Page 15 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

“You are not the only one avenged by her blood.” His words simmered with a rage so scathing, even if the threat behind them wasn’t for her, it scorched her face and forced her gaze to the floor. The leader of the Broceliande vampire clan had his own vendettas to reconcile.

“And you will not shoulder the consequences,” he added quietly. “I have made sure of it.”

“You could have at least covered your tracks. You didn’t have to make a spectacle.”

An astonished frown parted his lips. “A spectacle?”

“Garin, she was in pieces. It’s not funny.”

Garin was suddenly in pieces, doing his best to hold in a surge of laughter.

The skin of her neck was aflame. “There are public repercussions for a personal matter that could have been dealt with in private. The entire kingdom knows of Sinclair’s behavior at my ceremony. I had reason to want her dead.”

He collected himself before speaking. “Didn’t you?” His gaze dipped to her lips, and the familiar hunger that occasionally made its way around his ability to reason with himself reared its head. “Why are you quivering?”

She glared up at him. “Tell me what you did. I deserve to know.”

“I drained every drop of blood from Vivien. After I was done with her I entranced Sinclair, instructed him to deal with her body, then busy himself with tidying the dining room. What I wanted him to do was get rid of Vivien first, then dispose of Godwin. I suppose I could have been more clear, and the lingering effects of the toadstool could have interfered with my entrancement. When I returned to check on him last night to ensure Sinclair hadn’t wandered off, I found her remains arranged upon the table like a Sunday roast. That was when Armand arrived.

” He waved a hand. “So, as humorous as that sounds, I regret I cannot take credit for the most creative display that upset him.”

“Still, were you not the one who gave him an arm to present to me?” she said, frustrated he did not seem to grasp the reasons behind her fury. “Were you not the one who commanded him to impale himself?”

“I told him to have you open the bag; I couldn’t trust any other circumstance. If you didn’t, then he would kill himself. I figured you’d throw him in the dungeon if he succeeded.”

“My father opened the bag for me,” she informed him. “I still received your message loud and clear, in front of everyone. We’re just fortunate it wasn’t a public jury.”

“You’re wrong. The more witnesses, the better,” he said matter-of-factly. He was so sure of his answer, so unremorseful.

If he wanted to quell her concerns, he was doing it all wrong. He only fed her anger.

“For what ? To stoke your ego? To make everyone fear you more than they already do?”

“To ensure it was clear I am responsible for their deaths so that you would not shoulder the blame. If you were caught by genuine surprise, they would not think twice about your involvement with her murder. About your involvement with me.”

“Armand tried to insinuate I was involved anyway. ”

“As I thought he might. How delicious, the thought of one of his last fears being that the queen of his country is in bed with his enemy.” He reached up to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“But he’s dead now. So, you are free to pretend you are not involved, in any way you see fit, with the very Daemons you’ve sworn to protect.

With the vampire whose room you stand in. ”

Lilac scoffed, but as he eyed her, his jaw set and his brows cocked, it became clear there was something she wasn’t getting, a joke she wasn’t grasping.

“How is staying away going for you, Eleanor?”

The subject change felt inevitable. Now that they were alone together, truly alone, something in the air had shifted. Pretenses were dropped, and so were formalities. She had never intended to stay away, had she?

She was selfish; she’d been called that before. Selfish for being caught speaking to Freya. Selfish for leaving a comfortable life at the castle and denying Sinclair her hand and body. Selfish for making her parents worry.

Lilac was selfish, and tonight was proof. “You’re the one holding me here,” she whispered.

“You’re the one who walked into my room unannounced.

And I have not held you anywhere—at least, not tonight.

You’re here of your own accord. You cornered yourself.

” He slowly closed the space between them, evoking a visceral reaction and sending a jolt of adrenaline through her body.

He reveled in it, smiled knowingly as he placed a hand against the wall and two fingers of the other under her chin, then teasing one of them against the pout of her bottom lip.

He clicked his tongue. “If only Henri and poor Armand knew. And they don’t, do they?”

When she shook her head, he gripped her jaw in a gentle vice.

Her lip was trembling again, which she hated because she knew he secretly loved it.

Lilac coaxed his finger at the corner of her mouth onto her tongue; he watched, unflinching, as she wrapped her lips around it and sucked lightly.

His breath hitched at the movement of her head, her tongue against the pad of his finger.

She would play his game… and play it better.

His smile quickly fell. A low groan erupted from his throat as he released her.

“Is that what this is, then? Am I your revenge? ”

“If you are my revenge, Your Majesty, then it is the sweetest I’ll ever taste.” He stalked away toward his plant shelf, leaving her aching for more. “Your hand,” he said gruffly, without glancing back.

“My—oh.” There was still a smear of red along her finger. The scrape had been deeper than she’d thought. She reddened further and wiped it on her dress, uselessly hiding it behind her back.

He returned with a white cloth in one hand and something long and green in the other. He looked more amused than hungry, but with him it was difficult to tell. He cocked his chin to the end of the bed. “Sit. Let me help you.”

She slid off her cloak and settled onto the edge of his bed, again surprised that a vampire would keep his chamber so warm and cozy—though she supposed it was for the sake of his shelves of strange plants.

Garin reached down to peel her injured hand from her side, laughing when he met some resistance. “You think you could ever hide the scent of your blood from me? That, among the numerous summer aromas of Brocéliande, yours isn’t the temptress that calls me forth?”

“This is what Lorietta gets for making me chop potatoes.” She couldn’t help but smile. “I honestly forgot it happened. I also wasn’t sure how you would fare, after everything.”

“Nothing about my desire for you has changed. If anything, it has been amplified.” He lifted her palm to his nose and sniffed delicately at the gash on her finger. “Just as my ability to achieve that desire has been restored.”

“Doesn’t that make this worse for you?”

In answer, he squatted before her and drew out the green stem—it looked more like a long thorn than a stem—before readjusting his grip on her hand. It was a tapered stalk of some kind, covered on each side in a row of hair-like bristles. “What do you take me for? An amateur?”

She squirmed as he rubbed the slimy edge of it against her wound without warning.

His hand clamped around hers, stilling her. “Are you not used to an ounce of discomfort?”

She answered his inquiry with one of his own. “Did you get this from Adelaide?”

“No. She kills every plant in her care. Why do you ask?”

She didn’t take the witch as someone bad at caring for plants, not with all the flora surrounding her cottage; the information threw her. “It looks like something out of the Low Forest.”

“Oh. No, not this. Although it looks like one, it’s not considered a fae-rooted plant at all.

” He cocked his head at the plant shelf.

“Those blue ones are the only Low Forest species I own. My father would forage illegally in the outcropping of trees near Adelaide’s cottage, and there were several patches of outliers that would grow there.

He’d bring home seeds and plants but could never keep them alive, and the ones he did manage to maintain for a short while, my mother got rid of.

” He cleared his throat. “After I’d entranced Jeanare in the west wing, I’d poked around and found an unmarked bag of seeds in a box of belongings my father kept under one of his floorboards.

It was still there. So, I took a sachet and planted the seeds that were inside. ”

Lilac stared disbelievingly at the plants. As if they’d heard him, the nearest one slowly swiveled its head in their direction. After all these years, it still took mere weeks for them to grow. She shuddered. “They seem so… so?—”

“Not of this world?”

“Yes.”

“I suspect that was at least part of what my father was trying to study without getting too close. Why the flora of the Low Forest only grew there, why the plant species had not naturally dispersed over time as other plants tend to do.” He glanced back at his shelf.

“I believe he overlooked one simple solution: the soil. I thought of how nothing had happened when my father tried to plant them in his best garden soils, so I went and scooped some from the edge of the Low Forest.”

Lilac found this rather peculiar. “Why would the soil there be different?”

Garin only shrugged. “You ask me questions I ponder myself. Besides their odd coloring, they’re almost identical to a mysterious plant I find fascinating from the New World, the Dionea muscipula .

” He withheld an impressed smile. “That’s what the three pots below them should grow into in a few months, the mortal variety.

They both survive on sunlight, water, and insects, though I have a suspicion the fae-rooted Dionea may have other appetites. I have plenty to learn of them.”