Page 46 of Blood & Magic Eternal

His eyes open dazedly, and they take their time flitting up to mine almost as if he’d forgotten I was here. It’s all for show though, of course. For his kind, everything is play.

Licking his finger, he finally answers. “Why bother with shirts when I’d just dirty them anyway?”

Malachi takes another taste and my eyes snag on the red design on his wrist. It reminds me of the smears I saw on Gregor’s wrist too, only the one on the prince’s arm is much more define, possibly even permanent.

I want to get a better look at what the marking might be, but he notices me staring before I can and lowers his hand, the cloying nature of his saccharine smile returning.

“So sweet. But not as sweet as you will be, I imagine.”

“As sweet as a bolt to the heart,” I reply, nodding to the crossbow across the street. One of the gathered noctis, a woman with hair just as white as the prince’s is eyeing it with too much interest. I don’t recognize her, but her bone-white hair is indication enough of what family she belongs to, and I find myself wanting to kill the both of them. “Release me, and maybe you’ll find out just howsweetI can be.”

Prince Malachi chuckles, revealing a dazzling smile that has no right to be as gleaming as it is. He drinks blood, for pity’s sake. Shouldn’t his sharp fangs be stained red? Shouldn’t they be the serrated blades of my darkest nightmares?

“Oh,” he says, licking the front of his teeth and slowly circling me. Each calculated step he takes makes one more hair on my body stand straight, each one standing guard, haplessly waiting to defend me from his attack. Their sacrifice will, of course, be in vain. “You mistake me,” he says, flashing that wicked smile of his. “The more venomous the creature, the sweeter the blood.”

This time, I do flinch.Creatureis an even lower station than human. And I’ll never be able to understand how they can speak of us as if we are no more than beasts.

Then again, I suppose to his kind, we are just that. Nothing more than flesh and blood and sustenance.

He must notice the way his taunt impacts me because the corner of his mouth quirks up in a devious grin. “What’s wrong? Don’t appreciate being calledcreature? What aboutpet? Would you find that more suiting?”

I deny him any response, which only makes his devilish smirk deepen.

“Tell me, what’s the word you used to describe me?Bloodsucker, I believe you called me?”

My teeth aren’t nearly as sharp as his, but I bare them all the same. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You suck the life from the living?”

“Sometimes from the dead, as well.”

“You’re disgusting,” I scoff.

“No, I’m Malachi,” he corrects in that infuriatingly confident and condescending tone. “I thought you said you knew me.”

“I knowofyou.”

I’m not sure why I feel the need to correct him. Perhaps because of the way he hasn’t stopped smiling in that predatorial way since we started talking. Not to mention the fact that, aside from the noctis I was forced to endure earlier today, this is the longest conversation I’ve held with anyone other than Rowland in a decade, let alone a conversation that—dare I say—I’ve actually…enjoyed.

That acknowledgment makes me bristle, and I feel the need to remind myself of who he really is, what his family is capable of.

“You’re a Devonshire.”

“One of the many.” He spreads his arms wide, the heavy black cape expanding with them. “The best, if I do say so myself.”

“Can’t be difficult to be the best in a lineage that’s done nothing but kill.”

His father, Tor Devonshire, comes to mind. The first of the druids to embrace his noctis nature after Halira freed them from their demonic forms.

Malachi recoils, almost imperceptibly. A chink in the mask that I don’t think he meant for me to see. However, he’s quick to recover. “Perhaps that’s the very reason why I’m the best.”

“What do you want with me?” I ask at last. This game has gone on long enough.

He gazes upon me for an uncomfortable moment before turning to the noctis male beside him, the one who’s dark hair is tied back at the base of his neck.

Just as the prince opens his mouth to speak, another noctis barges through the crowd.

“What the fuck is this?”

Of the noctis who descended upon me, he was the one I feared most.

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