Page 66 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

Pure, undiluted hatred filled my chest with a hollowness I was quickly coming to recognize in the presence of my father. The wash of anger filled my body with fire, the flames of contempt eating me alive. If I was going to go down, I intended to turn us both to ash.

Suddenly, he released his grip and shoved me away. I stumbled backward, dangerously close to the fire that was now consuming Sterling’s wingback chair beside the hearth.

When I caught myself, I straightened to find Sterling and my father wearing similar expressions—one way more nefarious than the other—of complete enthrallment.

By their expanded pupils, you’d think I’d suddenly been doused in the most succulent blood.

Following the path of their attention to the length of my body, my jaw dropped.

The soiled nun’s outfit was gone. I now wore a black gown that clung to my curves like shrink wrap. It was made of black see-through mesh that would have left pretty much nothing to the imagination if it wasn’t for the offensive amount of rubies encrusting the entire surface of the dress.

The neckline plunged low, Elvira style, and a single slit ran to my hip bone. The form-fitting, long sleeves had black lace cuffs embroidered to look like spiderwebs, with a little lace panel at the bottom of the neckline that barely concealed my navel.

“From what I’ve seen of your memories and Sterling’s, they’ve dressed you like a common slut. While you may be a slut…” Venom embedded in the lines of his terse grin. “You are certainly not common. And regardless of your future, while you live, it’s my blood filling your veins. My house you represent. You must look the part of the vampire princess.”

Reaching up, I probed at the new choker around my neck. Sterling’s buttercup collar was gone, and in its place was a velvet choker with a large gem at its center.

“A sapphire,” the vampire king said, answering my unasked question. “I gave that necklace to your mother while she lived here.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t parse the frenzy of emotions strangling me, much like the bramble around Sterling’s throat. This was just an illusion in Sterling’s mind. My father wasn’t really giving me my mother’s necklace. Even if it felt like he was.

There was so much weight to the choker, far beyond its physical mass. This small trinket symbolized my parent’s relationship. There was a history behind it, one that ran deeper than hatred and was more complicated than love. It was hard to imagine what it had been like for them to be bound by their instincts and their monsters’ need for one another while being archenemies and leaders of their warring factions. That relationship had been doomed from the beginning.

Yet, maybe there had been a small part of them that had wished things could be different.

Knowing this didn’t diminish my pure loathing for Daddy Dearest, but it gave me a new perspective. It humanized him, just a teensy, microscopic amount. Still, it was enough for me to be just a little less afraid of dancing with the devil.

Swallowing thickly, I approached my father and took his hand. My hands curled around his still-extended claws, gouging into his flesh. If this was reality, he’d be bleeding. Instead, shadows seeped from his wounds and created a billowy shroud around us made of dark magic.

His fingers laced through mine, purposefully slow to unnerve me. Two could play at that game. Resisting the urge to recoil, I forced the same wry smile onto my face that always had Vincent fuming.

“If you’re trying to get under my skin, you’re going to have to try harder than that, Father. But that’s not why you’re here. If you have a proposition, it means I have something you want. So spill. You have control over Dagon, so you have the means to keep his animation spell going forever. Meaning you can take back the throne. We both know the Elders won’t stand in your way. You know they won’t call the other covens to fight you. Corry, Vincent, Eros, Sterling, and me—we’re on our own. But you’re still scared you’ll lose this war, aren’t you? After I broke your mind spell and gave you the boot from my head, you realized just how powerful I am. You see me as a threat now.”

The vampire king didn’t respond for a minute or two while he appeared to carefully consider his reply. The organ and off-kilter harpsichord music grew louder, the off-key notes stringing together an unsettling melody that made my pulse hammer to match a similar rhythm. We danced around the library, through the flames that couldn’t hurt us, around and around in circles until my head spun.

He was trying to disorient me, but I was hellbent on keeping up. I matched the energy of his steps, even though I did not know how to waltz and considered the accidental moments I stepped on his feet as fortunate coincidences.

“You have a sharp wit, little gem—for a mortal,” he finally said after an eternity. His fangs glinted malevolently in the amber flames’ light as he pulled me closer against him. “But you’ve no hope of outwitting me and no prayer of winning a war against me. You confirmed it yourself. You have no reinforcements. I’m offering you an olive branch simply because you fascinate me.” The fierce eye contact he’d maintained with me snapped, and his line of sight drifted past my shoulder.

“Because I remind you of my mother?”

His gaze snapped back to me. “You do, but your resemblance to her isn’t enough to save you from your punishment.”

I rolled my eyes. “Punishment. For what? Having my own mind? Trying to fix the crap-fest you left of your kingdom?”

He gave a twirl to my arm, making it so that I was forced to spin. When my back hit a shelf, he pinned me against it with his body, eyes void and completely dead. Gripping my jaw, he tugged my head so close, his spittle flecked my cheeks as he seethed low at me. “Your punishment for spreading your whore legs for your brothers.”

On the next thrum of my heart, he was smiling again. The corner of his lips curved to match the arch of his brow. Yanking me back into the center of the library, we were dancing around the shelves and stacks of books while everything burned around us, and Sterling’s blood dribbled from the chandelier where he hung.

This was so wrong. The stakes were so high, and I couldn’t see a way out of this. I was fumbling in the dark…

Good thing I was the literal princess of the night.

“I get it. I’m a huge perverted slut for mating your progeny. So cut to the chase. What about me intrigues you enough to forget the fact that your daughter has more game than you?”

“Forget? No, I never forget. But I might be compelled to forgive you.”

“Why would you do that?”

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