Page 89 of The Blood Crown

Clearing his throat, Asher placed his hands on his hips, feigning interest in the section of books behind them as he disappeared between the stacks without another word.

Her lips tugged into a smile. She wasn’t one to meddle—she’d leave that to Embra. But a fist squeezed tightly around her chest, and selfishly, she wondered if the Wraith might be enough to keep her brother at Ravenstone a little longer.

When Ven found her, Aurelia had one leg slung over the rolled arm of the chair, a heavy book propped open in her lap, and a small stack of empty plates and discarded dishes on the table next to her.

She went to take another sip of the glass of Red in her hand when he grasped the stem of the wineglass, plucking it from her fingers.

Leaning in close enough that his breath caressed her ear, he growled, “I realize you’re new to our customs,” his voice soft and low despite the edge in his tone, “but I find it a little insulting that you would drink the synthetic stuff to quench your thirst instead of just asking.”

Her blood heated at the dangerous look in his eyes as she sat up straighter, her chin tilted toward him in challenge.

“The only blood I want to touch your lips from this day forward, Love—” he leaned in, his lips grazing the shell of herear, “is mine.” His touch was feather-light against the sensitive skin of her throat—a seduction. A threat.

Love.

That silly pet name that he’d given her when she’d barely known him—it still drove her mad. Still made her blood boil. Sent her power surging to the surface in response to his own, or maybe it was his voice. Or maybe justhim.

“And if I find my thirst unquenchable?” she replied with equal venom, trying to keep her voice even as he caged her into the chair, his large body towering over hers.

The predatory smirk that pulled at his sensuous lips made her realize he waswellaware of what he was doing to her. And if he didn’t hear the way her heart thudded in her chest, he could certainly see her pulse hammering at her throat—scent her body’s response to him . . .

“Then I’ll be happy to die at the lips of My Queen,” he whispered against her neck.

"Queen—" she murmured, the word sinking in as her eyes flicked up to his. "You've decided to take the throne . . ."

"Not yet," he hesitated, "It is not my decision alone." He looked at her, the playfulness from earlier dissolving into something more serious. "Will you sit beside me? Rule our people with me?" he asked. "Fight for them?"

She understood the weight of what he was asking of her—the weight of this choice.

"With my life," she answered.

Shadows puddled and eddied around them, the wisps caressing her ankles and the bare skin of her arms as he carried them away without another word.

Chapter 45

Moonlight splintered through the domed windows in their chambers as Aurelia’s fingertips trailed the red-black ink etched along Ven’s throat, a matching image of the one on her own.

Grazing his collarbone, she traced the markings that began at his shoulder and spiraled down the length of his arm. Her touch feather-light as she ran a palm across the swells and valleys of his muscled chest.

He caught her hand in his own, bringing it to his lips. Exposing the inside of her wrist, he grazed the tips of his fangs along the sensitive skin, lips curving into a predatory smirk as she hummed with pleasure. “It’s time you got some of your own, you know.”

“I don’t—” she began, biting off her words.

“I promise Nira has a very steady hand,” he answered with a grin, placing his hands on either side of her hips and hauling her on top of him so that she had no choice but to look him in the eye.

“It’s not that,” she laughed, laying her head against his bare chest, breathing in the pine and citrus scent of him.

He toyed with a strand of her dark brown hair that spilled over his bare skin, wrapping the silken curl around his finger.

She let out a breath, her gaze falling to the hundreds of dashes that covered his arms. “I’m just not sure that I deserve to wear them.”

Ven sat up, a crease forming between his dark brows, an unruly lock of his onyx hair falling across one eye. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know who I am . . .whatI am.” Longing threaded her words, the weight of the unknown crashing down on her. “Where I belong.”

The library had offered up records of the Etheri, the dead kingdom her lightning harkened from, but she’d felt nothing as she read them . . . Her magick called to the coins, but she felt no closer to the truth of what she was.

The shadows, her thirst for blood—that, at least, was a small certainty. A tether to this place and these people.

---