Page 100 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
His deceptively handsome, charming features were trained on me now. The urge to puke arose.
Worse than the devastating guilt was the strange, sickly anger that I didn’t know how to put into words. I felt violated, as if a part of my soul had been consumed without my consent.
Juliette was watching me so intensely that it made me want to gouge outhereyes.
“She doesn’t like me.” She feigned sadness that I could see straight through to the emptiness beneath.
Aster stroked her cheek. “Miss Evie is still stuck in survivor mode. You remember what that’s like.”
I took a step away from them. Aster was strangely tender toward his unhinged, psychotic slave-wife.
They both stared at me now, and I could nearly taste the thirst on their tongues. I fought the urge to bolt, instead choosing to endure this overwhelming discomfort.
Juliette needed to die. Yet as strongly as I seethed with hatred, there was a part of me that now hesitated.
For some reason, I’d been envisioning someone older—a man. Not a girl who looked like me.
Not a girl who’d likely been married off as a child.
Was she evil? Or was she traumatized?
No.Fuck that. She killed Princeton brutally, harvested his eyeballs and used his death to make herself more powerful.
She was a mass murderer. She’d massacred innocent students…
Juliette stared at me as she leaned into Aster’s gentle touch, his hand cradling her face.
… andshe thought that made us the same.
32
EVIE
Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold. Inhale…
The more I practiced my breathing to soothe my shattered nervous system, the more I thought of the witch who’d taught me the technique in the first place.Iled the born to Princeton.
“There’s no need to worry, dearest Evie,” Aster said.
His tone might’ve been soothing if it weren’t from a disgusting predator.
“You’re not in trouble,” Juliette added with a nod as Aster continued to gently pet her.
“We know this city has poisoned you against us, your true family,” Aster drawled. “You took refuge with the turned when those humans came after you. That was a very smart move for such a lost, wounded little girl.”
Yep, the urge to vomit was back.
I gripped the flute of elixir far too tightly now.
My lips formed a tight line. I’d come in strong, poised, prepared. Now I felt turned around, confused, even ashamed by what I’d inadvertently revealed.
“You came here with a plan, no?” Aster asked, those amber eyes roaming my form. His smile was relaxed, as if I’d already given him everything he wanted. “To spy? To scheme?”
“She came here to kill me,” Juliette said, fake emotion in her childlike voice.
“Shhh,” Aster hushed before focusing back on me. “She will do no such thing. But you may ask anything you want, Evie. Unlike the turned, we have nothing to hide.”
The born were tricky, manipulative. I had to clear my mind and refocus. Even as the walls were closing in.
