Page 6 of Cruel Vampire King

“I’m not putting that on,” I said.

She ignored my protests. Her grip was stronger than any vampire I’d come up against before. Within moments, she’d stripped off my shirt and pants. I snarled again and tried to punch her face, but she dodged my fist and clicked her tongue.

“I don’t know what the king wants with a human child like you, but I don’t ask questions,” she said, tugging the dress over my head. She hadn’t reacted whatsoever to my scars. “And if you keep enough of his attention that I can spend the night with my lover, all the better for me.”

She winked, and I had to fight back a gasp. Keep his attention. How, exactly?

“I’d have preferred the jumpsuit,” I said, stuttering over my words as images flitted through my mind. The type that had me sitting on the edge of a table with my skirt bunched up at my hips. I liked dresses—impractical as they were—but if I’d guessed right in what the king wanted from me…

Marissa shrugged. “And it’d be stunning on you. But it’s too casual for your first meeting with the king.”

I bit my tongue before I could tell her it wasn’t my first meeting at all. Marissa stepped back, smiled, and nodded. She touched my dark hair as though she planned to take it out of thebraid, but I jerked back. There was only so much to this I could take!

She shrugged again and briskly walked away, clearly expecting me to follow. I looked around for a weapon before reminding myself that killing Luken wouldn’t get Darcie back. She had been claimed as a sacrifice to the gods four years ago. The girls chosen were kept pure and in comfort in the temples, though nobody knew exactly where. Darcie was safe, until she turned eighteen.

She had been fourteen when she was taken.

I was out of time—I had to get her out now. The Blood Trials were the only way I’d be able to do it.

So I squared my shoulders and followed after Marissa. Down the hall, to the final door, into a richly decorated sitting room. The amount of color that burst from every wall brought me to a halt. Portraits of wonderous natural scenes hung on every space on the walls. Flowers, forests, oceans, sunsets. It was so breathtaking that I first missed the square table in the middle of the room, laden with different seafood.

Then, the smell of shrimp and lobster hit my nose. My mouth watered, and I turned, my gaze sweeping over the offerings. It wasn’t just the shellfish, but also fish of salmon, haddock, cod, and vegetation. Badderdocks, dulce, nori, hijiki. The sort of foods my parents used to gather and prepare from the sea.

“Sit down,” a smooth, dark voice said.

I glanced up and found myself locked in Luken’s amber gaze. He smiled as he pulled out a chair.

“It’s been a long time, Elara,” he said. “You can’t be surprised that I want to catch up.”

My heart raced. My hands trembled, but I managed to keep my expression blank. I sat, and he pushed in my chair, leaning close. He inhaled deeply, inches from my skin. I resisted the urge of taking a handful of salmon and shoving it in his face.

“What’s going on here?” I asked. To my disgust, my voice shook.

“Like I said, I want to catch up.” Luken stood at the corner next to me. He rested his elbows on the table, his amber gaze not moving from me.

I clenched my fists together under the table. Catch up.Catch up?

“Perhaps you don’t remember. It was a long time ago,” he said softly. “You lived in Kondar, a little fishing village near the sea. The local earl had just turned fifteen and invited me to attend the celebration for his birthday. I decided to attend. The whole village was decorated with flowers. It was a pretty village, I remember that. And though I was a guest at the Earl’s estate, we went to the inn. And that was where I saw you.”

And where I saw him. I remembered that moment with too great a vivid recollection. I’d been wearing a new dress. It was cut daringly low—just to the top of my breasts, hardly showing any cleavage, but it had felt daring to me. My hair had been braided with flowers to celebrate the Earl’s birthday, and I had been harboring fantasies about his older, wealthier cousin falling madly in love with me.

The instant I’d laid eye on the king, all other fantasies disappeared.

“I wanted you to come back to the capital with me,” Luken continued, his voice low and gravelly. “The moment I saw you, smelled you, I knew I wanted you. You would have been my personal blood donor. And you wanted to come with me.”

I stared at the food on the table, trying to quell the rush of heat through my chest. Anger? It had to be.

“Your parents refused to let you go. And you were only eighteen. Old enough to leave if you chose to, but young enough that you feared disappointing them.” Luken picked up a wine goblet and drank deeply from it. I watched his Adam’s apple bob. “I meant to give you a few more years. To grow into yourself more, to figure out how to fight for what you wanted. I planned to come back for you. But then I learned you were dead, killed in a fire.”

His words were like a bucket of ice poured down my back. The heat in my chest, the anger, disappeared in an instant, leaving behind a hollow ache. I opened my mouth but stopped myself.

Luken’s eyes grew sharper on my face. He leaned forward, as though he was hoping I’d speak. A few tense moments passed before he slumped back in his chair and let out a heavy sigh.

“Eat, Elara. You will do well to have food in your belly before entering Wickham forest tomorrow.” He selected a shrimp off a platter and popped it into his mouth, chewing slowly.

While turned vampires couldn’t digest food other than blood, born vampires like him could enjoy the foods that other species ate. It didn’t sustain them, but it was well-known that King Luken employed an army of cooks to satisfy his tastebuds.

“I didn’t know you were alive until I saw you at the Trials. You can’t imagine my shock, seeing you there.”

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