Page 49

Dawnspear glittered in the morning light.

My gaze followed the elegant line of its tallest tower to the golden spire piercing the sky, luminous against the blue. Around us, Imperium Square buzzed with activity, the chaos a stark contrast to the serene grandeur of the castle rising above it all.

Dawnspear remained just as magnificent and awe-inspiring as it was the first time I laid eyes on it six days ago. How had it only been six days? It didn’t seem possible. Almost everything had changed.

No dread or terror rose in me at the sight of the bright castle. I wasn’t passing through the wall of climbing roses and shadow-streaked bone as a captive thrall, heart in my throat, stomach a pit of dread. I wasn’t scared for my future, my life, or even my body.

None were at risk. Not from the Kings of Dusk and Dawn.

That should have been a relief.

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t anything.

I wasn’t anything. I was hollow. That was the only way to describe the sensation in my chest. Like I had been scooped out and left empty. My limbs moved, my heart beat, my lungs filled, but something was missing.

I had been born to be compatible with the kings.

I wasn’t someone’s daughter, but someone’s pawn.

I couldn’t stop my gaze from flickering back to Estrella and Tristan, riding behind us. My mother perched in front of Estrella, small and frail in her thin black gown and simple cloak. Unlike yesterday, her gaze remained firmly on the ground. Whatever bravery had possessed her had fled overnight.

My anger and anxiety had gone with it. But the emptiness they left behind settled deeper with every breath. It crept in slowly, cold and quiet, spreading through my chest. Even Jules at my back, radiating warmth and quiet happiness, wasn’t enough to push it away.

My mother didn’t want me.

She had never wanted me.

She had birthed me for the quota and for the kings.

Well, for the soulbond and whatever plan the demonblood she was allied with had, but the result was the same. My entire life had been influenced by the soulbond, warping me into something I wasn’t.

Something for them .

But how could I ever be right for the Conqueror and the Butcher? That had to be a mistake. A severe miscalculation on part of the soulbond.

I’ve always loved you and I always will. Luc’s words came back to me, a low murmur from the dream. I shouldn’t have witnessed his and Jules’s whispered confessions. The moment had felt… private. Intimate. Not for my eyes.

If I said that aloud, I’d only get a smirk from Luc and a laugh from Jules. We were soulbound. Their emotions had itched at the edges of my mind since I woke. One day, I’d feel them like they were my own, just like their bodies would feel like my own. We couldn’t get more intimate than that.

But I still shouldn’t have witnessed any of it. I had known the kings for a mere twelve days. Twelve days to their five hundred years. Who was I to watch the moment the Conqueror confessed his love for the Butcher? Who was I to feel the Butcher’s elation, his dream coming true after so many centuries?

I was an invader in their soulbond. Even with the help of magic, I could never belong. Luc and Jules were gorgeous and powerful and confident. I was plain and broken and shy. Whatever emotion they one day felt for me, it wouldn’t be real. Not compared to the love they shared.

They were a perfect match for each other.

And maybe that was the root of the issue. It wasn’t that I felt safe in the arms of murderers. It wasn’t that my existence was manufactured. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to fall for the vicious Imperium.

What if this new life was just like the old?

I’d forever be on the outside, watching others experience the love and belonging I’d always craved. Only this time, there was no end date. I couldn’t drink the kings’ blood now, but they would ensure their survival, no matter what.

This would be my eternity.

Surrounded but alone.

Wanted but not needed.

Perhaps loved, but not truly.

No warm bed, endless food, or mind-shattering orgasms could fill that empty place in me.

But it was an improvement, at least. I wasn’t cold or hungry. I didn’t have to count my stipend or patch the same rip in my shawl over and over. I wasn’t in agony every day, my own body turned against me. Maybe this was the best life had to offer me. Maybe I should accept—

Teeth nipped at the ridge of my ear.

I yelped, pulling away from Jules. The sharp sting snapped me back to the present, to my reality, as sudden as a knife to the throat. I shot him a glare, but the King of Dawn only grinned. There was mischief in his eyes, but also something keener, something quietly assessing.

When I kept staring, he winked.

The heated promise behind it shivered along his skin, my skin. The soulbond dragged the sensation straight through my chest, past my hardening nipples, down to the low pulse between my legs.

Revulsion followed it, clawing up my throat.

My body wasn’t mine. It had been shaped for them , made to crave their touch, even when I wanted to shrink away. But the bond quickly smothered the feeling. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Luc and the library. The bond thought that was long enough.

It needed them.

Clenching my thighs tighter around Cala’s saddle, I spun back around. My pulse pounded in my ears, but I ignored it. We had already passed through the Sun Gate, but the road to the palace lined with pear trees wasn’t exactly short. Courtiers strolling the garden dropped into bows when they spotted their Imperium.

I latched onto them, onto anything to ground me. I traced the runic parterres with forced focus, willing myself to slip away, to find that void of feeling again.

Jules chuckled, his breath against my cheek. “You’ll have to try harder than that, lovely.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks. Was he teasing me about my failed attempt to drift off or the want I couldn’t hide? Maybe both. “ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Liar.”

I resisted the urge to glare at him again, but my gaze betrayed me, sliding to Luc astride his hellsteed ahead of us. He wasn’t laughing. He was watching, not with amusement, but with quiet certainty. He was waiting for the moment I stopped fighting. The moment she gave in, whether she wanted to or not—

I dug my nails into my palms. I refused to slip into either of their heads. Just like I refused to feel this need.

Jules’s macabre fountain decoration would come into view soon. I forced myself to picture it, to brace for the sight of flayed flesh and exposed ribs. But not even a flayed body was enough to dampen my arousal.

“The sweet scent of your desire is certainly an improvement from the panic or dissociation,” Jules said. “But it ruins my plans for the day just the same.”

I couldn’t help it. My head snapped back around. The King of Dawn’s grin widened, immensely satisfied. He’d baited me into reacting, but I didn’t care. Jules had plans that didn’t involve me naked, wet, and begging? My lips almost twisted into a frown.

That was not disappointment I felt. Not at all.

Liar , my brain whispered in Jules’s voice.

I ignored it. “What exactly do you have planned for the day?”

“Luc and I spent the last month in Mabon, so we have far too much work for my liking,” Jules said with a sigh. “Meetings with the council, the Blood Legion High Command, the Merchant Syndicate. Impires don’t run themselves, unfortunately.”

“You only planned to attend half those meetings,” Luc said without even glancing back.

“Well, yes. I didn’t say I was attending them all, just that they were happening.”

I nodded, but my focus was on crushing the rising disappointment. I didn’t want them. I didn’t need them. But the bond whispered otherwise, curling warmth through my chest, tricking me into believing their absence would leave me cold.

But could I blame it entirely on the soulbond? Without the kings by my side, I was nothing more than a fragile human in a city of vampires. The ease I felt wasn’t from the towering walls of their castle or the safety of their apartment.

It was them.

Their presence. Their attention. Their touches.

But that was the bond. It wasn’t real—

“Don’t worry, I had a lunch break planned,” Jules said, cutting off my thoughts. “Figured Luc and I could take turns licking your sweet cunt. Winner gets to fuck you, loser has to watch.” Jules paused. “Or maybe the winner gets to fuck the loser and you have to watch.”

My breath hitched. The heat that had been slowly spreading through my cheeks jolted through my entire body. It was absurd. Vulgar. Exactly the kind of thing that should’ve made me recoil. But Jules knew exactly what he was doing. He saw me slipping away again and lured me back with the one thing the bond wouldn’t let me ignore. My distress didn’t stand a chance against the wave of unadulterated lust that crashed over me.

Jules leaned in, his lips brushing against my ear, warm breath sending shivers down my spine. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

My body went stiff and straight. Jules knew. I didn’t know how, but he knew I had watched Luc and him fuck in my dream.

“You weren’t very conspicuous this morning,” he continued, answering the question clear on my face. “Blushed the second you looked at me.”

My stomach twisted. Heat. Mortification. Arousal. All at once.

“I plan to win this, though, so you’ll get a little variety in your new hobby. Any preference for how I should fuck our Conqueror King?”

“Don’t bother answering him,” Luc said before I could cobble together an answer. “Jules won’t be winning. Assuming I even agree to the wager.”

“You’ll agree and you’ll lose, Lucey.”

Luc glanced over his shoulder and arched an impervious brow.

Jules stuck out his tongue, the gold of his piercing catching the light.

My clit pulsed hard enough that I nearly whimpered. My fingers twitched with the urge to cup myself, to relieve even an ounce of the tension coiling inside me.

“You wouldn’t know it, since Luc loves to be in control,” Jules said, golden gaze fixed on the King of Dusk. “But every once in a while, he wants me to tie him up and fuck him like a dirty slut.”

Luc’s expression didn’t change, but something sharp pulsed across the bond. It tingled through me like sparks, buzzing just beneath my skin.

Jules obviously sensed it, too, since his grin went sly. “Keep in mind, the bondage part is mandatory with Luc. Can’t keep him in line otherwise.”

My mouth dried. It wasn’t hard to conjure the image of Luc leaning back against a mattress, black eyes locked and focused on me. But imagining shadows shackling his wrists, his ankles… My stomach clenched, interest sparking just as sharply as Luc’s did at Jules’s wicked words.

The kings had said they had meetings to attend. But they weren’t thinking about politics anymore. Just like I wasn’t thinking about what my mother had said anymore. Heat flooded me, stoking the ravenous beast the kings had awoken inside of me, the one that craved pleasure and despised pain. She wanted me to grab Jules’s hand, guide it between our legs, and beg him to make us feel good.

Another part of me screamed. This wasn’t natural, this wasn’t right, this wasn’t real—

A muted moan of agony reached my ears.

The sound spread through me like a splash of cold water. My desire died instantly.

We had reached the loop before the steps to Dawnspear’s red door, vampire attendants preparing for their kings’ arrival in the warming Montaurère air. Behind them, Sabas and Cédric waited. The Crown Enforcer’s arms were crossed and his face fixed into a glare while the Crown Mage waited patiently.

Overseeing it all, the flayed body writhed on the fountain’s golden spear.

Nausea surged in my gut. The impaled vampire’s gaping chest was a ruin of torn flesh, twitching muscle, and exposed ribs, just like last time. I twisted my head away until Jules’s earring came into focus, the heavy ruby drop swaying with his movement.

Jules narrowed his eyes at my swift change in mood, glancing between me and his prisoner. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been tempted to kill good ol’ Pops, but your repulsion is a compelling argument.”

I blinked. I had not expected that response. “That’s your father ?”

“Unfortunately,” Jules said.

It was such a Jules answer, I couldn’t help but snort. “For you or him?”

The King of Dawn pursed his lips. “I used to say me, but I think this might beat anything he ever did.”

“You’ve kept him on the edge of death for centuries,” Luc said, quiet approval beneath his words. “That’s quite a feat.”

“I do love a good edge.”

Luc’s lips twitched in a smirk. I narrowed my eyes at him, at Jules, not understanding the joke but knowing one was there. I wouldn’t ask. Admitting my inexperience in front of the kings during yesterday’s trysts in the apartment garden and library had been embarrassing enough.

When we reached the steps, the vampire attendants scurried forward. Sabas and Cédric started down to meet us, their long shadows cast by the rising sun. Jules’s brother’s expression hadn’t changed at all, unbothered by the shuddering corpse. By his father .

Were they only half-siblings? Did they even know? With all the orgies happening, some vampires surely had no idea who fathered them.

“What did he do to be worthy of centuries of torture?” I asked, trying to ignore all those quietly curious eyes.

For a long moment, Jules didn’t answer. He dismounted Cala, his movements fluid, easy. Behind us, Tristan unceremoniously dropped my mother to the ground. Luc circled Wrath, his dark brow arching slightly in an otherwise stern expression. Shit, was that too forward of me—

“He killed my mother,” Jules said simply.

“Oh.” I gaped at him. I hadn’t expected a reason. A good reason, at least. “Was it… intentional?”

“Plotted and planned. He chose her death, so I’ve made him beg for his.” A terrifying smile bloomed on that beautiful face, but his triumph behind it was thin, like an echo of justice that had lost its edge long ago . “Not that he’s sane enough to beg anymore.”

I shuddered hard. I had always known the Butcher was cruel. But this? He had devoted centuries to his father’s suffering. Not out of necessity, not as a punishment, but as a hobby. “That’s awful.”

“I know,” he replied.

Luc stopped at Jules’s side beside Cala. “Hands on the pommel, bride.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

He tapped the pommel before me. “Hold that and swing your far leg over Cala’s back.” His hand lowered to the stirrup closest to him, a light brush over my skin. “You’ll settle both feet here.”

“And then?” I asked incredulously, glaring down at Luc. Down . I was sitting at the height of his starsdamned face. The Conqueror was the tallest person I had ever met, but the hellsteed dwarfed him.

And he wanted me to do what? Jump off? I’d break both my ankles… if I was lucky.

I glanced over my shoulder. Behind us, Tristan had unceremoniously dropped my mother to the ground. “Why can’t you just lower me to the ground?”

Jules huffed a laugh. “And deny us the pleasure of watching you struggle?”

Luc’s lips barely twitched. Not a smile. Not quite.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Do what he says, then he’ll help you off,” Jules said. “No one’s expecting you to leap off a hellsteed on the first try. You’re much too short.”

I scowled.

The skinned body rattled on the spear.

Egh, that was disgusting. Teeth gritted, I grabbed the pommel and tossed my legs over without hesitation. Luc lowered me to the ground a second later, before I could even panic about how high off the ground I was.

Jules spun on his heel, already grinning as he faced Sabas. “Miss us, Sabs?” he drawled. “You didn’t have to meet us at the door when we were only gone for a day.”

Sabas didn’t return the amusement.

“We need to talk,” he said. No greeting. No pleasantries.

Both kings’ brows lifted.

Something in the air shifted.

Cédric cleared his throat. “I discovered a signature in her blood.”