Page 47

You were made to be ours.

The kings continued questioning my mother, but their voices blurred into a murmur at the edges of my mind.

You were made to be ours.

My insides recoiled. I didn’t know what to do with that information. I was my own person. Wasn’t I?

I had never questioned that before. If I wasn’t, I would have bowed to my stepmother’s wishes and married Patriarch Meallán. Allowed him to use my body no matter how much it hurt, in the pathetic hope of birthing three children before I turned thirty.

But I hadn’t. I had forged ahead, alone.

And the kings liked that about me. My defiance had endeared them right away. My stubborn refusal to bow to the path set for me was a point of intrigue.

But if I were made for them, my entire development influenced by the soulbond, then this was the path set for me. I hadn’t escaped it at all.

It explained too much. I had no overwhelming urge to share my thoughts with any other Azarasian. Luc and Jules weren’t just ordinary vampires, they were the Conqueror and the Butcher. I had found them petrifying even before I knew that, but my terror hadn’t dissuaded my interest. The rush I felt for them had been instant and surprising.

I hadn’t experienced that desire with any human man. I think I would’ve been instantly intrigued even without the influence of magic, but the kings had been interested in me, too. That had never made any sense. I wasn’t ugly, but I wasn’t a great beauty, not one who could ensnare a vampire with a single glance.

An attraction rune on its own couldn’t do that. Karra had knowingly entered her soulbond, intending to seduce the Beast King. The magic had helped her lure Azaras to her the moment she was in his proximity, but I hadn’t tried to seduce the kings.

But if I were made for them…

I swallowed a laugh.

None of this had been natural.

None of this had been true.

None of this had been real .

But of course it hadn’t. I couldn’t believe I had actually thought two vampires could desire me naturally. My own family hadn’t wanted me. Why would strangers? Without the soulbond, I was just another thrall to them, someone to fuck and discard like éamon had said.

Only one person in the world had ever truly loved me—or so I thought.

“Did you even want me?”

The library went deathly silent. Four sets of luminous eyes landed on me, but I ignored them all for the pair that matched mine, a dull human brown.

My mother.

I had missed her for twenty years. Dreamed of the childhood I remembered in flickers. But had she ever loved me? Had she ever wanted me?

Or had it just seemed like it in comparison to my father’s indifference and Deidre’s disdain?

My mother met my gaze. “I never wanted any children.”

I nodded stiffly. I couldn’t blame her for that. It wasn’t a choice people in Mabon were allowed to make. Not without severe consequences. “But after I was born? Did you… want me then?”

Did you love me then? But I couldn’t ask that. It was too pathetic, too fragile, too hopeful—

The furrow in my mother’s brow deepened. “I chose to care for you, but I never wanted a child. You were… a responsibility.”

I held my flinch back this time. Of course. That was all I ever was. Another mouth to feed and body to clothe.

I exhaled slowly, voice trembling. “So after I was born to meet your quota, you would what? Convince me to volunteer so I could be bound to the Imperium? So that my death could kill them?”

My mother didn’t reply.

I stared at her, willing her to answer me. To say she didn’t mean it, that she lied, even though she couldn’t with the truth rune on her skin. She stared back, her gaze equally intense. I couldn’t read her expression. I didn’t know her. It was like she expected something from me… and found me lacking.

A disappointing, unwanted responsibility.

Why had I expected anything else?

The shattering inside me was quiet at first. But then it cracked wide open, and I was breaking, breaking, breaking. I was standing before I even realized I’d moved. My eyes tingled. My insides writhed, wanting to escape. I backed away from my mother, the kings, the guards.

From everything and everyone.

“I need to… I need air.”

I didn’t wait for permission. Fuck their permission. I turned on bare feet and walked away. Just away. If the corridor leading to a courtyard wasn’t before me, I don’t know where I would’ve turned.

The open archway revealed vibrant green gardens. There was no door, but the humidity of Tenebra de Mar didn’t touch me—or the precious parchment stored in the library. I stepped through. As soon as I touched the walkway, the heat crashed down onto me.

My tears followed a second later.

I inhaled deeply, the sound near a sob, as I pushed from the path leading to some other archway and into the depths of Duskfell’s hanging gardens.

Sun-warmed stone gave way to terraces of greenery, spilling over the edges of carved balustrades. Bright fruit in shades of vibrant orange and deep red dangled from dark-leaved trees, the air heavy with their unfamiliar sweetness. Ivy coiled around pale columns, creeping along the walls of the tiers below. Bursts of red and violet blossoms broke through the green. Water trickled in fountains, the soft sound swallowed by the cries of birds wheeling overhead.

It was beautiful and otherworldly.

I didn’t care.

My heart cracked open in my chest, fracturing with every step. I wrapped my arms around myself, like I could hold the pieces of me together.

My mother had been cold, distant, aloof. Maybe it was her situation. She had been a thrall for twenty years. I couldn’t imagine what she had gone through, what she had witnessed. Terrible, terrible things, surely.

But that wasn’t enough of an excuse for me.

She didn’t care. She had never cared.

I was just a pawn in a larger game.

A game I had been made to play before I was even born.

A game I had been made to lose .

The kings had always owned my body, but I had thought, at the very least, that my soul was mine.

It never was.

My breath hitched. My lungs squeezed tight. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to feel. My mother didn’t care. The soulbond had influenced me my entire life. I couldn’t trust anything, not my senses, not my thoughts, not my emotions. They weren’t mine.

How much of me was? I had clung to my sense of self for so long, determined not to let my stepmother or the Church or my illness turn me into someone I didn’t recognize. But all along, what I recognized wasn’t truly me.

Stars, what the fuck was I going to do?

I entered a clearing, the greenery giving way to a stretch of grass before a statue. The figure of a woman was carved into a block of daemium, red carnations in bloom at her feet. I almost walked right past it. But then the blur of my vision cleared—

And I saw her.

I stopped.

It was the dark-haired woman from the portrait on Luc’s desk. This time, she was dressed in her finest gown, exposing sinuous peaks of her toned body. Her expression was fierce, overlooking the garden like it was the field of battle.

I hadn’t thought about her much, given all that had happened, but jealousy washed through me. I was a rock next to a gemstone, dull and boring beside something gleaming and twinkling.

That was the type of woman the kings could actually love, a beautiful vampire warrior.

Not me. I was a pitiful trap—

I dug my nails into my elbows. The pain didn’t register, but the pressure did. It jolted me out of my jealously, my insecurity. None of that mattered.

I did not want the kings.

But I had thought that before, and I’d think it again. Because I had been made by the soulbond for them. The core of my being was made to want them. There was nothing I could do.

I was trapped forever.

Bound for eternity.

My breath started escaping me in shallow pants. My head spun.

I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t—

My knees buckled. Carnations crumbled beneath me as I hit the ground, the scent of crushed petals mixing with the salt of my tears. My thighs pressed together— stuck together.

Because I was stained with the Conqueror’s cum. A sickening tingle crawled over my skin, like a thousand ants skittering along my inner thighs.

I needed it off.

I grabbed at my skirts, yanking the fabric up as I scrubbed at my skin, harder and harder. It wouldn’t come off. I was marred. I was stained. Deidre had been right. She had sensed it the moment she looked at me. I was a wicked, sinful whore, meant for our terrible Imperium. That was all I had ever been.

That was all I ever would be.

I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, but I could still feel them.

Their fingers on my skin.

Their cocks burning inside me.

Their presences hovering at the edges of my mind. Getting closer and closer with each passing hour until nothing would be left of me.

A violent shudder wracked through me. My stomach lurched. Oh, stars, I was going to puke. I curled into myself, clutching my chest—

Two shadows shifted overhead, the ominous swirl of a storm and a cackling wildfire. I couldn’t see them, but I didn’t need to look to know. Their gazes met over my head, something passing between them. Something I could also know, if I wanted.

But I didn’t want to.

I didn’t want this bond.

I didn’t want this life.

The kings settled around me, surrounding me like they always did. Like they always would. Luc’s grip was firm as he pulled my hands away from my scraped skin. The welts between my thighs burned, an angry red from where I had rubbed myself raw.

But I could still feel it, feel them.

I pulled against his hold, but he didn’t budge in the slightest. It was like I hadn’t even tried.

Because I was trapped by them eternally. My vision wavered. The birdsong and breeze faded beneath the suffocating weight of my heartbeat.

On my other side, Jules stroked a hand down my back. “Shh, just breathe.”

Luc’s fingers over mine drew two small shapes on my hand. Heal . Clean . Magic coated me in a wave of warmth. The skin between my thighs faded from angry red to regular pink. The sweat, the dirt, the cum all disappeared from my skin.

But it didn’t matter. Because the kings’ soul was still inside of me, merged with mine. The heat of them didn’t just press in from all angles.

It radiated from within.

I jolted back, ripping myself from their hold. They let me go.

My ass hit the grass, a sharp jolt of pain that barely registered as I scrambled away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Lovely — ”

“Don’t call me that.” I tried to snap the words, but they came out half a sob. “I’m not your lovely, your little curiosity, your wife. My name is Nessa.”

Neither of the kings moved closer, but their eyes didn’t leave me.

“We know that, Nessa.” Luc’s voice was calm. Too fucking calm.

I laughed, short and sharp. “Do you?” I glared at the King of Dusk, the terrifying Conqueror. Even kneeling in the grass at my side, he was intimidating. “To you, I’ve always been your possession. I was made to be your possession.”

Jules exhaled through his nose, reclining back as he plucked at a crushed carnation. “All Maboni are our possessions,” he said, offhand.

My vision went red.

If I had something to throw, I would have hurled it at his smug face. But my slippers were gone, lost somewhere in the library. “That’s not helping.”

“And what will help?” Luc asked, leaning forward, silver eyes sharp as a blade. “This is your life now. You can spend the rest of it resenting us… or you can accept it.”

Anger welled in me. What a cold-hearted bastard. “Fuck you.”

Luc’s jaw twitched. If I was anyone else, I’d be dead now. If I weren’t in the middle of a breakdown, he’d have bent me over his knee.

Instead, all he said was, “It’s the truth, Nessa. A harsh truth, but the truth nonetheless.”

I tugged at my hair. Why weren’t they angry? They had been angry. I had felt their fury when they realized how deeply they’d been manipulated. But now? Nothing. They weren’t unaffected, I knew that much. But they weren’t fighting it either.

“How are you so calm about this?”

“Why wouldn’t we be calm?” Luc asked.

“You just said there’s no choice. We’re trapped together.”

Jules didn’t move. But something in his expression shifted.

“Trapped,” he repeated, flatly.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes.” The King of Dawn held my gaze. “You meant trapped.”

He wasn’t smiling. Had I… had I actually offended him? I hadn’t thought it was possible to insult the Butcher.

“That’s not…” But that was what I meant.

I dragged my hands down my face, feeling the weight of my exhaustion settle into my bones. Whoever had cast the spell that made me for the kings had done a shit job at it. I couldn’t even excel at the one thing I had been designed to do.

I stared at the grass at my knees. Watched it sway in the breeze. Tried to let it calm my mind.

Failed miserably.

The kings waited. They always waited. I could maybe outthink them, but I could never outlast them. I couldn’t stomp away again. They had let me do that once already. I had been given all the space they could allow me.

My next words came out so softly, I barely heard them. “I can’t do this.”

They didn’t ask what I meant. They knew.

This life. This soulbond. This fate.

Luc’s response was steady, unshaken. “You can.”

I aimed another glare at him. “You’re fucking terrible at comforting people.”

Jules sighed dramatically. “What did you expect from the Conqueror?”

He crawled closer, crushing carnations without a care. His smile had returned, but it wasn’t real. He was still thinking about what I’d said. Trapped. He shouldn’t have cared. He was the Butcher. He skinned people for fun. But I couldn’t stop the pesky emotion. She thought us a cage. She wasn’t wrong. We would always be her cage, her captors.

But… I thought maybe, just maybe, she could actually learn to love me. But that had been an insane idea. No one could love—

I jolted out of Jules’s thoughts, my breath catching. My brow furrowed. What the fuck was that? Those couldn’t have been the Butcher’s thoughts. They were too vulnerable.

I was losing my mind.

“He isn’t wrong, though,” Jules continued once he slithered to my side. “You can’t change this. You can’t change that the soulbond was placed on you before birth. You can’t change that it’s bound us together. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of choices.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “I’ve always been out of choices. I didn’t pick this life.”

Luc tilted his head. “Neither did we.”

I flinched. How was I still offended by their rejection, even as I tried to reject them? “I’m well aware. You wouldn’t ever pick me.” My gaze flickered up toward the statue watching over us. “You picked her.”

Luc didn’t look at the statue, but a quiet reminisce passed over his face. “Corinne died during Isaura’s wraith attack on Duskfell.”

Something deep inside me—some bitter, jealous knot—uncoiled just a little. There wasn’t a beautiful vampire somewhere out there, waiting to drop in on my new soulbond unannounced.

Shit, I didn’t mean to be grateful she had died. And at a wraith’s claws? That was horrible. Would the soulbond make me horrible?

“Someone like her, then,” I said, voice hollow. “Beautiful. Perfect—”

Luc moved faster than I could react. He suddenly kneeled an inch away, his hand catching my jaw, stopping the words from forming. “You were made for us. You are the perfect choice.”

A tremor crawled through my body. Heat spread through me in a slow, treacherous pulse. My nipples peaked.

I ignored it all. “Then there’s something fucking wrong with you.”

Jules smirked like I’d said something hilarious. “We’ve never denied that.”

Luc didn’t laugh. His thumb brushed against my lower lip, his touch softening from a restraint to a caress. Just for a second, he looked… no, felt tired. “I didn’t mean you,” he said after a pause. “I meant this life.”

I snorted. The Conqueror didn’t choose this life? What other life could he live? I couldn’t see Luc as anything but a king.

He saw the disbelief in my eyes, in my soul. “I didn’t choose to be Azaras’s son. I didn’t choose to be his heir and Marisol’s pawn.”

Pawn . Something sharp and cold pressed against my gut. I was a pawn, but I couldn’t imagine the word applied to him. What exactly had his grandmother done to him?

I shouldn’t have cared.

But I did.

I shifted, my voice hushed but steady. “Then why are you here?”

His eyes flickered toward Jules, just for a moment. The King of Dawn only watched, tracing slow, lazy lines down my arm. “Just because the path was picked for me doesn’t mean my want for it was a lie.”

I swallowed. “I don’t know what I want.”

The words came automatically. A reflex. But that wasn’t true, was it?

Luc didn’t challenge my statement. He released my jaw. “You don’t need to decide now.”

But I had. I had always known what I wanted.

An impossibility.

A wild dream.

A home .

I wanted somewhere to belong, somewhere to rest, somewhere to be at peace. Someone to share it with, to make the days and nights a little less lonely.

I wanted what I had never had.

The soulbond whispered they were the answer. With the kings, I wouldn’t have to fear. I could be safe and warm, cherished and kept. Their pampered little wife, adored and protected. My body leaned into their heat—

Wrong.

I jerked back, sharply shaking my head. The Imperium couldn’t be the answer. No matter what every fiber of my being screamed at me.

Because they weren’t safe. Because I would never be cherished. Because I would never— could never—find peace in their arms, stained with the blood of thousands.

It wasn’t real.

It would never be real.