Page 56 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

“I’ll make you bleed like the unfaithful, ungrateful sack of blood that you are.”

The opening in the portal was so small now, only his lips were visible. But by the shift in his tone, I knew he was now addressing me. “When I pry what you stole from your arms, don’t think

that just because of the blood you carry in your veins, I won’t snap you in half—” He didn’t finish his threat. The portal closed, leaving us drowning in smothering silence, broken by nothing but my rampant heartbeat and Sterling’s shuddering breaths.

Still crouched over me, hands quaking on my shoulders, my prince hung his head. I could feel the shame filling him, tugging on our bond. “This isn’t your fault, Ster.”

He raised his head, his eyes nothing but cold slivers slicing through the curtain of his pale hair. “Like hell, it isn’t.”

“How could this possibly be your fault?”

“Back in my den, when you were in my lap, I should have just marked you. The moment you told me that your father was still connected to us mentally, I wanted to.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t. You knew I wasn’t ready yet. The moment wasn’t right.”

“Yes. I let your emotions sway me. It would have been so easy to bend you over the piano, shove your nightgown over your hips, and bury myself in your heat. Sink my fangs into your throat.”

A confusing mixture of white-hot rage and crushing anguish ran rampant like a stampede in my ribcage, leaving my heart totally flattened. “That’s not how I wanted you to claim me. If you’d tried…I don’t think I would have let you.”

He shoved off me, shadows masking his face. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given you a choice.” His words were waif-thin and fragile, but they slammed into me like a cannonball to the chest. “No matter how much you thrashed it would have been easy.”

Bitter tears burned my eyes. “H–how can you say that? That’s… That’s…”

“Monstrous?” his monster sneered at me, scars contorting with his scathing expression.

So many emotions tangled inside me, making it hard to decipher exactly what I was feeling. Sterling still appeared as his monstrous self. Scarred. Hurt. Threatening. I knew there were risks with stepping inside his mind like this, playing with the demons of his past. Because real-life Sterling would never ever hurt me, much less force himself on me.

Ever.

Especially not being a victim of rape himself.

But it was here, in this cage of his heart and mind, that his darkest regrets and musings came to the light.

And the thing was, I didn’t blame him for thinking it.

I’d wanted him to mark me after I’d attempted the mind-link spell because I had an instinctual urge to expunge the stain of my father from his soul. If he’d marked me beforehand, that moment that was meant to be magical and special and good would have been tainted.

I would have felt like he was doing it just to break his link with his master, instead of doing it to forge a stronger bond with me.

It was selfish.

“If I had taken you there, you would have resented me for it,” he said, “but at least you wouldn’t be subjected to this.” He threw his arm out, gesturing to the blend of memories that pulsated around us in a combination of light, throbbing magical energy and shadows. “You wouldn’t be a prisoner in my own mind.”

“Okay, I get that this isn’t an ideal situation,” I pushed out, the words becoming difficult to form with the way my throat constricted. “But none of this is actually real.”

My prince scoffed and strode toward me, yanking me against him. His heat licked at me, and his eyes burned into my skull. “I get you’re naive, Ruby, but you’re far from stupid.”

His fingers bit into my flesh, his severe disposition engulfing me. “There may not be any physical damage he can do here, but if he catches us, he will use me against you. He’ll make you see horrible things that even your beautifully twisted mind can’t fathom.”

My stony heart softened when I registered the tiny gem-like tears welling in his eyes and gathering on his lashes. “Sterling…”

“He’ll do everything he can to break your spirit. The damage he can wreak here could set the course for this entire war. It’s more than our fates at stake. It’s my brothers’ too. Our coven. The entire vampire kingdom. Would you detest me for turning what we have between us ugly? If you did, I wouldn’t have blamed you. To lose your love and respect would have been a blow that I may not have survived. But isn’t that a small price to pay in exchange for keeping you away from him?”

His voice split with emotion. His guilt was so palpable, it filled my lungs like wet concrete. “Better I hurt you and you hate me forever than for me to let you enter my mind, knowing full well that there was a chance he’d show up and do to you what he did to me.”

Sterling dropped his hold on me and stepped away as if the privilege of touching me was something he no longer deserved. “The moment I learned my mark was all it would take to break his connection to both of us, I should have taken you. Whether you wanted it or not. Better you hate me than to have you wake up a shell…because a shell can’t rule a kingdom. Or else I’d be on the throne now!”

I reached out for him, tears now flowing freely down my cheeks. “Sterling…”

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