“What else?”
“I...” I’m almost out of things I like. “I spend time with Terry. We wander the slave corridors a lot. Sometimes I help Sira with her chores.”
“You will no longer assist with the chores.”
He leans down, closer, to graze his mouth over the corner of mine.
“I will keep you treated with the powder whenever you require it,” he says, the turn of topic jarring to me. I frown at his cheek, at the shadow that cuts beneath his cheekbone. “I will clothe and bathe and feed you better,” he adds. “I will make you my lover.”
The frown digs deeper into my face. “Isn’t that ... what I already am?”
His mouth spreads into a grin against mine. “No. You are a house slave I take pleasure from. That will change.”
I think of the abandoned lover’s tower.
Is ... is this some sort of promotion?
Doesn’t feel like it. Flashing in my mind are images of more fumbles with him, his harshness, his shifting attitudes, the danger of what he is. It isn’t a safe offer he’s giving me. That much I know.
But before I can answer him, he nips my bottom lip, still grinning, and then draws back to look down on me. “As if you have a choice,” he says before pushing up from the bed. He turns his back on me, peeling off his dishevelled shirt, and my heart twists awfully.
I sit up on the edge of the bed, looking at his tanned back, the muscles that are licked over with black ink lines—but I don’t really see any of it.
My mind is reeling.
With his back to me, the prince explains, “It is our bargain. For more of the remedy, you must allow me into you. As my lover, your life will be more comfortable here.”
“What if I regret the bargain?” I whisper, my voice shaking. “What if ...with you... it’s not what I thought it would be.”
Smiling darkly, he looks over his shoulder at me. “Are you asking for pleasure?”
I shake my head, looking down at my lap. “Maybe I’m just wondering ... if you would be as you were at first. I didn’t feel so ... sad and used.”
His smile fades as that familiar darkness swallows him up. “I care nothing of how you feel,” he says after a moment, then turns his back to me. “Leave, April.” My heart skips a beat as I tighten my grip on the sheets. I never realised he knew my name. “Tomorrow, you will take the new position as my lover.”
“Until it’s time for me to go home?” I probe, slipping off the bed.
“Or,” he challenges, turning on me, “until I decide I am weary of you.” He comes to a stop in front of me, his hand sliding up to my throat. He grips, hard. “Becoming my lover has many advantages, April. Disobeying me is not one of them. When I tell you to leave,” he says, his tone dropping to something savage and gravelly, his fingers digging deep into the sides of my neck, “you obey—immediately.”
With his death grip, all I can manage is a faint not and a choked sound that was meant to be a ‘sorry’. He must get the gist though, because he releases my throat and stalks off in the direction of his desk across the large bedchamber.
I leave through the slave corridors, a hole carved out in my chest.
What have I gotten myself into? Better yet, will I survive it?
Can I survivehim?
end of book 2
SAMPLE OF DARK FAE EXTINCTION
I have barely a heartbeat’s time to scramble to my feet. The head-wound has the ground swivelling beneath me, and my feet unsteady.
Still, I’m standing—barely—and I stagger up to the pavement.
Distantly, I’m aware of Spike’s voice as though he’s shouting out at me, saying something or other, maybe warning me that the warrior is right behind me. But I can’t hear much else other than the blood pulsing behind my eardrums. And I know I can’t outrun him.
So why do I even bother?