Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (51)
I couldn’t materialize over such a great distance without risk of the energy rifts tearing me apart. But that didn’t matter. I’d foolishly found my way to Folkyn. Somehow, I would find a way to the realm of Baneberry.
I left the coins and rose from the floor. “What do you want?”
“So many things.” He closed the door and leaned back against it with his hands in his pockets, and that quiet snick was a bolt of thunder that caused my heart to jump. “Right now, I’ll settle for hearing what you’re concocting in that whimsical mind of yours.”
“If you believe I’d dare share any part of me with you again, you’re as delusional as you are cold.”
He blinked but otherwise remained aloof with a dash of curiosity as he watched me wring my hands in my robe. “You’re afraid of me.”
I hated that he could scent as much, and the slight tremble within my voice. “You’ve just murdered someone, and you...” It felt bizarre to think, let alone say. “You’ve been attacking my kingdom.”
“Your kingdom?” He tilted his head. “How sweet.”
I ignored that, and how ridiculous it was to call Baneberry as such. Though it was indeed the stunning truth. “You intend to kill him,” I said, and he knew I spoke of the male who’d sired me. “Before I even lay eyes on him.”
He smirked. “Only after I’m done picking at every piece of his flesh, so you never know.” He lifted his shoulder. “You just might catch a glimpse.”
My heart sank.
The attacks he’d been ordering. The red wax upon the maps in his study. The wagons he kept receiving...
Me. He would destroy me.
“And that involves marrying the heir he went to great lengths to hide from you?” His silence was answer enough. He fully intended to humiliate us both, and it was working. “You’re repulsive.”
“Interesting,” he said, grinning in a way I’d never seen before. It reached his eyes and brightened them to a dawn-touched sky. “For I’ll wager I can still make you come undone within seconds, Princess.”
“Do not call me that.”
“But that is what you are, and now, what you are is mine to do with as I see fit.” He closed the space between us until he’d backed me against the wall and clasped my cheek. “You are mine, Tullia. In time, you will learn to accept that as I have.”
“I won’t,” I seethed, my eyes making the mistake of crashing into his. Endless blue threatened to hold me underwater until all breath left my lungs. My rage and fear dulled, but the ache it left me with would not. “You lied to me, Florian.”
“Don’t take it so personally,” he whispered, brushing his nose over my cheek. “I will do whatever it takes to get what I want.”
“I hate you,” I rasped.
He tensed, then his hand slid down to my throat.
My heart kicked when he gently squeezed. I still said it again, hoping it wounded him—even if it was just a scratch compared to what he’d done and would likely continue to do to me. “I loathe you.”
His mouth hovered over mine, our lips grazing with every low word that left his lying, manipulative mouth. “Hate me all you like, butterfly.” His grip on my throat loosened, his thumb stroking my thumping pulse. “It changes nothing.”
“It changes everything.”
His eyes sparked. “You still hunger for me, and that is all I need from you.”
“And to parade me at your side like a pet you keep only to punish those you despise.”
His lips spread into a smile against my cheek. “You do not suffer, Princess.”
Then his mouth stole mine.
I sank my teeth into his lip, and he snarled softly. This male was pure poison. Yet I licked his blood from my lips like it was an elixir.
His eyes were on my mouth. His teeth flashed as he rubbed my throat before releasing me. “Climb into bed like a good little pet. I’ll return to tend to you when I finish carving Frensroth into bite-sized pieces for his return to your father.”
Bile rose up my throat at the image he’d gruesomely painted.
He was stalking through the door when I said in an unintentional whisper, “Find another body to defile. I want no more of you.”
His fingers gripped the doorframe, the wood creaking. “Ordering me to humiliate you further, my daring creature?” His eyes gleamed a depthless blue over his shoulder. “I highly advise against such foolishness.”
The door slammed.
I sank down the wall with my hands in my hair, terrified, ashamed, and longing for the home I’d been so skies-damned determined to escape.
A guard was standing outside of my rooms.
I didn’t need to ask to know she’d been standing there all night. She eyed me up and down with a smirk, her perfect features freckle-dusted and her dark hair trapped in a thick braid.
I was still in my robe, and I had no intention of remedying that as I stalked down the hall. The sun was almost due to rise when I’d finally found sleep. After dreaming of flying blades and pools of blood and unfeeling kings, it hadn’t lasted long. I’d woken with a pounding head and heart with the birds, and in a cold sweat.
The guard followed me, of course.
Olin waited beneath the stairs with that perfect posture and his pointed chin in the air. Rather than bid him good morning as I’d done every day prior, a greeting he’d never deigned to return, I said, “I know why you detest me now.”