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Because I would kill the human. Or he would.

What had changed, I wondered? He’d been so adamant I not kill the man in the throne room. Had it been because there was an audience? Or he wanted me to get a handle on my emotions? The latter seemed most likely. But he ought to know by now that when the rage bubbled over, I had little control over it. I didn’twantto control it.

I could feel that anger rising to the surface now. The desire to make the human pay, to exact revenge against an entire race. It rose within me, heating my veins. My eyes had flitted closed. I opened them now, finding Arran staring at me intently still. A smile curved my lips.

“What have I done to earn that wicked smile now, Princess?”

My mouth was impossibly dry. My lips as well. “Your eyes are glowing,” I said softly.

It was impossible, but the black fire burned brighter at my words.

I licked my lips, unable to pull my gaze away from those mesmerizing eyes. “Does the thought of my bloodlust arouse you, Brutal Prince?”

“Everything about you arouses me, Veyka.”

I wondered if he heard the trickle of wetness sliding down my inner thighs.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning down the dark corridor. He knew I’d follow.

44

ARRAN

Half hidden away and entirely forgotten, the closet where I’d stashed the human was hardly big enough for me to shove myself into. But it was perfectly adequate for a human prisoner. I wasn’t surprised when Veyka paused in the corridor, immediately sensing something was amiss. I’d cloaked the place every way I knew how; but still, that wasn’t enough to fool her.

She paused, hands settling on her impossibly wide hips. Hips I’d thought about endlessly.

“A closet? You stuck the human in a closet?” She shot me a look of vaguely impressed disbelief.

I shrugged. “Would you have gone looking inside a closet?”

She swayed those hips, and I almost pushed her up against the wall. Let the human hear my beast ravage her. It would only add to his fear and make him more pliant to our questions.

Veyka could read the desire in my eyes. She flashed that wicked smile, dragging her tongue over her perfectly white teeth, the same pearlescent color as her hair. Ancestors, I was so fucked.

No, I needed to fuck her. Again. A hundred times. Maybe then I’d be able to think.

But she’d shifted her attention away from me, toward the closed door. I waited, half expecting a burst of power to explode out of her and decimate the door. Instead, I watched her chest move up and down in a steadying breath. Then she reached for the handle.

The scent of human hit hard, but I’d smelled every offensive odor that existed on the battlefields over the last three hundred years. It knocked Veyka back a step. She grabbed for the door to steady herself.

Humans were always so easy to read. Fear always drenched their scent, coming off of them in waves. This man was no different. Fear, unwashed grime, the excrement bucket I’d left in the corner. But there was something else that was harder to name. Something not quite as dark as all the other fetid stenches seeping from the small space… something, perhaps… hopeful?

The human blinked in the darkness, his eyes taking longer to adjust to the low torchlight of a single flame halfway down the corridor. But the second they did, we knew it. He fell forward, prostrating himself on the dirty ground before Veyka.

“Your Majesty,” he mumbled into the rough cobbles.

“Groveling will not save you.” Veyka’s voice was as cold as ice, as cold as her hands, or the phantom wind I’d not felt since dismissing Evander days before.

The human’s head rose a few inches, enough that he could peer up at Veyka through the matts of dark hair that hung over his forehead.

“I have… I…” he sucked in a ragged breath. “I have no regard for my own life.”

Veyka bit out a harsh, merciless laugh. “That makes you either quite wise… or very, very stupid.”

I knew this side of her existed. Of course, I did. Revenge—it was all she cared about. It was the dark twin to the apathy she’d bathed in before. It was terrifying to see her blue eyes so full of hate. Different from the hate she’d directed at me. This—the way she looked at that human—it was bone deep. Deeper, maybe. In her soul.

Exactly as she’d told me.