Page 35 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
And so, I watch.
“She was no queen,” Christian utters. “She was just a Promised. My father made sure everyone knew that. In the end, he threw her out just like the others.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Prince.” Thorn’s rumbling tone is all mischievous taunting, and I know the next words out of his mouth have been saved for this very moment, a need to throw the prince strongly off-kilter. I understand why he does it, but his next words are just as much news to me as they are to Christian. “She was a Queen,” he adds, his shoulders tense as if he expects another fight. An eeriness drifts between his words. Something unsaid shadows his voice, and everything in the room pauses in anticipation. “She was my father’s soulmate, as Crymson is ours. His one true love. His Queen. Even after your father killed her. My mother will always be a Fae Queen,Brother.”
TWENTY-TWO
Crymson
“Brother?”Christian repeats, the dirty word hissed through his teeth. “You’re lying.”
“What reason would I have to lie?” Thorn asks, glaring at him.
“To trick me into letting my guard down? To use it as a way to distract me? Planning to murder me in my sleep?” Christian spits back.
“Don’t tempt me,” Thorn grumbles, his eyes tight with disdain as he folds his big arms across his chest.
“Enough,” I say, interrupting a conversation that’s clearly going to do nothing but get worse the longer it goes on. “Can we not have a civil conversation about this? It’s like watching two roosters trying to look bigger than each other.”
Rorrick slips in through the door then just to add, “Two cocks. Tha’ seems accurate to me.”
Christian shoots Rorrick a glare that nearly makes me laugh. Luckily, I understand now isn’t the time and keep it sealed tight behind my lips.
“Explain yourself,” Christian growls. “What proof do you have that your mother and my mother were the same woman?”
Thorn snorts. “It’s not hard to gleam, Princeling. You only have to sense her blood running in my veins.”
I watch in surprise as Thorn reaches up to one of the sharp points on his face and presses his finger against it, just enough to draw a single drop of blood. He holds it up in the air between us, waiting for Christian to make the next move. We all watch the Blood Prince carefully, waiting to see what he’ll do. After a moment of hesitation, he steps forward and swipes the drop of blood from Thorn’s finger with his own. I don’t know what I expect, but it isn’t the sight of him pressing the drop to his tongue. Maybe I thought he’d smell it like a bloodhound or something. Either way, his eyes widen once he tastes it, and he stumbles back.
“Impossible,” he growls.
“Clearly not,” Thorn says. I feel his imagined roll of his eyes. He’s too proper to actually do it, but I know he wants to. I’ve learned a lot about the Thorn King in these past few months. Like the fact that hidden beneath his lifetime of regality, he’s genuinely funny.
“My mother was a Promised,” Christian says again, as if that’ll somehow solve all of this.
“She was a Queen before Boris stole her,” Thorn repeats, his patience wearing thin. “We’ve discussed this.”
“How?”
Thorn shrugs. “How are we brothers? I thought you too old for the birds and the bees talk.”
“How did he take her?” Christian snarls.
Thorn tenses, his eyes flashing at the question. “He waited until they’d slain my father and then he sent in a team to take her. I was young then, too young to fight. She shoved me in a cupboard in the kitchen before they burst in. She killed two of them before they dragged her away.”
Carver’s words echo through my mind, making me shiver with the dark memory...
When they realized she was with child... he cut me out of her belly and left me in the dirt to die.
“And you didn’t stop them?” Christian snarls.
Thorn doesn’t flinch. “I was barely old enough to understand what was happening. When she told me to be quiet and don’t come out until my father came home, I listened. When I finally ran out into the night to look for her, they were gone.”
Christian’s disgust flashes across his face. His fangs make him look like a feral animal ready to attack at his words. My own anger rises and comes out before I can stop it.
“Stop!” I hiss. “Both of you shut your mouths!”
With a spark of chaotic magic, all three men in the room are unnaturally silent. A muffled scream of words that can’t seem to get out shouts from behind Christian’s closed lips. His face twists in rage, but his mouth literally will not open. A glare like a dagger lands on me as he sends an accusing look my way.
