Chapter 18

Iarch back, using the pad of my thumb to roll her bottom lip so far I expose her clenched teeth, then thread my fingers through her hair that looks like honey in the blazing light—tangled in a mass of knots I itch to tame.

Her cheeks are flushed, sodden shirt clinging to the outline of her heaving breasts, that bold gaze darting between my eyes. Fearlessly seeking.

Little does she know, that’s exactly what I want. What stirs my fucking pulse.

That fearless gleam that makes her eyes sparkle with a luster I yearn to catch. Cradle.

Consume.

That same fearless gleam she had when she pinned me against the wall with her hairpin at my throat. When her thick, golden locks unspooled and tumbled about her face, falling past her waist in a churn of untamed disarray.

My fierce beauty hidden away—cloistered and unsullied—with supple, unspoiled skin begging to be marked.

Claimed.

Perfect.

My hands tighten into fists that crush her hair, straining the strands against her scalp. She doesn’t flinch, even though I know it must hurt.

I sigh.

“So fucking perfect.”

She sucks a breath like she’s going to speak, but the words die on her tongue. I yearn to tip forward and taste their strangled remains. Instead, I rest my forehead against hers, pushing until there is no give.

“I really wish you hadn’t seen this, petal.”

I feel the pulse of her whirring mind …

Does she realize what she’s ruined? What she’s smacked out of my outstretched hand by coming here?

A chance at normality.

Silence stews, tension crackling like a dying flame I want to blow life into. But she’s seen too much. Now I have to plant my pretty flower in the ground and take Ocruth by force. What a fucking shame.

Behind me, he rumbles in his sleep …

“Who—”

“My father,” I admit, and her breath hitches.

“You … You told me he passed.”

I thread my fingers deeper into her messy, messy hair, tugging the wet tangles. “He did.”

I study her eyes. The questions swimming within their orchid depths make her look like an addled sprite blinking up at me, choking on her own naïvety. She has no idea how big the world is. How small and delicate she is.

How fast I could rip into her.

Drink her dry.

How fast I could have her screaming for me to let her go while her body begs for more.

And if I truly unleash? If I listen to the voice that picks, picks, picks at me—give in to the savage urge welling in my chest, threatening to rupture, making my fingers curl and my mind whirl with grisly possibilities?

My hand threads around her neck like a collar, gently squeezing, a throb flaring to life in my hardening cock …

I could control the breath flowing into her heaving lungs. Watch her lips turn blue, panic igniting her eyes. Feel her struggle beneath me, powerless against my crushing might. Cast her into a sleep she’ll never wake from, then peel the skin from her flesh to examine her inner workings.

Turn her into a beautiful, bloody mosaic. My own personal masterpiece.

But I would never do that to her.

Couldn’t.

The moment I looked into those orchid eyes and felt our souls collide, watched her breath hitch like she could feel it too, I knew she was for me.

Mine.

Gifted to me by the Gods themselves.

She couldn’t walk away fast enough, but she already had me hooked. Under her fucking spell.

I hunt that fluttering pulse …

She just needs time to catch up. To taste me.

For me to taste her.

She’ll have plenty of time down here while she mulls over her mistakes. A caged eternity to take me into her iron-clad chest and accept the fucking truth standing right before her. Accept us and forget the sick bastard who manipulated her into believing she was his.

“What happened to him?” she rasps, pulling me from my thoughts.

“The Great Purge almost ripped him apart,” I mutter, though the words still come out like they’ve been sharpened on a whetstone. “Tore him down to his base urges. Turned him into an animal.”

The last word strikes like a blow, and my delicate flower flinches.

Looking over my shoulder, I study the monster. Remember the strong, cunning man I used to know. He’s in there, somewhere.Every time he begs for death, I see a little of my father peeping through his inky eyes. A little more of the man who fed that bestial, broken part of me and called it perfect.

Called me perfect.

He never looked at me craven and quaking. Never begged me to change. He gave me everything.

Until Rhordyn took him from me.

“That’s all that’s left of the man who raised me. If I hadn’t kept him safe all these years, gone above and beyond to keep him fed and healthy so he doesn’t have to leave this place, he would’ve been hunted. Slain.”

The refugee kid locked in the cell behind Orlaith lets out a squeal.

I narrow my eyes on her—a small, huddled shadow in the gloom, peering at me through eyes bulging with pure, undiluted fear. His next fucking meal if she doesnt stop looking at me like that.

“You feed him children,” Orlaith says, distracting me, her voice barely a whisper.

I sigh.

Almostperfect.

“He’s picky. Sometimes he refuses to feed unless he’s given something … irresistible. I have to mix it up. Vary his diet. Get him excited.”

Her gaze slays, fearlessly picking me apart. A look that spears straight to my fucking loins.

Shrugging, I run the back of my hand up the smooth expanse of her throat. “I have no choice, petal.”

“You always have a choice,” she chides.

My heart stills, a whisper from the past creeping to the surface, wrapping around my neck.

Tightening.

Ignore the voice in your head, Non. Listen to mine.

My voice will never hurt you or tell you to do horrible things.

My voice is right—not wrong.

My voice is love.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snap, and realize my hand has clamped down. Orlaith claws at it, mouth gaping, eyes bulging like glass marbles glistening in the firelight. “Mother talked to me like that.” I tilt my head, lean back, then grip my shirt by the collar and rip, spraying popped buttons.

The yawning front exposes the scar almost directly above my heart. The pale, risen remnants of the moment my own flesh and blood decided the world would be better off without me.

Another bleeding heart.

I remember the look in Mother’s eyes when I woke to that talon sliding through my chest, like she was hurting more than me.

“She’ll never speak again because her aim wasn’t as good as yours,” I chuff, flashing Orlaith a half smile. “You—on the other hand—put Rhordyn down so beautifully.”

Tears shred down her cheeks.

I let her go, hoping she’ll fall to her knees. Disappointed when she doesn’t.

She folds against the bars, color flooding her face as she coughs and gasps, cradling her flushed throat.

Always fucking fighting me.

“Only because you,” she heaves through swift, serrated breaths, “played me …”

I did.

There was something poetic about manipulating the woman he thought was his into stabbing him through the heart. The woman he loved—I could see it in the fucker’s eyes.

“I had no choice,” I say, serving bite-sized pieces of a truth too big to swallow whole. “He was sniffing too close.”

Her bloodshot gaze nips to Father as she gulps air, clinging to the bars at her back like her spine has been ripped free.

Rhordyn may have spared me years ago when he stormed the palace like Kvath come to weigh my hollow heart. When he looked down upon a frightened, powerless boy with the pathetic blood of my mortal mother flowing through my veins, but failed to notice my father’s blood warming my soiled heart.

And if he knew I was harboring my bestial, broken father who didn’t quite die during The Great Purge?

“You were the only one who could get close enough to eliminate him.” I step forward and thread my hand up to cup her cheek. “You saved me. Saved him,” I say, jerking my chin at the man I’d rip myself to shreds to protect.

“Sacrifices,” she sputters.

Again, I drag my hand down her delicate neck, blotched red from my tight grip. “Yes.” My fingers rest upon her carotid, ripe and swollen with fluttering need.

A flame sparks inside my chest, her hot pulse flicking at my fingers, churning faster, faster. Begging me to split her skin.

Set it free.

My throat works as I brush my thumb across her silky, untarnished canvas. “I can’t let you leave, Orlaith.”

The child begins to sob, drawing my gaze toward her frail form. Still she’s looking at me in that same haunting way.

The same way she looks at me.

The child releases another whimper, and a growl brews in my chest, fingers itching to tighten around her tiny throat and stem that fucking sound—

“I know,” Orlaith whispers, and the air flavors with metallic spice, interrupting my train of thought.

My attention homes on the trickle of blood oozing from Orlaith’s nose, descending over her lips, her chin, the background noise paling in significance to the sudden, aching thirst making the nerves beneath my tongue burst with tingles …

Her lashes sweep shut as I smear it across her lips, painting them red like the night I tasted them for the first time. The night she wore a dress that looked like blood pouring down her curves, puddling around her feet.

My perfect muse, following my lead, dancing just for me.

Mine.

Her lids flutter, and she opens her mouth, seeming to hesitate. “I have a confession, too.”

I tilt my head to the side, twirling a wet length of honey hair around my finger. “About?”

“Rhordyn did drink me.”

A violent jolt of jealousy almost shreds me in two, and my hand fists her sodden locks, jerking back her head.

Heart thumping, my narrowed gaze scours her untarnished neck for any sign I may have missed that the broody heathen ripped into my pretty flower. Scored her delicate skin with his monstrous maw.

All I find is smooth, untarnished perfection begging to be marked.

Bled.

She can’t be meaning the scar on her wrist. It’s too small to be made by a man such as him. I always pictured her making that mark herself.

“Are you lying to me, Orlaith?” I swallow thickly, tapping her carotid. “There’s nothing more primal than drinking from right here. Nothing more dominating than pulling from such a vulnerable source.”

“He never drank from my neck,” she rasps, and I frown, wrestling with her boggling allegations that just don’t stack.

Nothing brings me closer to feeling like a God than when I’m latched onto a warm neck, listening to the slowing whump of a dying heart. Deciding between my voracious greed and withering mercy. Rhordyn may be mused by saving small, pathetic lives, but the same voracious hunger that sits inside my chest bestrides him twofold.

If he drank from her, there’s no way he didn’t bite what’s mine. Somewhere.

Unless she’s playing me a fool …

“Where?” I growl into her ear, feeling her shudder against me.

If it’s her inner thigh—

Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. Slowly, she lifts her hand, boasting the tips of her fingers.

Tiny, pale dots mar them, barely noticeable even to my eyes.

“Needle pricks,” she whispers, and my heart stills. Eyes widen. Hers harden with unfathomable hurt—a look that punches through my chest and rocks my rotten core. “Every night for nineteen years I dripped myself into a crystal goblet and set my offering in a small wicket door, even though I knew not what he was. Why he needed it. Every night for nineteen years he climbed that tower and took, and took, and took.”

My heart stills.

“Every night?” I confirm, frown deepening. “Did you ever drink from him?”

A laugh bubbles in the back of her throat that’s beautifully unhinged. “Rhordyn? Bleed for me? Of course not. Not until I stabbed him through the heart,” she bites out, and I swear some of the light slips from her eyes as a shiver rakes through her delicate body.

Fuck.

I push closer, mind whirling as she shudders against me. “Petal—”

“I loved it,” she admits, and my blood runs hot when I see no lie in her open, aching eyes.

Luscious, shocking creature likes to bleed …

“Loved h-him.”

I want to strangle the fractured whisper from existence the moment it leaves her lips.

I shove my hips forward, crushing her against the bars.

She swallows, her eyes losing more of their luster as the next words croak free through chattering teeth. “And all I w-wanted, all I fucking needed, was f-for him to want me just as much as I w-wanted him. To see the pleasure in his eyes when he t-took what I was freely giving.”

I snag her wrist, gripping tight.

She should have been mine from the start. Tucked into my palace—my bed. Eating my food.

Giving me her fucking blood.

“Don’t you see,Cainon? Rhordyn never l-loved me.” Another fat tear rolls down her cheek as she nips the tip of her finger, releasing a bright-red bead of her. Spicing the air with more of that rich, potent scent that makes me picture embers crackling against my tongue.

It drips down the length, and I watch; transfixed.

Fucking hypnotized.

She squeezes the tip, releasing another bulb, and my heart leaps when she brings it to my mouth. Her face knots—features drinking the angry firelight like they were made to burn together.

“He just loved my blood,” she snarls, then shoves it past my lips.