Page 51 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
“You were his stolen Promised,” I murmur, and though the words don’t carry off of my bloody lips, she nods.
The sharp points of her teeth slip out as she smiles softly.
“We all were. Now we’re his curse. His half-breeds,” she coos affectionately, and her eyes trail across the land of corpses fighting her war for her.
“They were Promised?”
Do these walking Dead—these rotting vampires–do they belong to her? Or to Boris?
Her gaze drifts back to me. Cold hands clasp around mine, and her nails bite into my fingers as she forces my hold harder on the dagger. On a sweeping motion so similar to a bow, she bends over me. Her forehead kisses mine, and she holds me.
Why is she doing this? Does she want to comfort me?She is, if I’m being honest. There’s an aura about her that sinks into you. It’s warm and calm. Peaceful. She’s holding me, and my eyes drift closed as I wait for the slow beating of my heart to finally drift off into the darkness of this land.
“You know what you have to do, Crymson,” she whispers darkly, and I feel her breath along my neck.
My eyes flinch just slightly as a light pain prickles my flesh. Warmth oozes down my throat and across my chest. It’s so...nice.It’s a warmth that fills me from my soul all the way to my toes.
A scream that can’t be mine rips from my throat. It’s different from the others. It feels different than even when Christian fed from me, which was so consuming, I thought I’d never leave.
My fingers are numb, but I feel her press them harder against the metal of the dagger. She takes more from me. She takes every drop just as she grips my hands tighter around the hilt. Heat seeps between us as she feeds. A gasp rattles. The pain along my neck subsides.
Darkness kisses at the edges of my mind, but the faintness of her words echoes there in the shadows...
“You know what you have to do, Crymson.”
THIRTY-ONE
Carver
I felt her.Felt.
“Fuck,” I hiss out before kicking the dead corpse and stomping my boot to the ground like a child.
The dirt of this fucking land is so thick in the air that I can’t see. I can only sense things, and right now, I can’t sense her.
“What’s wrong?” Christian growls out and then he does the one thing no one’s done to me in ten years.
He fucking puts his hand on my shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” he asks again with so much contained violence in him, I can see it bleeding across his pretty skin in crawling black lines of dark magic.
“Something’s happened.” I shove past him and keep going, rushing through the heat of the land so fast, it only stirs up more debris.
But he’s still there. Still keeping up with my strides every step of the way.
“She’s hurt, isn’t she?” he asks, and I know he knows. I know he feels her in a way I don’t, and that thought alone should piss me off, but it doesn’t.
The pretty Prince and I are too similar, unfortunately. He knows what’s his is his. And he also knows that Crymson isours.
Sharing is caring, my dear Prince.
Right now, though... there’s a stabbing in my chest where her love should lie. It hurts. It hurts to breathe, and it hurts not knowing.
“Fuck!” I scream again into the darkness.
A tree trunk hits my shoulder hard, and instead of stumbling, I grip it around the center and bring it down hard with one arm. My frustration rips through the pounding of my heart, attempting to replace the fear and pain there with rage. The cracking of bark tears through the night. Dust floods up around us in a wave.
I stop and stare for a long moment. The Blood Prince watches me as I watch the void around us.
