Page 22 of A Bond in Blood (Blood Bound Duet #1)

Chapter 22

U lrich was silent while I sat in the middle of the clock room, meticulously drawing the skylight above and the hallways circling around me.

We’d barely spoken in the days since that ill-fated dinner on the top of the mountain. Our daily meals were silent, the bed quiet and cold each night. Exactly how I preferred it.

His feet shuffled loudly, and I glanced up, finding him watching me.

“Yes?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“Are you finished?” he replied.

With a sigh, I set my parchment down and held his gaze. “ You requested that I map these passages. Do you want them to be accurate or rough sketches?”

“Does it have to take so long?”

I admired the room and my hand ran against the stone floor beneath me.

“Your stone has markings,” I said absent-mindedly.

“What?

I pulled my eyes to my hand, drawing the tip of my finger across the marking. A line down, then one at the bottom jutting upwards, with another jutting down. Then at the top of the line, two similar lines as the bottom going opposite directions.

“What does it mean?” I asked, noting the floor covered in the barely visible marking.

Urich stared at my hand drawing against the stone.

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Why won’t you let me go down that hallway?” I asked, pointing to hallway nine.

Ulrich’s body went rigid, and his hands landed at his side while he blocked the hallway from my view.

“So full of questions today,” he replied.

“And you’re lacking answers.”

A thump from the music several stories above us rattled the walls of the circular room and Ulrich smiled.

“All done.”

“I am not,” I protested.

Ulrich leaned down, ripping my easel from my hands. “I said you’re done.”

He walked away, my supplies bumping against his back and I glared. My head turned back to the hallway he’d still refused to show me, and then I stood.

“I need entertainment tonight,” Ulrich called over his shoulder. “You’re to join my side.”

“I’d rather not,” I yelled and he whipped around, his eyes wide when he found me at the threshold of the ninth hallway.

“Brenna,” he warned.

“Ulrich,” I challenged.

“Do not—”

I didn’t let him finish his warning before I’d turned my body and ran down the hall. The candles around me went from brilliant warm light to an unsettling red the further I ran. Like an omen, warning me to turn back.

Only I refused to heed the warning, and I continued down my path, rounding the corner while the hallway became more narrow.

My body slammed into the wall and Ulrich’s hair brushed against my neck.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

I struggled against his hold on my arms that pinned me to the wall. “I just want answers!”

“Not here,” he snapped.

I stared into his masked eyes, my chest heaving with my breaths. “Why?”

“Brenna, enough.”

His hands released me while he walked away. I stared at him, insulted he believed I would follow him back so willingly.

A pull from the darker end of the hall wrapped around my body. It was quiet. A whisper. A warning.

I ran to it again, ignoring his shout of irritation.

His cold bit at my heels but he did not grasp for me. As though he were allowing me to see a glimpse of the mystery.

The candles went bright red when my running stopped, and I stood before a wooden door the color of blood. My fingers trailed the wood, tracing the grotesque carving on its surface.

It was a face, and based on the carved lines of hair, I assumed it was a woman. Only half of this face was carved in, while the other half appeared skeletal—corpse-like. And tears fell from the corpse side, dark red of the wood carved to mimic lament.

Ulrich’s cold was wrapping around me, and I turned to face him.

“What is this?”

He was utterly silent with his shadows crawling around his body like a blanket of protection.

“Get upstairs,” he muttered.

I didn’t protest when his hand wrapped around my wrist, pulling me away from the door. My feet stumbled while I kept my gaze on the entrance with the strange carving. Wondering what it was. What it meant.

Why Ulrich appeared terrified of it.

We made it to the circular room and he picked up my tools without addressing me. He grasped my wrist again, guiding me through hallway three and up the stairs to the bedroom.

My chest was frantic by the time he threw his bedroom door open, tossing my things to the side.

“You don’t listen,” he whispered. “You do not listen.”

He led me to the bed then knelt before me, shocking and terrifying me all at the same time.

“You cannot go back to that hallway, do you understand?” he asked.

I blinked at him.

“Brenna?” he snapped his fingers in my face.

“You are kneeling before me,” I muttered.

He glanced down, then met my eyes. “Yes, Brenna, I am. The Unseelie King is on his knees, asking you to do as he says. Can you do that?”

My hands trembled on the bed. “Where does that door lead?”

Ulrich stood, lifting his hands with frustration. “Fate fuck it all! Are you not listening?”

“You don’t listen to me!” I yelled back. “You have yet to hear a single thing I’ve said.”

His hands gripped my face, pulling me toward him. “Tell me then, Ursa . What have I not heard? ”

The green eyes behind his silver mask were alive with a burn behind them as he stared at me. He shook my head softly, his hands on my face tightening but not painful.

“Tell me. Tell me and I will hear,” he whispered.

His breathing was slow, as slow as my own then I blinked myself back to reality.

“Unhand me,” I demanded.

He stood, releasing my face and taking a step away.

“Stop putting your hands on me.”

He nodded once.

“Stop jesting that you will use my body to your pleasure.”

Another nod.

My feet were moving me upward and I approached him, one finger raised and pointed in his face. “Never, and I mean never, call me a whore again.”

Ulrich’s blank expression broke with a slight smile while I waved my finger. But he nodded once more.

“Take off your mask,” I said.

His smile dropped and he stepped back. “That I cannot do.”

I let out a huff, turning back to the bed. “It was worth a try.”

The room went quiet, and I gazed around the space.

“Why do you have three separate entrances to your room? I would assume that to be a risk for the king.”

“Who’s going to try and kill the Unseelie King?” He met my eyes and grinned. “Other than a foolish half-fae woman?”

I dropped my eyes.

“Tell me something about yourself, Brenna,” he said, sitting beside me. “We spend so much time in each other’s company either fighting or in silence.”

I shifted away from him. “I do not have much to tell.”

“Why the bird?”

My cheeks warmed. “Men always want to talk about one topic and one topic only.”

“I’m not asking because I want to see. I’m asking because it appears to mean something to you.”

I turned to him, staring into his eyes. “What do yours mean?”

He was standing suddenly, pulling his shirt from his body. My breath stopped while I watched the fabric fall to the floor and he bared his torso to me.

I rose to my feet, hands trembling while he motioned for me to come toward him. His shoulders rose slowly with his breaths while I circled him.

The beasts—they did not meet in the middle in the way I had originally assumed. No, one had the neck of the other in its throat, but there was no inking of blood or gore. Neither creature appeared in conflict, at least not angry with one another. Instead, their eyes were so full of sorrow it made my heart ache.

I continued circling, finding the beasts’ two different sizes on his back. One slightly larger than the other. Surprisingly, the smaller one was the one holding the other in the death bite.

I followed where the limbs wrapped around the front of him and the tails, twisting from his back, over the bodies, down the edges of the shoulders and coiling down his forearms.

I studied the markings.

Running up the tails were miniscule symbols, reminding me of the ones carved into the stone in the clock room.

I appeared before him again and jumped when his hand grasped my wrist, placing my palm against his chest.

“What are they?” I asked, tracing the tear-lined eyes of the one whose mouth grasped the neck of the other.

“There is no word in the fae language for them,” his voice whispered above me.

“What are they?” I repeated.

“ Dreki, ” he muttered, stopping my hand from tracing the ink any further.

My eyes snapped up to his, finding that same burn from before. I opened my mouth but he shook his head.

“These symbols?”

“Death, Fate, Freedom, Friendship, and Battle,” he muttered, staring into my eyes.

“What?”

“No more questions,” he replied, removing my hand from his chest.

I stepped away. Then a creature, a foolish, wild creature, took control of me. I made my retreat, keeping my eyes on the king until my knees hit the edge of the bed.

I was sure he’d stopped his breaths when I pulled at the hem of my gown and slid it over my head. Leaving me in only my thin chemise.

I motioned to him, as he had to me while I laid back on the bed, lifting my thin skirt, revealing everything most intimate.

He was before me in an instant, dropping to his knees as I bared myself to him, revealing the ink on my skin.

His eyes didn’t once venture below my hip while his fingers traced my smallest, most insignificant secret.

“A bluebird,” he whispered.

I jumped at his touch, my body shaking with fear while my mind cursed me for allowing myself to be so vulnerable in his presence.

“You asked me what it meant to me,” I whispered, my voice shaking while his finger continued to trace the outline of the ink.

“Yes,” he muttered.

“Freedom, hope, peace, and love.” My tears fell while I voiced my own list. “A chance to be who I want to be.”

“Why hide it?”

His hand pulled away and my breath loosened in my chest.

I sat up, pulling my chemise back down.

“Because I’m destined to be a queen, Ulrich. I’m a princess of an island the majority of our world believes should not exist. My blood is tainted , unclean, and unwanted. I cannot have a marking on my skin that anyone can see.”

“Do you wish to be a queen?”

His question was an attack on my soul, digging into my darkest secrets. I pulled my knees to my chin, refusing to meet his eyes.

“I want to be myself. Whether that ends in my queenhood, or me doing whatever it is the Gods have planned for me.”

“What about Fate?” he asked.

I laughed and shook my head. “There you are with that word again. Fate . What does that mean to you?”

The king let out a breath. “Everything, Brenna. It means everything.”

My words stuck in my throat as the lights in the room went out and a clatter sounded on the bedside table. The sound I’d come to recognize as him removing his mask in the dark.

“What are you doing?” I questioned.

“I’m going to sleep. Would you like to join me?” he replied.

The bed shifted with his weight and the comforter lifted beneath me. My body shook while I contemplated what had just happened between the two of us.

I turned back, hoping to see an outline of his features in the dark.

“You cannot look upon my face,” he whispered.

“Nearly six and a half months, your grace,” I replied.

“Until what?” he laughed.

I climbed up the bed, finding his bare torso while I ran my fingers where I believed his Dreki to be.

“Until I’m going to force you to remove that mask.”

His hand laid against mine, flattening my palm to his chest.

“Perhaps Fate will allow such a thing,” he whispered.

I pulled my hand back, laying against the pillows.

“Whatever or whomever Fate is, I wonder if perhaps you are right,” I replied.

Then the strangest thing in the months since I’d been in his bed occurred—I fell asleep, peacefully. With the giant hand of the Unseelie King wrapped around my own.