Page 135 of Our Sins in Shadows (Coven of Sin 2)

“Fuck no, let’s stick it to the fucker.”

Vincent stroked my thigh where he held me, tender and sweet. “Fuck, I love you so much, you beautiful monster.”

When we entered the main room of the mausoleum, I tapped Vincent on his back. “Set me down.”

Reading the urgency and force in my tone, he obeyed. It went without needing to be said that our game was on pause while I took a few moments for myself to adjust to being this close to the evilest being to have ever existed.

My stomach dropped when my attention fixed to the statue that sat at the end of the room. The vampire king’s likeness, like in his paintings, was severe and eerily terrifying in its silent subtlety.

As a three thousand year old being, he’d become a master at many things, primarily his skill of invoking fear, even in death. In that way, he lived strong inside me, and inside the hearts of my mates, I couldn’t shake the niggling worry that that part of him would never die.

Before the statue sat two marble sarcophagi with smooth lids. One black, one white.

Why were there two?

My brows crinkled, and I stepped closer. Carved into the lid of the dark sarcophagus were the wordsLuciferi equitis. And below the Latin inscription, Thomas Knight was written in English.

I turned to the other one. Everything in my body turned to ice as I read the name.

“Sterling Knight,” I read, twisting to look back at Eros and Vincent. They both wore blank, unreadable expressions. “I’m…confused. Why is this here?”

Vincent spoke first. “Your father wanted Sterling to be buried beside him. It was per his instructions that should he ever die, his oldest progeny was to meet the true death and be buried next to him.”

My chest felt like it was shrinking, making my heart ache and my lungs work harder to get air. “The Elders. They wouldn’t. They didn’t.”

“The Elders may have respected and feared Thomas Knight as a king. But murdering Sterling wasn’t something that anyone could be convinced of doing. Maybe it’s why they were so eager to appease his wishes when Sharpe made them believe he wanted you as his heir. They were eager to honor his memory after disobeying his primary wish.”

My fists clenched at my sides as I walked between the caskets, raising my chin to gaze up at the statue.

Never had I felt so much unbridled rage tear through me. Not even when I’d met Dagon, or when I’d been made to believe Vincent had left me for good.

The barb of my hatred for the vampire king wound deep through my soul, seeming to dig deeper with each breath I took.

“I hate you.” My voice wobbled dangerously. “I’ve never met you. That doesn’t matter. I hate you more than anything. I think somewhere in the hole where a heart never sat, you cared for my mother and me. You cared for Sterling too. But that’s how you showed your love to the people closest to you. You hurt them. You turned Vincent into your blood whore. You turned Eros into a monster hunter and made him live with the creatures he despised most. I don’t know why you turned Corry, maybe because you knew a modern twenty-something-year-old would suffer in your archaic world.” I gulped a breath, trying to squash out the rising rage that made my voice split.

“Then there’s Sterling. Your greatest disgrace yet somehow your greatest legacy. But it makes me sick to give you credit for that. You used and abused him and somehow he turned out to be the gentlest, kindest soul. You stole his life, his mate, his child. You stole his ability to ever be a father. You tortured and raped him and you convinced yourself that it was all out of love. Well, guess what? He’s never going to lie beside you. Know why?”

I stepped closer, glaring venom-dipped daggers into the statue as if it were the flesh and bone monster standing before me. “I took him from you. I covered your mark with my own. He’s mine. And guess what? He returns my love. They all do.”

A crazed smile flitted across my face, and diabolic satisfaction unfurled within me. “I almost wish you were alive, so you could see the monster you created. I want you to see how well I wear your crown, and your progeny. Like they were made for me.”

Using every bit of strength in my body, I hurled my fist into the head of the vampire king’s statue. The stone exploded into a million fragments. I turned around, stepping from the cloud of dust as it settled around my feet.

Vincent and Eros watched me with awestruck expressions. Their eyes were lust-red and banked with the fire that flickered from the torchlight.

They were just as malleable as that time in the cell when I demanded their fealty. Mine to command, mine to pleasure.Mine.

“Before you fell in love with me, what did you think of me?”

“You know I loathed you,” Vincent answered in a husky whisper.

Eros said, “I just wanted to use you.”

“Ruin me. Break me. Make me bleed. Claim me in all the brutal ways I know you fantasized before you grew to love me. Let’s make the vampire king roll in his grave.”

Chapter fifty-four

Thicker Than Water

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