Page 21 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
After a long moment of thinking of him, I turn away and push through another door–one I haven’t yet adventured through. Not because I’m afraid or because it’s off-limits but more because... Carver is strange and alluring and standing before him feels dangerous and magnetic all at the same time.
I shouldn’t go to the King’s brother for this information. But he’s the first one who greets me with a sinister smile when my feet step down from the stone steps and land in his domain.
“I knew you’d come eventually,” he whispers as he turns away from a black-clad desk and faces me. Big wings adjust with a shifting flap behind his lean shoulders as he stands. He doesn’t come forward though. He leans there in the darkness of the room, watching me, waiting for me to make the first move.
His office—you know, the dungeon—is clean and polished, the floors gleaming with a sparkling effect like black water beneath my feet. A chandelier of golden candlelight hangs overhead. The desk is at the center while a grand bed rests farther back in the corner of the room. Large portraits hang in a line on the wall nearest me, and for a moment, I’ve forgotten the bubbling rage that was boiling in my chest. The first painting is of a man and woman, tall and elegant with fine attire and large wings that seem to span from one side of the frame to the other. The wings are just as detailed as the painted crowns on their heads. Strokes of shadows and lights play against the sheer height of the black leathery wings. It’s a detail of power.
The next is the same couple but with a young man standing between them: their son.Thorn.His smile is boyish, and the shining thorns that typically pierce his body aren’t there. Smooth bronzed skin and sleek wings are all I can see.
My footfalls are quiet as I step closer to see the next one, and the woman radiates with color in her cheeks. The sharp points of her ears are clad with gemstones. Her long gown is a soft blue color, and the wings at her back are less emphasized nowand more delicate as the focus of the portrait seems very clearly directed at the glow of light haloing around the curve of her blooming belly. Her hand rests protectively there.
Then, nothing. The stone wall is barren and empty, and that detail alone feels like a story of art, but I don’t understand it.
“Is she your mother?” I ask, feeling like the woman with the inky black hair is more familiar to me than I know.
His voice vibrates across the wall, and his nearness startles me when he speaks just over my shoulder.
“She is.Was,” he corrects on a whisper.
“Why are there no more?” I ask, gesturing to the emptiness of the wall before us.
I peer back at him, and those bright watchful eyes dance across my face.
“Because no more exist.”
I blink up at him and the quietness that lingers like a ghost around his words.
“She was taken by the Blood King just after that portrait was done.” He pauses, his lips pressing together in a firm line before speaking once more in a haunting voice that might forever stain my memories. “When they realized she was with child... he cut me out of her belly and left me in the dirt to die.”
My lips part, but no words come out.
“Thorn found me wailing into the night. I was bloody. Dying. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
I swallow hard.
“What do you mean?”
“Fae magic is a tricky thing. Mischievous even when it’s well intended.” Long fingers brush against my hair, and he slips a lock back behind my ear as he looks at me with manic interest... or maybe it’s amusement, I can’t be sure. “Do you know what a soulmate is?”
“A binding of two hearts,” I answer almost immediately, and I can’t help but remember the letter of my name that mars the skin of a few vampires I know.
“Clever girl,” he whispers, and his praise kisses goose bumps across my skin.
“Are you saying Thorn somehow made you his soulmate?” A small teasing smile pulls at my lips, but he just shakes his head slowly.
“No. Not exactly.” He pauses, thinking for a moment. “He bound us, and in return, the magic made him a monster.”A monster.That’s how the vampires spoke of the man cursed with thorns. “My soul is forever bound to your King. Whatever he feels, I feel.” Those long fingers skim down my jawline and drift against the column of my neck, making me shiver from the lightest touch I’ve ever felt. But fuck, do I feel it.
“When we were younger, I used to hate him. I hated the magic that saved my life and ruined it all at the same time. He was an epic warrior. And every scratch that carved into his body, I felt. Every wound. Every broken bone. Every fucking pain that man endured was given to me.” His heated words are spoken slowly with a dripping rage that he carefully contains. With a single step, his body is aligned with mine, and his head tilts down until his lips hover just over mine. “Until there was you.”
My lashes flutter as I taste his soft-spoken words against my tongue.
“Me?” I echo on a whisper, not able to pull away from his nearness and hating how badly I want to lean into the ache that’s blooming in my chest.
“You, Crymson Vaine.”
“What am I to the Thorn King?” I ask, and his fingers lift one by one until he’s tilting my head up for himself.
It’s a test of sorts. I don’t move an inch. He waits. He gives time and consideration for me to pull away from him while myheartbeat counts every second he leaves pressing between us. I never do pull away. And he brushes his lips across mine ever so slowly. It’s a chaste kiss. Something I didn’t realize how badly I wanted until he took it back. My lashes flutter as I lean in further, but the heat of his body isn’t there. He places a safe but small amount of space between us. His tongue slides slowly across his lips, tasting me long after I’m gone.
