Page 7

One of my arms looped around Luken’s neck, my head resting on his shoulder as he carried me. We’d heard the elves calling to each other in birdsong some time ago. Luken instantly pulled me into his arms and started running through the forest. I was still weak from Draven’s attack, slipping dangerously close to unconsciousness.

“Am I going to be a vampire now?” I asked when Luken started to slow.

“You’re closer, but it wasn’t quite enough to push you all the way over,” he answered. “I can feed you more of my blood if—”

“No.” I pulled myself straighter and squirmed in his embrace. “Put me down.”

Luken lowered me to my feet. He held my waist until I was steady, then we started to walk side-by-side. I tested myself. I was stronger, almost fully healed. There was still some pain in my stomach, but it would go away soon enough. I just needed to move my body now, to make sure that the scar tissue remained flexible as I healed.

“What’s so wrong with being a vampire?” Luken asked. His dark eyebrows pulled together into a V as he studied me.

“I was born human. I like being human. Becoming a vampire will change a fundamental part of me,” I said honestly. It wasn’t the first time he’d offered to turn me full vampire. Even though I knew I’d be stronger, faster, if I accepted, I couldn’t convince myself to do it.

Luken hummed. “It wasn’t such a terrible fate for Thessa.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And if I’m dying, then I’d rather be a vampire than dead. Doesn’t mean it’s my preference.”

Now that he brought up Thessa, my stomach squeezed. I hadn’t been paying enough attention. How far away from Thessa and Darcie had he already taken me? I pulled to a stop and turned to face him. He was going to try to take me back to the palace. He would lock me up in my room and make me wait out their deaths, then pretend as though he did me a favor.

I felt the shift of his surprise through the bond and realized my sudden anger and fear had seeped through to him. I shut down the bond quickly, not wanting him to feel any part of me.

Luken turned to me, frustration dancing in his eyes. “What just happened, Elara?”

I lifted my chin and stared into his devastatingly handsome face. I couldn’t risk this going on further than it already had. Everything that happened over the past few months had sent me spiraling off course again and again. Luken wouldn’t let me save them if he had a choice, which meant I had to take away his choice, the same way he was trying to take away my choice to go after them.

“If we don’t save Darcie and Thessa, I will kill myself,” I told him. “If you try to take me back to the palace, I will hurt myself any way I can. A sharp rock, running off cliffs, stealing your weapons. I don’t care what I have to do; I will hurt myself, and it will make you weak.”

Luken’s face hardened. He went very still as he studied me, without emotion. I didn’t dare open the bond to try to get a sense of what he was feeling.

“Rather than asking, you jump right to blackmail, do you?” He quirked one dark eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes in answer. He’d already proven again and again that he wasn’t going to help me get Darcie back. Why would that change now that Thessa was taken away, too? Threatening him by threatening myself was the only power I had in this relationship. My hands clenched at my sides. I was ready to prove myself if he started arguing.

He didn’t fight me on it, though. Instead, he said, “I have a better hiding place for you to regain your strength, rather than sitting out in the open forest. We’ll plan how to get Darcie and Thessa back once my brother’s mercenaries can’t ambush us again.”

My fists loosened. Could I believe him? He started walking again, and I followed, struggling to find balance after this. He was right about one thing. If we were ambushed, I wouldn’t do much good. I might be healing, but I was still weak. I needed rest and food.

“Where are we going?” I asked cautiously.

“A safehouse near the border.”

We arrived at a little village shortly after. It was a quaint little place, full of brightly painted houses and a handful of stores, or at least that’s what it looked like from the outskirts. Luken led me to a two-bedroom cottage on a well-maintained property close to the forest. A fence surrounded the property, blocking out spying eyes. Several large trees shaded the cottage and there was a ring of stones just inside the fence that were etched with runes.

“It’s protected by wards and charms,” Luken told me. “Nobody in the village even knows this place exists. Draven’s people won’t find us here.”

Inside, the cottage was decorated in cool shades of blue and green. Everything was soft and organic. The carpets had vine-like patterns, and the curtains were lacy, letting in plenty of natural light. The furniture was modest and inviting. The main room was an open-concept kitchen and living room. Luken had me sit on the couch while he went to the kitchen and started to prepare some food for me.

“What is this place?” I asked him.

“A safehouse.”

I eyed the fresh fruit sitting on the counter. “And it just happens to be fully stocked?”

His eyes flickered up at me. “Do you really think I wanted to spend my honeymoon with a million people underfoot?”

My cheeks heated. That was exactly what I thought would happen. That I’d stay in my room, and he’d come every night, trying to convince me to accept him as my husband. I looked around the cottage with new eyes. It wasn’t just some place. It was a honeymoon cottage.

“Oh,” I mumbled.

Luken sighed. “I was hoping we’d have time to talk and get to know each other.”

I didn’t like the uncomfortable prickles of conscience that accompanied his words. It was all too easy for me to fall into the fantasy of what I wanted him to be. I had to be strong, to fight against these moments of quiet. Even if he had planned out a private honeymoon, he hadn’t bothered to tell me about it. And how did he think I was going to be happy here while Darcie was still set to be sacrificed?

If we were going after her, though… he needed to be strong, too. “You haven’t had blood for a few weeks.”

He had pulled some cheese from the fridge and was slicing it thinly for my sandwich. “I have not.”

I braced myself. “You’ll need to drink from me before we go after them.”

“No, I won’t.” Luken nodded toward the fridge. “I have a store of blood bags. Since I haven’t had a personal donor in… a while, I’ve made do with the frozen kind. It’s enough to keep me strong. Like I said…” He looked up at me, his amber eyes smoldering. “Not until you’re begging me for it.”

Heat washed through my system. If he drank from me, it would cause all my hormones to flare to life. I would beg him to take me. I opened my mouth to say just that, only to pause. That was exactly why he wasn’t going to drink from me, wasn’t it? Because he wanted me to beg for him because I wanted him that badly, not because of the aphrodisiac response of being drunk from.

This line of thinking was only going to get me into trouble. I got up and went to the kitchen myself, getting a glass of water.

“They took Thessa. Draven said they were going to give her as a tribute to the Gods again. Why would they want her after she ran the first time?” I asked, my hands gripping the glass tightly. What if it had all been a lie? It made me sick to think of what might happen if it was a lie.

“The Gods choose their tributes the day they’re born. At least, that’s what the oracle says. If they want Thessa, they want her for a specific reason, whatever that might be.” His gaze darkened as he slid the now-finished sandwich to me. “My guess is that since she survived the Blood Trials and escaped the punishment they planned for her, they want her back for their original reasons.”

I bit into the sandwich, but it tasted like ash in my mouth. What original reasons were those?

“Elara.” Luken’s hand closed over mine. He was warm to the touch, which showed me just how cold I was. Usually, his skin was a much cooler temperature than mine. “If there is one thing I can say about my brother, it’s that he hates rape more than he hates me. He won’t allow them to touch Thessa.”

A shiver ran down my spine. The night that my family was slaughtered, the one comfort I’d gotten from their deaths was that they were killed quickly. None of them had been assaulted before being murdered. It was a small comfort now to hear Luken tell me this. Draven could have changed. But…

“He told me she had to stay pure for the gods,” I mumbled. The mouthful of sandwich was difficult to swallow, but I did it anyway. “He told me it was the one comfort he would offer me as I lay dying.”

Luken looked away. I thought I felt a ripple of something—pain?—through the bond.

“How did he get free again? After what happened at the colosseum, why didn’t you kill him?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper. “This could have been avoided. He escaped your dungeons before. Why would you give him the chance to get away again?”

“Are you the only one allowed to love their family, Elara?” Luken’s shoulders slumped. “I know he hates me, but when I look at him, I can still see the good-hearted child he once was. If it’s my fault that he’s become the man he is, then can I not want to save him?”

I lowered my sandwich, staring at Luken’s profile. “I… don’t know how to respond to that.”

He gave me a quick, tight smile. “I don’t expect you to. You’re still very young. You don’t know how these things work. I should have known you’d take unnecessary risks for Darcie. When you love someone that much, what risks won’t you take? But it was foolish,” he continued, his voice hardening as he pulled a blood bag from the fridge. He viewed it with distaste as he opened it up.

“How did you even find me?”

“I had GPS trackers put on your bike,” he answered easily. “I followed you as soon as you and Thessa left the palace grounds. I was going to keep my distance, but I sensed your pain through our bond when you were attacked. The Gods must have seen you and Thessa leaving the palace and decided to take the opportunity to ruin me.”

“Ruin you?” I repeated. That familiar flare of anger washed through me, and I clung to it. “Oh, of course. Any attack on me must be about you. You’re the most important person in the room at any moment, aren’t you?”

Luken sucked on the blood bag, seeming unfazed. He swallowed and, looking in my eye, said, “Yes. They only care about you as far as hurting you weakens me.”

“You—” I lunged for the kitchen knife, and Luken snatched it up before I could get it. He flicked it away, the blade sticking into the wall near the fridge.

A cocky grin crossed his face as he slurped up more blood, then tossed the empty blood bag into the trash. “We really shouldn’t fight when you’re in your state. Finish eating, and you can try to beat me after you’ve had a nap.”

“You condescending piece of shit,” I snarled. I went for him again, feinting a punch to his head, only to check my shoulder into his chest. He grunted and wrapped his arms around me. His hands grabbed my wrist, and he twisted me around, pinning me firmly into his chest. His body was so warm and inviting, his scent overwhelming.

“Let me go,” I spat.

Luken pressed his face into my hair. “Not until you agree to eat and rest before fighting me, Elara. I would love to spar with you. Thinking about how we fought at the hot springs still gets me hard as a rock. But you’re going to need to use your strength if we’re going to get Darcie and Thessa back.”

The fight drained from me. “You’re going to help me?”

“It’s that, or you kill yourself,” he answered dryly. “I still need you to defeat the Gods, and you’ll get yourself killed if you go after them alone. So we should stick together, hmm?”

I grabbed my sandwich and took it back to the couch, resentment broiling in my gut. For a moment there, I’d nearly let myself get sucked back into his charm. He didn’t care about Darcie or Thessa. Didn’t even care about me, not really. Even the fear I’d felt through the bond when I was dying wasn’t about me. I was just an instrument in his quest for power.

He was right about this, though. I needed to eat and sleep. The sooner I fully recovered, the sooner we would get moving again.

I watched Luken as I ate. And continued to watch him when I lay down on the couch. Why couldn’t I keep myself steady when it came to him? I hated flipping back and forth, knowing I couldn’t trust him, but constantly being drawn to him.

Eventually, I fell asleep. But even in my dreams, I wasn’t free from him. They were filled with him and the fairytale ending I knew we’d never have.