“I knew you’d come to me,” she whispered, her skin writhing with blackish veins as she stared deep into my eyes. “Look at those rings,” she hissed. “Pretty, pretty little silver treasures. But mortals cannot be mated to Fae, and when I am tired of playing beast with her, perhaps I shall recall my pet from her body and leave her to waste away as a weak human girl,” she mocked. “Your princess’s rings will be gone forever. Poof. Bye bye.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. “She’s my mate regardless.”
“Is she now?” she laughed. “And have you come to pay the price for your sweet princess, Lance Orion? I bound your blood to the curse after all.”
My throat thickened at those words as I remembered the blood she’d spilled from me that day. So this was it? The answer lay with me? Well all the better.
“I will pay any price for her. Name it, and swear she’ll be free,” I demanded and she considered that, a look in her pitch black eyes that said this was what she’d hoped for all along. And it made my stomach twist that I was playing so easily into her hands, but Darcy had to be free. I would do whatever had to be done to ensure that.
“Why are you doing this to us? Why not just kill us and be done with it?” I snapped.
She shifted closer, all darkness and death clinging to her flesh.
“Because a Vega punished me once a long, long time ago. And it is my turn to repay the favour,” she growled, vengeance sparking in her gaze. “I’ll make them hurt, and squeal and writhe in agony in every way I can think up. And it is so very easy, little hunter. I’ve already turned one of them into a killer, a monster too, now all that’s left is to take away her king like mine was taken from me.”
“So it’s my death you want?” I bit out, and though I felt numb to the idea of death right now, I was not numb to the thought of being parted from Blue because of it.
“Perhaps,” she said through a smirk, sliding her hand down to my heart and I felt her shadows reaching into my body and making it beat painfully hard for her. I was sure I was about to die, the stars pulling on my soul like they were preparing to tear it from my being at any second. “Your blood is the price. Flesh, bone, heart, whichever way you want to offer it. You can cut your heart from your chest and give it to me raw and bloody if you wish.”
My heart thundered as Lavinia released me from the binds of her shadows, offering me back my sword, but using her shadows to guide my hand so I turned the blade’s tip against my own chest. I glared into her eyes, snatching the blade from her grip and pushing it hard against my flesh myself, not wanting the choice to be hers.
Pain flared keenly and I gritted my teeth against it, staring my fate in the eye and not cowering from its cruelty.
Blood spilled from the wound as I gave this offering without a shadow of doubt passing through me. It was easy when I thought of Blue, holding her in my mind’s eye and not letting go as adrenaline burned through my limbs, begging me not to do this, but for her I’d do anything.
I’m sorry, beautiful. I’ll wait for you in the stars.
She was my winged princess, the girl who had saved me from myself and had offered so much sweetness into my life, it was staggering to think I was the same person at all. She had made me into a man I had never thought I could become, and there was nothing I could offer that would repay her for that. But I could do this, because what was my life worth here in this world anyway if Blue was lost?
“Goodness,” Lavinia purred, latching the shadows around my hand to stop me from cutting any deeper. “What a loyal little king. More loyal than my own.”
“Do you want my heart or not?” I snarled and she shifted closer, tracing her thumb along the line of blood that had spilled down my chest, bringing it to her mouth and licking it away.
“Mm,” she sighed. “So sweet, so tempting. But you didn’t listen to me very well. I’ll say it again. You may offer me the price in flesh, blood or bone. Personally…I think I’d like to take it from your flesh.” She leaned down, capturing me in her shadows once more as she sank her teeth into the meat of my shoulder, and I growled in fury as she bit deep enough to draw more blood. Then she lapped at it like a heathen, making me shudder at the caress of her cold tongue.
“I don’t know what you’re asking of me,” I hissed in disgust as she pulled away, licking her lips as a raw, depraved kind of lust filled her eyes.
“You will become willingly mine,” she announced. “Your body will be my playhouse to do whatever I wish with. I may cut it, whip it, burn it, and fuck it if the notion takes me. And you will allow me to do so willingly, no complaints, no fighting back.”