“I don’t want to fight you, Little Prince. I don’t want to burn your borders again when they’re so close to recovering.” His calmness is cruel. A fuck-you in the face of rage. “I only want one thing.”
Seven and Rorrick walk up slowly and quietly behind the Blood Prince. Christian’s brows pull with a thin line.
And then all of them look to me.
“No.” Christian’s answer is flat and final. “She’s not a bargaining chip.”
“And yet you were happy to bargain with her when she was just a faceless Promise.Like your mother was.”
Rage ticks through Christian’s jaw. It’s clearly a stinging comment that slices much deeper than he lets on.
“I said no.”
I stand between the two men, and it’s only then that I realize they’re talking about me. The Thorn King wants me. Christian... doesn’t want me, but he doesn’t want Thorn to have me either.
Thorn’s fuck-you smile widens when he pulls his attention away and fully looks at Christian.
“My men and their skeletal dragons are lined within the darkness. Your king is overindulged and underprepared... for everything in life, it seems.” His pause drifts to me, and there’s that feeling again when our gazes lock. “I could take these lands by sunrise. Your people would die. Your women. Their children. All of it would be burned to the ground just like before, and only then would I think that the charred remains would be better than the wasteland of magic that it is now.”
Rorrick looks to Christian immediately, and that single look of alarm is too telling.
The Thorn King isn’t lying. These people—as terrible as their lives may be—they’ll all die. Because of me.
“I’ll go,” I say suddenly.
Seven’s head turns swiftly toward me, and his big brown eyes hold even more concern in them than usual. Christian’s fury burns brighter where the redness tinges his glinting gaze.
“And Delilah?”
“I don’t want your sister. I don’t want your lands or your crown. I only want her.” He nods toward me. His voice is steady, but the moment he says those things, my heart stutters at the sound of someone blatantly stating they want me. Even someone as terrifying as the Thorn King. “Maybe someday, I’ll come back to right the darkness that’s staining our lands, but not today.”
“And how do I know you won’t just kill her?”
“You mean like your father would?”
I swallow hard at that fact.
This morning, I wanted so badly to escape. I thought I’d run tonight. Instead, I ran right into Christian’s arms. And I’m still facing the same fate I was when I woke up chained to a vampire prince’s bed.
The Thorn King is offering me life. Maybe he’s a monster of a man, but at least he doesn’t want to eat me alive. Jesus. It’s pathetic how low the bar is for the men in my life.
“I’ll go. I want to go.” I meet Christian’s eyes, and there’s quiet pain there mixed in with the dark violence. For the first time possibly ever, he shows his remorse in the downturned line of his lips.
He can’t protect me from his father. Not unless he kills him. I don’t honestly believe Christian has the ability to do that. Despite how much he seems to hate him, there’s a sick twisted loyalty between them. And above all, I don’t want more blood on his hands because of me.
He said it himself: He’ll never have me. But he won’t let anyone else have me either.
I can’t live like that.
I need safety. I’ve always needed safety.
Now more than ever.
“She’ll be safe there,” Rorrick whispers to his friend, mirroring my own thoughts.
Deep down, I know Christian knows that. I know he knows he put me in this situation. And I know he hates himself more than I ever could.
I can see it in the depths of his silver eyes.