Page 55 of Vicious Knight

Minutes later I’m still walking. I try to figure out where the path might lead but I have no bearings. At least the sounds of the rats have decreased, and I can’t hear the laughing anymore.

The rumble of voices suddenly fills the tunnel. It’s different from the laughter I left behind. These voices sound like people talking. Men talking in normal conversation.

I follow the sound but stop dead in my tracks when I see runes engraved on the walls ahead of me. Straight away I realize with horror where I am.

The Knights use the old Elder Futhark runes to communicate secret messages.

Levgen taught me how to read the runes. The ones ahead tell me that I’m beneath Raventhorn Hall. As in the place I’m not allowed to be.

And I’m right near the meeting hall where the Knights gather for ceremonies.

If I’m caught down here…

Oh my God, if I’m caught down here I would be in all sorts of trouble. Me and my parents. The male voices I heard just now were Knights. Shit.

What the fuck have you done to me, Tiffany?

What the actual fuck?

I whirl around to go back the way I came—even if it’s infested with rats—but I crash into a hard body.

Before me stands a tall and muscular Knight. He’s even wearing his tunic. The black Knight's tunic with the blue raven insignia embossed on the front.

His hood is up, so I can’t see his face properly.

The voices sound again and the Knight looks behind us, then back at me, his mouth curling into a deep frown. He takes his hood down and I’m almost, almost relieved when I see it’s Thorne.

It’s him, but for once he looks pissed off to see me. The joviality I usually witness is nowhere to be found in the hard lines of his handsome face.

I open my mouth to tell him why I’m here but when he grasps my throat, I realize my false sense of hope.

“You should never have come down here, Bambi. You really have a death wish.”

“I didn’t mean to. I?—”

“Shhh.”

He presses his thumb down on the side of my neck and everything goes dark. The world tilts then fades into nothing, taking his face with it.

Then I go to the land of nowhere.

Chapter 12

Thorne

I brought Ivy back to my place.

Now she’s asleep on my bed.

I lean against the doorframe of my bedroom watching her lithe, doll-like body resting peacefully on my king-size bed.

She looks even more delicate and beautiful in this vulnerable state. That hair of hers has spilled across my navy pillows in contrasting waves, making her look like a silver-haired Venus painted against the sheets.

In my fantasies of this moment she was naked instead of wearing the yoga pants painted to her legs and the T-shirt hugging her breasts. The circumstances of her being here were also definitely different from what I’d conjured in my mind.

I never thought I’d run into her in the secret tunnels beneath Raventhorn Hall and have to knock her out.

I had to do it.

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