Page 138 of The Ballad of the Vampire Prince

“Please…This person is important to me,” he begs desperately.

Her gaze narrows, searching for his eyes. “It’s for your girl?”

“Yes,” he says carelessly. Red overhears my low growl and quickly amends his answer.

He clicks his tongue and points towards me with his thumb. “I meant his girl.”

The old woman’s wise eyes flick to me at his gesture. “Are the three of you in a relationship?”

“He wishes,” the knight replies.

I want to fucking end him.

Red turns his pleading eyes on the woman again. “Please, I’ll give you anything you want.”

He empties his baldric and places his elegant sword along with the dwarven-made breastplate on the table. Rhianelle’s chosen knight is dumber than I thought.

“You’re trading good metal for wood?” I finally ask when his foolishness becomes too unbearable to watch.

I find two sets of eyes staring back at me as if I just muttered something blasphemous in a holy temple.

Her silver eyes sharpen on me. “Not just any wood, young man.”

“It’s a piece of a tree from Astefar,” Red declares.

“Astefar?” I echo.

The old woman casts me a disbelieving look. “You’ve never heard of the Forbidden Forest?”

Red clears his throat. “Forgive him. He’s not from here.”

She gazes long into my eyes, long enough to make me uncomfortable. Her voice carries a strange, soothing lilt when she speaks. “When the elves first arrived to this continent, untamed beasts and gods dwelled in the woods. The first Elven King, Casimir the fool—”

“Casimir the Brave,” Red dutifully redresses as he inspects the wheels of the cart.

“—fought against their unearthly forces with his inquisition. Their battle lasted for thousands of years, and legions of elves fell to the bloodthirsty dark gods. Through endless slaughter, the king painfully learned that chaos and malice can never bedestroyed. To avoid further catastrophe and doom to his people, Casimir contained the malevolent beings and sealed them in what is now called, Astefar,” she finishes, then adds, “No elf has ever trespassed that forbidden forest and lived to tell the tale.”

“Except for a girl,” Red mutters underneath his breath too low for her mortal ears to hear.

But I think the old lady heard him all the same because she is now staring down at him. The knight is too ignorant to notice he is being silently assessed by the old woman.

I finally recognize that this is no ordinary woman. Something different prowls beneath that skin. Something lethal and dangerous.

“Please, please, please, I will trade anything for this,” Red whines again.

“Anything?” she asks. “It may cost you.”

There’s a strange gleam in her eyes, the kind that belongs to witches and devils.

Red holds that deadly stare, unrelenting and unafraid.

“Anything,” he confirms. The bastard is an inch away from bargaining his first-born to whatever the hell this old woman is.

She gives him a saccharine smile. “You can have it in exchange for… a shade of green from your left eye.”

A chill sings in my blood over her words.

The woman raises her hand to the knight to complete the deal, the earlier sweetness in her features morphing into something lupine.