Page 3 of Cruel Vampire King (Honeyblood Vampires #1)

We were at the palace before I could fully wrap my head around what was happening. Luken had recognized me. Emotions surged through me, distracting me. We were already there before I could remember that I should be fighting back.

It wasn’t the palace within Holakas that Marissa brought me to, but it was grand nonetheless. Domed turrets lifted toward the sky, and every window glinted with an inner light, bathing the grounds in a myriad of colors. It seemed that Luken had decided that all his windows needed to be scenes of stained glass.

Marissa zipped through the front doors and up the stairs before I’d gotten more than a cursory look at the grounds. Tapestries, portraits, and what no doubt were priceless antiques whizzed by in a blur before she’d slipped through a set of massive ebony doors and deposited me.

My lungs were burning for proper breath, and as I sucked in the air greedily, my head started to spin. How long had the wind been stealing the oxygen away from me?

“Why am I here?” I asked, fighting against the shakiness of my legs.

Marissa threw open another set of doors, leading into a walk-in closet bigger than most apartments. “I told you. The king wishes to see you. Now come along, Miss Tideborne. You must get dressed. It would be best if you could bathe first,” she said, casting an unhappy look over her shoulder at me, “but the king insisted you come to him as quickly as possible.”

“I’m not going anywhere near him,” I snarled.

She pulled a sleek blue gown from the closet and held it up, eyeing me critically. “Blue would look good on you. But I think maybe something less…”

She dropped the gown to the floor and pulled out a forest-green jumpsuit. With a click of her tongue, she dropped it as well. With a satisfied cry, she grabbed a simple A-line dress made of a jewel-toned purple. She strode toward me.

“I’m not putting that on,” I said.

She ignored my protests. Her grip was stronger than any vampire I’d come up against before. Within moments, she’d stripped off my shirt and pants. I snarled again and tried to punch her face, but she dodged my fist and clicked her tongue.

“I don’t know what the king wants with a human child like you, but I don’t ask questions,” she said, tugging the dress over my head. She hadn’t reacted whatsoever to my scars. “And if you keep enough of his attention that I can spend the night with my lover, all the better for me.”

She winked, and I had to fight back a gasp. Keep his attention. H ow , exactly?

“I’d have preferred the jumpsuit,” I said, stuttering over my words as images flitted through my mind. The type that had me sitting on the edge of a table with my skirt bunched up at my hips. I liked dresses—impractical as they were—but if I’d guessed right in what the king wanted from me…

Marissa shrugged. “And it’d be stunning on you. But it’s too casual for your first meeting with the king.”

I bit my tongue before I could tell her it wasn’t my first meeting at all. Marissa stepped back, smiled, and nodded. She touched my dark hair as though she planned to take it out of the braid, but I jerked back. There was only so much to this I could take!

She shrugged again and briskly walked away, clearly expecting me to follow. I looked around for a weapon before reminding myself that killing Luken wouldn’t get Darcie back. She had been claimed as a sacrifice to the gods four years ago. The girls chosen were kept pure and in comfort in the temples, though nobody knew exactly where. Darcie was safe, until she turned eighteen.

She had been fourteen when she was taken.

I was out of time—I had to get her out now. The Blood Trials were the only way I’d be able to do it.

So I squared my shoulders and followed after Marissa. Down the hall, to the final door, into a richly decorated sitting room. The amount of color that burst from every wall brought me to a halt. Portraits of wonderous natural scenes hung on every space on the walls. Flowers, forests, oceans, sunsets. It was so breathtaking that I first missed the square table in the middle of the room, laden with different seafood.

Then, the smell of shrimp and lobster hit my nose. My mouth watered, and I turned, my gaze sweeping over the offerings. It wasn’t just the shellfish, but also fish of salmon, haddock, cod, and vegetation. Badderdocks, dulce, nori, hijiki. The sort of foods my parents used to gather and prepare from the sea.

“Sit down,” a smooth, dark voice said.

I glanced up and found myself locked in Luken’s amber gaze. He smiled as he pulled out a chair.

“It’s been a long time, Elara,” he said. “You can’t be surprised that I want to catch up.”

My heart raced. My hands trembled, but I managed to keep my expression blank. I sat, and he pushed in my chair, leaning close. He inhaled deeply, inches from my skin. I resisted the urge of taking a handful of salmon and shoving it in his face.

“What’s going on here?” I asked. To my disgust, my voice shook.

“Like I said, I want to catch up.” Luken stood at the corner next to me. He rested his elbows on the table, his amber gaze not moving from me.

I clenched my fists together under the table. Catch up. Catch up?

“Perhaps you don’t remember. It was a long time ago,” he said softly. “You lived in Kondar, a little fishing village near the sea. The local earl had just turned fifteen and invited me to attend the celebration for his birthday. I decided to attend. The whole village was decorated with flowers. It was a pretty village, I remember that. And though I was a guest at the Earl’s estate, we went to the inn. And that was where I saw you.”

And where I saw him. I remembered that moment with too great a vivid recollection. I’d been wearing a new dress. It was cut daringly low—just to the top of my breasts, hardly showing any cleavage, but it had felt daring to me. My hair had been braided with flowers to celebrate the Earl’s birthday, and I had been harboring fantasies about his older, wealthier cousin falling madly in love with me.

The instant I’d laid eye on the king, all other fantasies disappeared.

“I wanted you to come back to the capital with me,” Luken continued, his voice low and gravelly. “The moment I saw you, smelled you, I knew I wanted you. You would have been my personal blood donor. And you wanted to come with me.”

I stared at the food on the table, trying to quell the rush of heat through my chest. Anger? It had to be.

“Your parents refused to let you go. And you were only eighteen. Old enough to leave if you chose to, but young enough that you feared disappointing them.” Luken picked up a wine goblet and drank deeply from it. I watched his Adam’s apple bob. “I meant to give you a few more years. To grow into yourself more, to figure out how to fight for what you wanted. I planned to come back for you. But then I learned you were dead, killed in a fire.”

His words were like a bucket of ice poured down my back. The heat in my chest, the anger, disappeared in an instant, leaving behind a hollow ache. I opened my mouth but stopped myself.

Luken’s eyes grew sharper on my face. He leaned forward, as though he was hoping I’d speak. A few tense moments passed before he slumped back in his chair and let out a heavy sigh.

“Eat, Elara. You will do well to have food in your belly before entering Wickham forest tomorrow.” He selected a shrimp off a platter and popped it into his mouth, chewing slowly.

While turned vampires couldn’t digest food other than blood, born vampires like him could enjoy the foods that other species ate. It didn’t sustain them, but it was well-known that King Luken employed an army of cooks to satisfy his tastebuds.

“I didn’t know you were alive until I saw you at the Trials. You can’t imagine my shock, seeing you there.”

Did he really think I would be swayed by this… this poetry he was spouting? If he was so concerned about me being alive or dead, he wouldn’t have burned down the inn in the first place! I could feel the accusations creeping up my throat. If I blurted them out, would he decide to kill me, too? How would I be able to save Darcie then?

So I swallowed down what I wanted to say and reached for the same shrimp. He smiled, pleased that I was following his lead.

“I remember that day well,” I said, lilting my voice to sound softer and younger. “I was… bewitched when I saw you.”

“Bewitched,” he repeated. His voice hardened slightly on the word, as though he was unhappy I’d chosen it.

Quickly, I asked the only question that seemed safe to do so, “How did you recognize me? It’s been four years.”

Amusement twitched the corners of his lips. “I remember in perfect clarity events that took place four decades ago, a century ago. I’m over three hundred and fifty years old, Elara. Four years is nothing.”

Something burned in his eyes as he spoke. Something that made my scalp prickle. I took a deep breath and pushed away from the table. I was off-balance, and the smell of the food made it hard to think clearly. It reminded me of the days at the inn, a family laughing at dinner as we talked and ate. My parents never adhered to the adage of ‘children should be seen and not heard.’

I walked away from him, to the stained glass window that adorned the one wall without paintings. It was a scene from the elven histories, of their Queen Camilla ascending to the heavens to become the consort of the moon-god Sel. It was a beautiful image, the glass lit up from the electric lights inside the room. It must look even more beautiful when lit by sunlight in the morning.

“Even if four years is nothing, I’ve changed. These burns…” I touched the scars that marred the lower half of my face. I’d been pretty four years ago. I was pretty now, if they were covered.

Luken’s footsteps sounded lightly on the carpet behind me. He stopped so near me I could feel the heat of his body through this chiffon dress. One of his hands touched the back of my neck, following the pattern as it traced up my jaw to the other side of my face.

“These scars only show how resilient you are,” he murmured. “Third-degree burns. Your shirt rode up on the obstacle course. How much of your body does it cover? Thirty perfect?”

I shivered at his touch and his words. “Fifty,” I answered in a whisper. Even though I shouldn’t. But his touch was cool, soothing. I hadn’t realized that these old scars were heating until the coolness of his fingers against them. “Most of my torso and down my legs.”

Luken’s breath wafted on the back of my neck, causing shivers to run down my spine. I was certain he was going to move closer. That he was going to bite into me and draw out the blood he’d wanted four years ago. His words about my scars showing inner strength only served to confuse me.

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, reminding myself how I got these scars. “Don’t touch me.”

He paused, then withdrew. The warmth from his body dissipated, leaving me in the blessed cool. I turned, my arms wrapped around myself, as I lifted my chin to glare at him.

“If you’re hoping that I’ll give up my place in the Blood Trials and be your personal juice box, think again,” I said. “I entered for a reason, and no amount of flattery is going to change that. If you want me for your personal donor, you’re going to have to offer me a hell of a lot more than some pretty words.”

The light of his eyes increased as his jaw tightened. “Very well. You will be returned to your team in the morning, and none of them will be any the wiser. I expect that you’ll keep it that way.”

Despite how he looked at me and touched me, there was a clear, underlying threat to his words. Good. I could work with that. It showed me that this persona he was trying to persuade me with was just that. A persona. It wasn’t real. He was just a vampire king who had killed my family because my parents didn’t want to give me to him four years ago.

If he was really that concerned about me, he would have had his men drag me to the palace, regardless of my parents’ no . Of my no.

He seemed to read my thoughts in my eyes. “I’m not that sort of vampire, Elara. Blood isn’t sweet unless it’s freely given.”

His voice was low, and my mind flashed to Marissa’s warning to the troll who had been harassing me. Any attempt at sexual assault against another combatant was instant death. Did the vampire king have morals after all? Though they weren’t strong, if he decided to wipe out my family because I refused to go with him to the palace four years ago.

“Come back to the table, before the food gets cold,” Luken said, backing away from me. He didn’t turn as he made his way back to his chair.

He stared hard at me, sending fresh chills over my body. I hated the way I felt when he looked at me like that. Hated the way my breath grew more rapid. My stomach tightened, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t quite convince myself that it was all fear.

I sat back down and started to eat, because he was right. I’d had a modest meal at supper with my team, and more food now meant I could live on less food later.

“Where have you been these last four years?” Luken asked me.

“None of your fucking business,” I said automatically.

His jaw tightened further. “You could do worse than being the king’s personal donor.”

I rolled my eyes, exaggerating the motion. “Sure, sure. Like what?”

He didn’t speak again as I ate, only watched me. The prickling goosebumps never died down. The awkwardness of being watched so closely set my teeth on edge. As soon as I declared I was done, he called Marissa to take me back to Wickham Forest. She took me back to the other room, allowing me to change into my clothes this time rather than doing it for me.

She was slower taking me back than she had been running me to the forest. By the time I arrived, my thoughts had gotten so snared trying to figure out what Luken Holakas wanted that all I could do was collapse back into my bed and sleep. It was a deep sleep filled with dreams I couldn’t remember, the taste of the sea still on my tongue.