Page 64 of Heartless Prince

16

Tatum

I openedone eye as something creaked near me. There was a man in my room. All I could see was brown hair and cold blue-green eyes. The rest was a blur.

A moan escaped my lips. “Where… where am I?” I asked.

“Sit up. It’ll wear off soon. You know these things are necessary,” the man said. “I think they may have given you too high of a dose last night, though, if you’re this bad.” His voice was cold, dangerous, sent a lick of fear up my spine. I couldn’t remember who he was, but I knew to be afraid of him.

I tried to do what he said, lethargically pulling myself up to a seated position. I was on a small bed with white sheets and a gray blanket. I swung my legs over one edge and rubbed my eyes before looking around again.

I repeated my earlier question. “Where am I?”

The man glared down at me. “Tatum, you’ve been here for weeks. You know where you are. Think.”

A name suddenly popped into my head, clear as day. “King,” I whispered. “That’s… that’s you.”

He was Tobias King. Richest man in the country. But why was he here? I strained my mind, trying my best to figure it out.

“Good girl. You’re starting to remember.”

My voice trembling, I spoke up again. “Why am I here?”

“Because you asked for it.”

I shook my head. “No...”

A vicious smile. “Oh, yes.”

My memory was slowly beginning to return now. I recalled a ceremony in the woods, flaming torches, robed men with horned masks and golden rings. A woman in white, tied to a stone altar…

I moaned, and the memories kept seeping in. A mansion in the darkness. A skull filled with red liquid. A hot metal iron pressed against my skin. Mellie, laughing cruelly at me. A ballroom. A tasseled whip. A bath.

Elias.

“I made this happen,” I whispered, reaching around to feel the brand on my lower back. It still wasn’t entirely healed, but the scab was almost ready to fall off, and it wasn’t infected.

Tobias cracked another nasty smile. “So it’s all coming back to you. Thank god it’s wearing off. We need you ready for tonight, don’t we?”

“Tonight?”

“The Bonding is tonight. Surely you remember thatpart.”

I shook my head. “I don’t.”

“It means it’s finally time for you to lose your virginity.”

Suddenly the rest of it came flooding back. Of course. I’d been given some of the orange juice last night because the guards were sick of me crying for Elias after he left me the lobster rolls. No wonder I felt so dizzy and blurry for so long. The drugs in the juice made me sleepy and woozy, and they made it hard to remember anything when I woke up, at least for the first few minutes.

I wished I never remembered any of this at all. I wished the drugs would strip it away permanently, leave my mind untainted and innocent.

“I can’t believe I did this,” I repeated miserably.

“You did it because you belong here.” Another nasty smile. “Don’t you?”

I nodded grimly. I hated to admit it, but he was right. This was where I belonged now, and it was all my fault.

I thought about how different my life would’ve been if I wound up making other choices. Better choices. What if I’d been smart and accepted from the very start that I didn’t belong anywhere near the world of the elite and subsequently never attended that party with Katie nearly two years ago? I wouldn’t have met Ben Wellington, I wouldn’t have contributed to his death, and I wouldn’t have ended up on the Kings’ radars. I wouldn’t be here now, owned and subjugated by one of them.

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