Page 8 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
“See what?” I peer around at the soldiers, at all that they’re doing, and admittedly, they seem perfectly capable as warriors.
Thorn looks down at me, his eyes shining with some emotion I can’t place. “That you’re safe here,” he murmurs. “That if Boris should come searching for you, he’ll be met with resistance. Destruction. Death.”
The death and destruction sound a bit much, but it’s all a bit much. Everything about Thorn is.
I frown up at the Thorn King, his words confusing me more than anything else he could have said. “Am I not a prisoner here?”
After all, he took me from the Blood Court, and he hardly gave room for argument.
“You’re a guest,” he answers.
“So, I can leave?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.
He tilts his head. “For your safety, it’s best you stay.”
I roll my eyes. “So, Iama prisoner. Good to know.” I scoff. “You know, I didn’t need to see this. It’s not necessary. I understand Boris won’t come find me here. Otherwise, your court would have been conquered long ago.”
He hums under his breath. “Still, I wanted you to know you’re safe, Crymson.”
I look up at him, study his devastatingly dangerous and handsome face, and shake my head. “I don’t know what safety feels like,” I admit. “But this feels just as unsafe as I’ve ever been.”
Sadness flickers in his eyes. “I hope to change that feeling.”
“Good luck.” I shrug, stubbornly focusing back on the sparring.
If the Fae King wants to try and prove me wrong, then who am I to stop him? There’s no point in telling him it’s useless.
There’s no point in telling him that safety is a myth told to children who didn’t grow up in homes like I did.
FIVE
Crymson
It’sstrange to be sneaking the halls in the Fae Kingdom the same as I did in the Blood Kingdom. It’s also completely bizarre that no one gives a single shit when they spot me, the foreigner creeping around their gilded home.
Two kitchen chefs peek up at me as I slip through the kitchen. The one with large pale ears and dark brown hair looks me up and down as she wipes thoroughly at the spotless stone counter. The other nods peacefully. I can’t bring myself to say even one word to them though. I try as casually as possible to smile halfway before scurrying out the swinging door and down the infirmary hall.
I just need someone to talk to. Someone who will make sense of all the nonsense in my screwed-up life.
I need Seven.
“What are you doing, clever girl?”
A breath catches painfully in my throat as I spin at the sound of a cold gravelly voice.
The length of his lean body rests lazily against the shadows of the doorway. Messy dark hair nearly touches the top of the frame, but he tilts his head to the side as a slow eerie smile spreads over vicious sharp teeth.
“Who are you?” I steel my spine, crossing my arms tightly over my chest and facing the nightmarish man head on.
“Just a friend,” he whispers.
“Whose friend?”
The lazy smile against his lips turns wicked as his crimson eyes zero in on me. “Yours.”
I can’t help the bitter laughter that shoves from my lungs. When I was little, I used to want a friend so damn bad. On the playground filled with laughter and smiles, in the middle of the night when the yelling became so loud it knotted my stomach with crawling nerves.
It’s when you grow up you realize you need no one.
