Page 41 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
Underwear: that’d be great right now.
I push open my bedchamber doors, and one by one, they all file in behind me. I try not to roll my eyes at them as I pull open the sleek wooden wardrobe and start pushing hangers back and forth.
“Definitely,” Carver says, and he’s being so serious right now, it’s scary.
“How do you know?” Seven asks curiously, but his gaze pulls to me like a magnet the moment the white button-down falls to the floor.
I smile at him, and his boyish smile sinks right into me with a flutter of energy washing through my stomach.
“Hey, focus!” Rorrick snaps. “Give ’er some fuckin’ privacy.” He pushes his hands down his lean hips hard like he’s the onlyasshole in the room that hasn’t side-eyed the curve of my ass in the last three seconds.
Ope, never mind. Chivalry is in fact dead.
I lift my brows at Rorrick’s straying glance, and though he doesn’t blush, he shyly looks away. With a wet rag, I continue wiping away the mess of blood that covers far too much of my body. It feels like an endless task that will never be finished. but I try my best.
“I can feel her,” Carver finally replies absently. He frowns. “So other. Decaying. Strange.” Nothing any weirder than he often says.
He leans lazily against the frame of the open door, but when I meet his gaze while pulling a white sundress up my thighs, he doesn’t dare look away, challenging me with the heat of his eyes.
“Are you sure you should get dressed?” he interrupts as if my nudity is negotiable.
“Well, you’re fairly certain a small army of the Dead is no longer in the burned border but in the Fae Realm for what I’m guessing is the first time. I kinda think I should wear clothes for that occasion.” I lift my hands in a half shrug at him.
“No,” he says with a smile and an adamant shake of his head.
“Where’s Aerin?” Thorn asks with heavy concern lacing his words.
“He went on a walk with Delilah,” Christian answers, and thunder rumbles through the castle walls.
The two fae eye the Vampire Prince and he glares right back. With that single statement, the room is full of too much testosterone and distrust once again. They don’t trust the Vampire Princess. Or her brother. Or his friends. Jesus. He just shared me in a garden with Carver, but that bonding experience is long forgotten, obviously.
Apparently, trust is earned in the Fae Realm. Not fucked.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Christian
The evening passesin a substantially less sexy manner if I do say so myself.
The taste of her blood and the pulse of her orgasm is still buzzing through my body. Even as I sit patiently in the fae’s war room with uncomfortably stiff posture. Thorn is seated at the head of a massive mahogany table that’s etched with a sword in the middle.
The symbol of a sword in a war room is usually a notion of strength, but it’s not in this one. Because crawling up the sharp edge of the blade are endless vines of thorned roses swooping extravagantly around the weapon in a way that seems more righteous than militant.
It reminds me of my mother and her decor I’ve kept safe in the Blood Kingdom like forgotten artifacts. She was the Fae Queen. She was loved. How did I not know that? How did an entire vampire court so carefully bury that dark secret?
My father did. And he did it well.
I wonder if he’s noticed me missing yet.
I stare down the long table at the Fae King, and his attention bores into mine before passing to Seven on my left and Rorrick on my right. Aerin, the charming fae fucker I met earlier, is absent from this little get-together, and I know at the back of his mind, that fact is gnawing at him. Curiously, to his immediate right is Crymson. She sits quietly with her hands neatly folded in front of her. His brother, Carver, is across from her to Thorn’s left.
Carver interests me more than Thorn. Not because of the sweet little moment we shared in the gardens, but because he’s more relaxed than his brother: easier to get information from.
“You said you could feel her. Her who?” My fingers lace together firmly, and my jaw is just as tightly hinged as I wait for the Blood Carver to spill his information.
“The woman, the leader of the Dead is a woman. She’s their Queen,” Carver stares blankly back as if the fun fact makes all the irrational sense in the world.
“I’m sorry, what?” I exhale slowly, paining myself with patience I don’t possess.
