I smirked. “Got you trapped in more ways than one, huh?”
“You’re a real bastard.”
“I might be a bastard, but your mother is a real cunt.”
She jolted. “How dare you?”
I pushed off the bed, barking, “How dareshe?”I bolted forward and fisted my hand in her silky pink hair, making her gasp. “Do you know what she did to my father, to my family? To ourKingdom?” I pulled tighter and she hissed at me again. “Of course you don’t, because you’re a sheltered, weak fucking thing who spent so much time masquerading as a motherfucking human.”
“Get your hands off me.”
I ignored her seething demand—that was just like a motherfucking angel right there—and forced her face close to mine by my hold on her hair as I rumbled, “But you will know that hell. You’ll know that shame. That fucking pain. We can’t come ather,but here you are right up close and ripe for the taking. Justicewillprevail after all.”
“Justice for what? What are you talking about? What do you think she did to you?”
“Three years ago? Ring any bells?”
Realization actually shone in her eyes.
“TheCataclysm,”she breathed.
So she hadn’t been completely sheltered from everything then. She knew about it after all.
“That was a difficult time. It hurt a lot of people.Butmy mom wasn’t the culprit, it was Constantine Vale, the maniac who went after us all. Abigail Rose was trying to save everyone from his wrath. She was a hero back then and she still is now.”
“A hero, huh?”
“That’s right,” she said, standing firm in her beliefs.
“You’re so fucking naïve. She ruined my life. My family’s. Talon’s life too. And now you’re here,you’llpay for her sins.” I growled hauntingly at her ear, “We. Will. Ruin. You.”
Instead of balking at my dark promise, her eyes narrowed and she bit out, “Then you won’t survive the year.”
Damn.That was hot as the fires of hell.
Another source of heat drew my attention and rolled right through me, and I looked to see her eyes lit with golden flames, the sign that she was trying to call her power.
No, it was more than that… it was doing something to my magic.
Even though her gold power wasn’t touching me or my power directly, it felt as though it was, at the mere close proximity of it rather than actual physical contact.
That warmth morphed to something a whole lot more intense.
Engulfing me.
Consuming me.
Tantalizing me.
A groan left me at the same time as a moan slipped from her lips.
I stepped closer. “What are you doing?”
“It’s you. Stop it.”
“This release of power is more than just the slight spell of conjuring food for yourself. A lot more. For it to impactme…pull it back.”
“It’s interacting with your magic. Break these binds and retract yours and it’ll have nothing to fight against.”