Chapter 49: Forty Nine
Valka
The body is cleared in minutes, the room emptied, save for me and Lucien.
His face is hard as ice as he lifts a bloodied hand to my chin. I flinch, but he grips my jaw anyway, tilting my head left and right, examining the bruises Alfie’s fists left on my cheeks, smearing Lord Ashwynd’s blood against my skin.
"You could’ve stopped it," he says after what feels like an eternity, voice soft. "Why didn’t you?"
There is no one response to that question. It was a lot of reasons, none of which I am willing to share. I smack his hand off my chin. "I could ask you the same thing. You could’ve stopped at any point. But you didn’t? Why?"
He leans over, intruding my space. His lips brush my cheek and a hint of frost kisses my skin from the contact, soothing the pain radiating from my broken nose. "You want to know one of the fun things about being King?" He darts a tongue out and licks the blood off the corner of my mouth. "I answer to no one."
I shove at his chest, disgusted, only to rebound and fall on my ass. "You’re a pig."
He laughs at me, turning around with his hands folded behind his back and trudging across to settle back in his chair.
The blood stains on the plush rug beside me are a glaring red, and I take pains to avoid it. To avoid remembering how Cairn’s body had twitched. How easy it had been for Lucien to kill a man and act like it was nothing in the next minute.
A man he’d killed because he had insulted me. He’d killed for me.
Usually, when I read about these things, I’d often romanticised it. A man who would tear the world apart for his lady’s honour. I knew such things didn’t exist in this world where women were tools for breeding, and so it was rather easy to imagine it did exist in a different world.
Women spoke of the perfect gentlemen, the matchmakers setting up matches with men of good homes. I often thought it was rather dull. I told myself that if I ever stepped out of my own skin and accidentally dreamed of getting mated to someone, it would be with a man who would kill for me.
In reality, it is... terrifying. And disappointing.
The latter because I knew deep, deep down that the only reason Lucien is remotely drawn to me is because of his Erasthai, who lives on inside me in the most twisted way.
Terrifying in the sense that no one tells you it is all fun and games until it is the wrong man killing for you. A man you do not want. The line between a murderer and a morally grey man is often dependent on one factor.
Does he make your insides squeeze with want or repulsion?
Even then, I couldn’t answer the question honestly. I’d say no and it’d feel like a lie. I’d say yes and it’d still feel like a lie.
"You haven’t had a meal since lunch yesterday," Lucien says suddenly. "Have breakfast with me."
I’m not even surprised at how he knows that. He knows everything. "I don’t--"
"I wasn’t asking."
Twenty minutes later, a table is brought in, heavy with enough food for a feast. Roast quail glazed with herbs, poached eggs sprinkled with saffron, flat bread brushed with rosemary and olive oil, honey drizzled oatcakes, aged cheddar, a bowl of pomengrates, and rich red wine spiced with cinnamon.
None of which he touches, save for the wine as he watches me force down every morsel. "Have you always been a picky eater or do I make you uncomfortable?"
I drop the fork. "Remind me again why we’re doing this?"
He shrugs, the stars in his eyes winking in and out like magic. "Maybe I like watching you squirm."
"Or maybe," I bite out, "you want me softened up. Fattened before you make me your whore. Obviously, you prefer your women with more flesh."
Lucien swirls his goblet, lips curling as if my defiance is foreplay. "Beauty comes in all sizes, Valka. I’ve never been one to starve myself of variety. I savour them all--slender or soft, men or women, fragile or wicked. I’ve always been a collector of pretty things."
He leans forward, dropping his goblet to take mine. Then he twists it, without breaking eye contact. My pulse skitters as he drinks, long and deep, and when he eventually sets the silver down, it is to poke at my half eaten pomegranate, the juices spilling down his fingers, mingling with dried blood.
He moves with that eerie, dangerous grace, and I blink to find him reaching for me. His next words are a whisper meant only for me, dark and intimate, sinking into my skin like a brand.
"And once I collect something," his thumb drags along my lower lip, smearing the taste of pomegranate there, "I do not share. Nor do I let it wither. You will eat as much as I want you to, Valka. Not because you want to, but because I want to watch you swallow what is mine."
Goddess, boil me, freeze me to death, but I swear it doesn’t sound like he’s speaking about the food anymore.
I try to think of a response to give. Or rather an insult. But I find that my brain cells have vanished and I cannot think, cannot stop my tongue from darting out to lick the juice off his thumb.
His eyes flare gold and he catches his bottom lip between his teeth in a filthy smile. "Ah."
He draws back before I can stab him with the fork, resting in his seat once more. When he speaks again, I realize there is a point to this breakfast. "The Prince of Voss arrives tonight."
My chewing slows. "Is that... good? It’d mean you were wrong about their alliance with Silvermoor."
Lucien shakes his head. "Not quite. Perhaps, King Adric sends his son to learn our weaknesses firsthand. Before running us through the back. Perhaps he offers an olive branch. If Silvermoor did take silver and ash, that is a declaration of war against the humans. It will stretch my forces thin. It will force me to guard both flanks with men I can no longer spare. Either way, Cyrus here spells trouble. Still, neither explains the reason for the proposed truce. An important part of every war involves understanding motives of the enemy and having contingencies set in place in the event that planning fails. You," he raises his wine in a silent toast. "were nothing I could have planned for."
I don’t know whether to take it as compliment or rebuke. "What if it’s just what it is? A truce. Maybe Voss aided Silvermoor because they did not want them wiped out. It is common knowledge that humans and wolves get along way better than any other race. Maybe they wanted to prevent more bloodshed. Maybe that’s why Silvermoor seeks a truce."
He licks his lips once, and for a breath his eyes go somewhere I cannot follow. Somewhere cold and void of life. When he speaks, his voice is hard. "The last time a Draemir sought peace, it was merely a ploy to lure me away from home. My mate. My daughter. My mother. My family. Defiled. Butchered. Pissed on."
He exhales and a gust of icy air whips at the strands of my air, chilling me deep to the bone. "They ensured I was too far to return before they attacked, within the walls of a city I knew nothing of. The wine I was offered to celebrate our peace was spiked. I woke in chains, my blood pumped so full of silver it blackened in my veins. I could not say how long I lay there. Weeks, maybe. Months. They kept me fed enough to torture me, cut me open, steal my blood."
The chalice cracks and he smiles eerily. "And when all that came of it were scraps of my power, nothing permanent, they decided they would send their women of strong noble blood, Alpha females, to breed the perfect killing machines from me." He grins, fangs glinting in the air. "You want to know what they did when I killed any one who so much as touched me? They began mixing the silver with herbs to quicken me, whether or not I wanted it. So much of it, I couldn’t tell one apart from the other. I couldn’t tell brown eyes from green and black hair from red. And even then, they’d hold me down until it was done."
The food turns to lead in my stomach, my eyes widening with horror. And suddenly, it makes sense why he’d have killed any woman who touched him without his consent.
"I was rotting in their dungeons, laid out on an altar, muzzled with fresh vials of my blood being refilled when I felt Ilya through the bond for the first time. It shouldn’t have been possible to break free, but when you find your Erasthai, you quickly learn that when their lives are at stake, no binds can hold you down, no man strong enough to stand in your path."
He stares at me then, and the room narrows to the hard set of his jaw. "It should have been an eight-day ride. I made it in one." His thumb drags a clean line down the goblet as if gouging his memory. "I was still too late."
My voice softens, tears glazing my vision. "Lucien..."
He waves me off. "Save your pity. I don’t want it." His eyes grow colder. "The moral of the story is, you cannot go very far with that wishful thinking of yours. I wasn’t the last who shared that fate. Even now, some of ours reside at the belly of their dungeons, being experimented on and violated within inches of their lives. If you wish to help me, you must learn that you know nothing of the people you claim as yours. And there is no such thing as truce. Certainly not one being offered by a royal."
I swallow, nodding, blinking back the water that keeps flooding my eyes. I hated the man, but I didn’t need to like him to feel even a shred of empathy for him. For the depravity of what had been done to him. Or for the guilt that haunts him, still. "What do you need me to do?"
He smiles and all of that darkness and pain vanishes. I’ve never met a person who has more mood swings than Lucien. "I met Cyrus when he was sixteen. Even then, he always did like to reach for things that didn’t belong to him. You will be his guide for the duration of his stay here."
I frown. "You want me to befriend him?" I suppose it made sense. If Lucien wanted me in Cyrus’s head, I would have to be close to the man. Close enough to touch. Close enough to slip into his mind.
Lucien laughs softly, the sound without mirth. "No, Valka." He leans in so close the wine scent floods me. "You will seduce the Crown Prince of Voss."