Page 45 of Their Blood Queen

My mother doesn’t look much better than the peach, but she’s alive. I watch her for a moment, confirming the slow rise and fall of her chest before I move farther into the room.

I consider the silver bell next to her bed that will call the staff, but a sense of wrongness about the whole situation makes me feel like I need to take care of this myself.

Taking the vial, I pull out the dropper and squeeze the end to suck up the contents.

Will two drops be enough for this?

She’s not just in a coma. She’s been neglected.

My mother’s lips are dry, and her hair is stuck to her face. Anger builds inside my chest, beating against my rib cage with no outlet, for this level of neglect.

Has no one tended to her since I last saw her four days ago?

She’s alive, but her lips are cracked and her face is deathly pale. The shadows under her eyes and cast over her sunken cheeks are new. Based on her shallow breathing, I fear how much time she really has left.

How dare Father leave her in here, alone, to die of neglect next to a rotten peach.

But something rubs me wrong about the whole thing. My father loves my mother more than anything else in this world. He’d never allow her to be left alone, uncared for, and suffering.

With that reassurance, I decide to summon him when I’m done here. He couldn’t have known about this, and his anger will be far more respected and feared than mine.

I let two drops of the elixir fall onto my mother’s lips. Her skin greedily swallows up the silver contents.

But she doesn’t move. She doesn’t lick up the moisture. Her body merely drinks it up.

The skin on her lips smooths out and a kiss of red returns, but everything else stays the same.

Indecision makes my hands tremble. Caution tells me not to do what instinct says is necessary.

She needs more than two drops.

Which means she could potentially become addicted, and then what? My family can’t possibly afford anti-aging elixirs.

But Edward can.

I inwardly roll my eyes at myself. I’m already on a first-name basis with a man I hardly know?

My betrothed.

My future husband, with whom I am bound to spend the next thirty days in a romantic courtship that will end in marriage.

Earl Rinhold has made his intentions clear. He wants me.

He wants my children.

He wants a marriage, and in effect, that gives me certain assurances that should I need more of the elixir, I can get it.

Maybe that’s exactly what a man like Earl Rinhold wants, I think as I bite my lip.

I’m giving him a means to control me. That’s dangerous.

But I find my fingers overriding all the what-ifs and obeying instinct.

The reality is that if I don’t do anything, my mother will die.

I wind up praying for the second time in my life after I have added two more drops to my mother’s lips.

“Please, Cain. Let my mother live, and protect me against the Elite games I must play.”

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