My entire life, I’d been nothing more than the little Prince. Despite my physical size, that was how everyone had always thought of me. I’d never even get close to the crown. I remembered what the Rogues said about the ruined timeline that we were in. The tenth heir, a little Princess, who snapped and killed all of us when she was only fifteen years old… I could relate to those feelings. Being ignored for a lifetime was enough to drive a person to madness.
But, now that I’d had a week to think about it, I knew I didn’t just want to kill them for some kind of reckless revenge fantasy. It was deeper than that. If they were all dead, that would mean I’d be the King. It was an idea I’d never entertained before, given that it was almost impossible. Maybe I would like being the ruler of my country and my people, but maybe I wouldn’t. Years spent watching my oldest brothers learn the ropes at my King’s side showed me that it wasn’t just a parade, but a stressful and demanding job.
Still, how could I ever know if I truly cared about being a King if I’d never even been given the opportunity to really learn what it was like? My father had failed me and my younger siblings in that regard. He never bothered to teach us how to be leaders; instead, he used his daughters for pawns in marriage alliances and shrugged off his youngest son because there was no way, in a million years, that Markus Aurelius III would ever be faced with the responsibilities of the throne.
Now that I was here, the time had come. I had eight siblings, two parents, a dozen cousins and a handful of other family members to kill.
Despite all my earlier thoughts, a bubble of anxiety burst in my stomach. For a fleeting second, I imagined staying on the ship and not going through with it. I imagined going back to Ellen and curling up beside her in her bed once more.
“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness?” came a voice to my left.
I jumped and turned to find a young woman with platinum hair. It was Loretta, Lee’s second-in-command. Lee must have been too busy to come bother me personally.
“Markus,” I corrected her. “Just Markus.”
“Right,” she replied. Somehow I knew she wasn’t a fan of informality and no amount of reminding her that I didn’t want to be called a Prince on this ship would make her stop. “Well, it’s obvious at this point, but we have landed in the ruined timeline that will be the perfect opportunity for you to kill your family. The tenth heir, the Princess we spoke about earlier, is just thirteen at this time. While she is not completely murderous, she has just begun to descend into her psychosis, so it will probably be best for her to be among the first of your kills.”
I nodded, letting my gaze slip from Loretta’s and back to the distant horizon where the golden castle of my youth was beginning to light up with the oranges and pinks of the sunrise. Just outside the window, the pure white snow began to glisten in the early morning light. It was beautiful. It almost made me wish that I was home. Truly home, in my original timeline.
“We have a vehicle that will take you down to the castle discreetly,” Loretta continued, unbothered by the fact that I was clearly only giving her half of my attention. “A small team of Rogues will accompany you in order to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Once you are satisfied, simply return to the ship and we will be off, finishing our dark tour by dropping off each of you in your respective home timelines.”
“Got it,” was all I could manage in reply. I was suddenly feeling the tiniest bit sick to my stomach.
“Are there any questions I can answer for you before you begin?”
I shook my head and waved her off. Loretta disappeared immediately, though I did catch a glimpse of her pursing her lips at my rudeness. Still, she bent into a shallow bow before walking away, unable to shake the reality that I was royal. I wondered what she was doing before becoming a Rogue. She was so formal and full of conditioned respect for authority that I figured she was probably part of some distant planet’s army. I imagined she would be formidable on any battlefield.
I groaned quietly and collapsed sideways onto the couch like a child.
What was I doing? Was I really about to go sneak into my own palace and murder everyone who shared my bloodline? What would that feel like, to see my mother, Lilia, and the tiny insane Princess, bleed out at my feet? I closed my eyes against the image. The memory of my nightmare, with my mother, the Queen, covered in blood on the floor of the throne room with her throat cut, attacked me.
With a curse, I punched my fist into the plush pillow beside me.
Ellen was right. I shouldn’t do this.
I couldn’t believe myself. I was a fool. I’d left a beautiful, naked girl, who I was pretty sure I was in love with, behind in her bed in favor of a violent, murderous rampage. Lightness and darkness beside, I knew in that moment what was better for my heart, mind and soul.
It was her.
Screw the Rogues. Screw this timeline. They could keep my money.
In an instant, I was back on my feet, practically racing back to Ellen’s room. A startled Rogue jumped at the sight of me hurrying around a corner, pressing himself against the metal wall as I ran past him without a second glance.
I stopped suddenly at Ellen’s door. It was almost the same scene as the night before, when I’d hesitated outside of her bedroom. Thankfully, something in her had craved me just as much as I was yearning for her, and she’d found me. Pulled me inside. Made me hers.
I was hers. She was mine. That much, I knew to be true.
I hoped she wouldn’t be mad at me for leaving her.
With a deep breath, I opened the door to Ellen’s room and paused, taking in the sight of the tangled sheets on the far side of the room.
The bed was empty.
Ellen was gone.
Chapter 17
Demon
Ellen
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was brilliant, early morning sunlight peeking over the pointed tops of a thousand evergreens. I gasped in wonder, pressing my fingers to the cold glass as I took in the sheer beauty of the scene before me.
A blanket of the purest white snow I’d ever seen rested over everything. It glittered like diamonds as the sunrise inched higher over the distant horizon. Towering, beautifully green trees stretched up to the azure sky like fingertips toward the sun. I could almost hear the soft whisper of a gentle breeze through the millions of pine needles, swirling the topmost layer of snow up into the air like dustmotes.
Far off, I could see the shadowed spikes of mountain peaks, jagged and terrifying, and yet somehow still undeniably stunning. I lay there in awe, not having seen such natural beauty in all my life, even before the war began. I’d grown up in the city, after all. Save for a handful of childhood adventures north with my parents, all I’d ever known was stoic concrete and planned parks.
I realized, suddenly, that this must be Markus’ planet. Well, not quite. A perfect copy of his planet would be the more accurate description, with a young Princess assassin being the main, and probably only, difference. I couldn’t believe he’d grown up in such a wonderful fairytale of a planet, and yet somehow harbored such a strong affiliation for the dark and twisted.
With a sigh, I tore my eyes away from the view and rolled over.
My fingertips danced over an empty expanse of sheets, cold and abandoned. Frowning in confusion, I sat up and stared at the space in my bed where I’d sworn Markus had been throughout the night. Had it all been a dream? It couldn’t have been.
The bruises blossoming on my hips in the shape of his hands and the delicious ache between my legs told me that I hadn’t imagined the wonder and passion of last night. It was real.
And yet, he wasn’t here.
I flopped back down onto the sheets and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if I’d done something wrong. Maybe he’d been ashamed that I was in control, and wanted to duck out before I was awake, unable to show his face. But, no, that couldn’t be it. He’d certainly looked like he was thoroughly enjoying me on top of him.
Maybe he was calling hi
s family to apologize for running off yet again without warning, and was telling them that he’d be home soon. Maybe he’d decided once and for all that he wouldn’t go through with his original plan of killing the parallel versions of his family members, and that he would instead find a different way to cope with the darkness inside him.
But, if I was being honest, that didn’t seem entirely likely either.
I cursed under my breath and pressed my face into the pillow he’d slept on. It still smelled faintly of him.
Maybe the cold, hard truth was that Markus was nothing more than a spoiled dragon Prince with a rockstar attitude and reckless, cruel habits. Maybe I, the innocent and doe-eyed human girl, had been just another notch on his bedpost, and I’d been a fool to think he’d come to me in the middle of the night for anything other than a piece of ass.
Maybe he was simply acting as he always did. Party, seduce, run away. It was his pattern. After all, as I continued to remind myself, I hardly knew him. Though he felt so comforting and familiar when he was around me, the reality was that I’d only met him about a week ago. And, after all, if I hadn’t been determined time lost by the Rogues, Markus likely would have never been curious enough to visit me that very first time. I would have been tossed into Zik’s torture chamber with the rest of the kidnapped people and never thought of again.
I was so stupid. I always did this. I always expected people to live up to my idealized versions of them.
When I was sixteen, the first boy I ever felt more than a schoolgirl crush for had been the first one to teach me this lesson. The war had been over for only a few years at that point, he and I among the handle of survivors on the entire planet. His name was Jack. He was eighteen at the time, and in the pre-war times, had been in juvenile detention for a laundry list of petty crimes; robbery, breaking and entering and even mild auto theft. But, the thing about our post-war world was that criminal status fell to the wayside in our efforts to survive. There were so few of us left that we couldn’t spare a dozen people to be tossed into a makeshift jail, let alone a dozen more to guard them.
My parents, of course, had warned me not to spend so much time with Jack. But he was handsome and devilishly charming. I liked the way he made my teenage soul feel alive inside a dead world. We snuck around for the better part of a year, stealing kisses in the shadows and making love in abandoned buildings.
And then Jack killed someone. It was a boy he’d known before he was thrown in prison, a survivor that had fought his way across the hellscape that Earth had become to reach our colony. Apparently, the boy had been the one to turn Jack in and land him in juvenile detention.
With no police or law enforcement of any kind in our new world, Jack took it upon himself to exact the revenge he’d craved for years.
But, murder was tolerated even less in the post-war era. Survival was so difficult that willfully taking away the chance for it from another person was a crime that everyone could agree deserved the worst punishment possible. They exiled Jack from our community, dragging him out into the wasteland that had once been a lush, green forest. They abandoned him there and left him to fend for himself. As a silly teenager, I almost thought he would make it somehow. But, they found his body weeks later, picked apart by scavengers.
It took me a long time to be able to give my heart to someone again. In fact, I hadn’t ever really given it fully, completely ever again.
But now, with Markus, I had entertained the idea of being totally, unabashedly his. Of holding nothing back.
I really had been a fool with Markus. A fool, again.
I hadn’t thought about Jack in years, but the memory of him had me wondering if I was crazy. Insanity was, after all, repeating something several times while expecting a different result. Even if I hadn’t totally lost my mind, this obsession of mine with nurturing dark, disturbed creatures into the light was going to get me in trouble one day.
Arguably, it had already got me into trouble plenty of times.
I sat up and forced myself out of bed, stumbling across the room to find a clean pair of clothes. Because I’d been forced onto the ship with nothing but the clothes on my back, I’d had to make do with a lot of the secondhand, mostly black clothing that the other Rogue women had lying around. Today, I tugged on a pair of black leggings and a short black dress, preparing myself mentally for another day of training with Lee and Loretta; another day plotting my revenge against them.
Markus had told me he would help me find a way to turn them in to the Time Agents. I had a feeling that his help was no longer guaranteed. That was fine; I was strong and smart, and I could figure out a way to get out of this mess of a criminal career path on my own.
I wondered idly if Lee would make any comments about Markus’ presence in my bedroom last night. Surely, he would have seen the security footage. He was obsessed with the Prince’s and my relationship, or lack thereof, I guess, and would probably have some kind of snide comment to make about the image of Markus sitting outside my door, head in his hands. I was just going to have to ignore Lee and brush off his stupid words. If I was going to be successful in my endeavors of putting an end to the Rogues, I was going to have to keep Lee from being suspicious of me. Any behavior that was different than I’d already exhibited in front of him would clue him in to the fact that I had something brewing in the back of my mind, especially because Lee was incredibly intuitive.
I hated thinking about Lee.
But, the more I thought about Markus, the angrier I became. A black pit of darkness swirled in my stomach at the fact that he’d been the one to come to me last night, the one to beg me to take control of him, the one who moaned the loudest as we made love…and yet, he was gone by morning. It was immature of him, actually. The fact that he couldn’t face me after sharing a moment like that.
Maybe I wasn’t the fool. Maybe he was.
Or rather, perhaps we both were, because he was the fool who had managed to make a fool out of me. If I was going to survive much longer in this galaxy, I was going to have to get better at guarding my heart.
I glanced outside and figured that Markus had probably already left the ship. It was more than likely that he was already on his way to his family’s castle to kill them all. I urged myself not to care, to simply let it go, but the heartache stung like a knife wound in my chest.
With a frustrated huff, I threw open the door to my bedroom, not entirely sure what my next destination was, but knowing that I needed to get out of that room, that place that Markus and I had shared such a meaningful moment in.
The moment the door banged open and I caught sight of the hallway, I froze.
Someone was waiting for me.
It wasn’t Lee, nor was it Loretta. It certainly wasn’t Markus.
It was Zik.
“Um, hi,” I said, stupidly.
Zik’s facial expression didn’t change. It remained cool and stoic like stone. Everything about him made my blood chill and my skin crawl. His aura felt so wrong. It was neither dark nor light, but a disturbing, murky gray.
“Ellen Moore,” Zik replied, his voice as cold as ice. Two brown eyes fixed me with a terrifying glare. “I’m in need of some assistance.”
I swallowed hard and stepped out of my room. If I was going to play at being a Rogue, it meant that I had to go out of my way to help every dark tourist, including the downright horrifying ones like Zik. Maybe Lee had sent him as some kind of test.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.
The moment that Zik’s thin lips curled into a grotesque smile, I knew something was wrong.
I should have stayed in my room.
Faster than lightning, Zik lifted his hand and blew a sandy, white powder in my face. I squinted and flinched away, coughing as the powder entered my airways. Almost instantly, the edges of my vision started to go black.
No. No. What was going on?
My body crumpled beneath me like it was nothing more than a bag of
bones and I fell to the hard metal floor, staring up at Zik as I fought to maintain consciousness.
His savage features were the last thing I saw before the entire world went dark.
Chapter 18
Horrors
Ellen
When I regained consciousness, I was in hell.
Zik was nowhere to be seen, clearly having dragged my body into his specially designed torture chamber and then immediately hurried off to either grab another victim or some more supplies. My hands were bound behind my back with what felt like thick, twisted rope. I struggled into a sitting position, blinking away the haze of whatever chemical Zik had drugged me with and tried to take in my surroundings.
Unfortunately, the surroundings were incredibly bleak.
Instantly going into survivor mode, an incredibly familiar state of being for me, I did my best to remain calm and look around me with cool, logical thoughts. Even though I wanted to scream at the sights around me, I knew that this room had been sound-proofed by the Rogues when they built it for their twisted, torturer client. Furthermore, I knew that screaming would only waste precious energy that had already been depleted by the drug that had knocked me out in the hallway outside my bedroom.
Still, I couldn’t help groaning quietly at the nine bodies scattered throughout the room, limp and abandoned like rag dolls. Though I hadn’t been particularly close with any of the people I’d been kidnapped with - we’d simply been grabbed as a group when we all happened to be in the same place in our ruined city - I cringed at the sight of their fate.
Disturbing stains coated the walls and floor, and I didn’t want to think too hard about what had caused them. Already, my stomach was roiling with nausea and I was grateful that it was empty. All around the room were an assortment of terrifying, unidentifiable tools. They were all sharp points and razor edges, and I fought back the urge to burst into tears at the reality of all the pain that had been experienced in that room in just the past week.
A Wife for the Torturer Page 11