Page 20 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
Warm heavy laughter crawls across my flesh, and I shiver in the darkness.
“Sweet pet, you should know by now... I’ll never let you go.”
My lashes fly open with a throbbing pain, and trickling sweat kissing my temple. Red eyes shine from across the room, and it takes me a moment to register that something is looking at me.
Christian?
I stand from the bed immediately, but the door sways open from behind the figure, dousing the person in the warm candlelight from the hall.
And sadness pools inside of me when I see her pale face: Delilah.
“Crymson,” she hisses, her shining eyes dancing across my features.
“What are you doing here? What’s wrong?” My hands clasp over hers, and I wait with wide eyes for her reply.
“Nothing–I mean–I’m fine,” she says, looking back at the empty hall behind her before focusing on me once more. “I have to tell you something, something important.”
“Okay,” I whisper, and too much dread and fear sink into me all at once.
I’m getting really tired of people revealing once-in-a-lifetime crises to me every fucking day.
“Airen and I were talking tonight over wine. I think he had a bit too much.” She smiles a conspirator-like smile, and I want badly to ask if getting the King’s guard drunk was her intention, but I don’t want to interrupt nor do I want to be an accomplice in her plotting, “Anyway, I may have tranced him. Just a little.” She holds up her index finger and thumb to indicate it wasn’t a lot of vampiric voodoo magic that she used on the boy who obviously has a crush on her but just a smidgen.
“What?!” I whisper-shriek at her.
“I–I needed information. And he needed to give it to me.”
“I thought you had a fucking crush on him, Delilah! I thought you wanted to be his girlfriend, not his extortionist.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Sometimes, they’re one and the same.” Her eyes twinkle in the dark like the most beautiful demon I’ve ever held hands with.
“Do you want to know what I know or not?” she asks with an arrogant and impatient tilt of her head that reminds me all too much of her brother.
A few seconds tick by before I quickly nod to her without daring to speak a single word.
She takes a long breath, and the hold she now has around my hands is gentle. Alarmingly gentle. The memory of a case worker holding my small hands lightly as she explained that my motherwas gone and that I’d be going away with her for a little while flickers through my thoughts, but I shake it away.
“Airen said the Fae King isn’t your kin. That he only told that to the vampires to get you in the Dark Lands. He said... he said youbelongedto him. And that there are even bigger secrets that not even Airen is privy to.”
My fingers dig into her palms as my teeth grind together hard.
Hours ago, I was blissfully drunk and unaware of the web of lies he has entangled me in. I even thought I cared for him. I thought... it doesn’t matter what I thought.
What matters now is what the fuck he has to say for himself.
THIRTEEN
Crymson
It’s stilldark in the halls as I make my way from the second floor to the first. A warm blush of color kisses the horizon through the arching windows, but dawn has yet to crawl across the dark skyline. My bare feet pad over the cold floors, and not a single soul stops me as I storm the castle.
Delilah slithered off into the night, closing her bedroom door across from mine with a firm finality like she didn’t intend to be getting up anytime soon.
The lucky bitch.
Meanwhile, I’m stuck digging up old secrets this kingdom has probably been plotting since before I was even a toddler. What on earth does the King of Thorns want with me? And why, why did he not just tell me the truth? Why hide it? Why act like you’re my fucking friend when you’re very obviously plotting something right in front of my face?!
I shove open the kitchen doors, and for a moment, my gaze locks onto the infirmary door directly across the room.
