Page 76 of Bloody Royals

I gaped at her as Leo tugged on my arm again. I wanted to pull from his grasp, but he was too strong and I was too stunned by what I’d just witnessed. Atticus, who had remained surprisingly quiet during this entire ordeal, whispered something that made venom travel up my closing throat.

“Beautiful.”

Leo dragged me over to a hidden doorway in the ballroom. The entire castle was full of hidden passages should we need them. The last thing I saw before he forced me inside was Christine wiping the blade on her dress.

Chapter Twenty

CHRISTINE

“I want to know who the hell that man was and how the fuck he got into our castle, within the hour,” Isabelle yelled at her team of security guards. We were in her private study, and I stood with my back pressed against the wall, with dried blood on my hands. My mind was locked in that trauma-induced haze of bloodlust.

I shouldn’t have killed him. He had answers.

But he threatened August.

He had to die.

Isabelle dismissed everyone and glared at me. The lines around her pursed lips aged her some, but not a hair was out of place. “If anyone asks, Leo apprehended him.” I nodded once. I had an image to maintain. She took a step closer to me, her eyes drinking in my disheveled appearance. “Your eyes…” Her tone was haunting, bleeding with concern that felt foreign to me. She’d always been so cold, so calculating. But at that moment, she sounded…remorseful.

I stopped staring at the way she clasped her hands in front of her and met her gaze, knowing she saw how empty I was. Whenever I killed, it was like the girl I was stepped out and the woman I had to become took over. She was heartless. Ruthless. Deadly. “The castle has been cleared. August should be released soon. You should clean up before he finds you.”

I nodded once, the dutiful killing machine.

“Christine?” she said before taking another cautious step toward me. The warmth in her tone made a spark of innocence flare in my chest. I pushed it down with a cold swallow. I couldn’t let her out just yet. She needed to be safe. “Thank you for protecting him,” she whispered finally. But the guilty way her eyes swept over me made my spine tingle. “Are you…are you going to be okay?”

I clenched my jaw. “Now you care?” The snappiness in my tone made her flinch. Good. There was something satisfying about startling a queen. “You brought me here for this reason. If you don’t like the results, then you can find other ways to protect him.”

She looked around and closed the remaining distance between us. “Of course I don’t like this,” she hissed. “If your mother could see what you’ve become…she’d be devastated.”

Her words were painful enough that the killing haze faded. I blinked twice and shame held me like an old friend, wrapping its suffocating arms around my body and squeezing so tight that it crushed my bones.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said before tilting my nose high up in the sky and walking out of her study.

Aside from a few guards, the castle was mostly empty. The staff was evacuated because of the terrorist threat, and people hadn’t been allowed inside because they were conducting interviews. The few guards that remained stared at me with wide eyes. I knew rumors would circulate about me, but it wasn’t my job to navigate those.

I was here to wear pretty dresses and be submissive.

I was here to protect August.

I was here to kill the Crown’s enemies, even though I was technically an enemy myself.

I made my way to my room, shuffling in heels that were too tight for my feet and staring at the ornate decor. I wanted Atticus to tell me I wasn’t a monster. I wanted Leo to make me feel safe. I wanted August to make me forget.

But August now knew the truth. He knew what I was capable of. And he’d never look at me with love again.

My room looked the same. Pale pink. Pristine. I stripped out of my dress, knowing that not even the best detergent could get the stench of death out of the designer threads. I slipped off my shoes and shuffled to the bathroom. And when the water was scalding hot, I stepped under the spray and let it burn the blood off my body.

I scrubbed.

And scrubbed.

It always felt like the first time. I didn’t know the name of the man I killed today, but his blood felt like Lord Geralt’s. My body still felt like a tool for the Crown. My innocence still felt stripped bare, poked, invaded, claimed and manipulated. I lathered more vanilla soap in my wash cloth and dragged it down my arm, wishing the material wasn’t so soft. Wishing I could take a knife to my creamy skin and cut out my shame.

Wash away the blood, Christine.

“Christine!” August’s voice boomed, making me jerk in awareness. I kept washing my body as he stormed into the bathroom and ripped open the glass door. He stared at my pink, angry skin with wide eyes, his hands trembling as he reached for me. “Are you okay?”

I looked up at him, the flicker of innocence dancing between us. If I’d run to August that night, would he have protected me? Would he have defended me? Would I have had to become this killer if I’d had a knight in shining armor?

---