by Alexis Davie
The door was pulled open, revealing Oliver standing behind it with a pair of wireless headphones hanging from his neck.
“Hey, Ellen,” he greeted her with a surprised smile. “Sorry, I was listening to some music and didn’t hear you. Come in, come in!” He pulled the door open all the way to let Ellen inside, and once she had stepped in, he closed it behind him and sat down on his bed. “So, what’s up? What brings you here?”
“I, um…” Ellen glanced around the room. “I’m actually looking for Maddox.”
Oliver’s brow furrowed. “He’s not with you?”
The paranoia and anxiety settled inside Ellen once more.
“N-no,” she said. “I haven’t seen him or heard from him since Saturday. I knew I wasn’t going to see him a lot this week, but we had plans last night, and his phone keeps sending me to voicemail.”
“What?” Oliver frowned. “That’s weird, he never turns it off.”
“Have you seen him lately?” she asked, hoping that this was all just a big misunderstanding and Oliver would soothe her nerves.
“Come to think of it…” he said, deep in thought. “I mean, I haven’t been here all that much either. I got tired of being cooped up in our room, so I spent a lot of time studying in the library or in the cafeteria. When I didn’t see him, I assumed he was either here or with you.”
Ellen tried to keep her breathing level. She couldn’t spiral into panic. She had to keep a clear head to figure out what was going on and if it was something they should be worried about.
“When was the last time you saw him?” she asked.
Oliver ran his hand through his hair. He looked more like a cliché vampire than Maddox did, with a mane of black hair, pale skin, and sunken blue eyes. However, he also looked as far from threatening as he could be, despite being the Vampire Prince’s best friend.
“Sunday,” he said. “He went out to go get some blood, but I…” His eyes narrowed. “I never actually saw him come back. I thought maybe he’d run late, or that there were a lot of vampires at the blood bank. He would’ve texted or called me if there had been any problem—”
“Does he usually?” Ellen interrupted him.
“Yeah.” Oliver nodded his head. “It’s mostly happened when he has to go back to the palace for a day or two. Sometimes an emergency comes up and so he texts me something like, ‘I’ll be back in so many days,’ and since he didn’t say anything, I didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary.”
Ellen started pacing from one side of the room to the other, in the space between Maddox’s bed and Oliver’s. Maddox had mentioned that he’d gone back home a couple times during his first year at EMU, but he’d said it was always just for a few days, because he didn’t like missing so many classes and he didn’t want to take advantage of his privilege as a prince.
But if he had gone back home, he would’ve told Oliver, right? He would’ve told her, right?
“Is there any chance at all that he’s at the palace?” Ellen wondered.
Oliver stood up from his bed and leaned against the desk on his side of the room.
“Maddox never turns off his phone,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I know that for a fact. When he can’t answer, he sends you a message to tell you he’ll call you back because he can’t talk at the moment. If he did go home without telling anyone, and there’s no way we can reach him, then it must be something really serious.”
“You…” Ellen bit her lower lip. “You don’t think that he…that he’s…” She looked around the room again, at Maddox’s side. She looked at his made bed, at his backpack in the corner, at his books neatly piled on his own desk, at the clothes inside his closet. “Th-that he’s…not coming back, right?”
“What? No, no, no, Ellen—” Oliver walked toward her and pulled her into his arms, and Ellen clung to him, her arms shaking, her eyes shut tight as tears spilled down her cheeks, biting back the sobs wanting to sprout from her throat. She was so used to Maddox’s cold skin that she didn’t even shiver in Oliver’s embrace.
“Maddox wouldn’t do that, especially not to you. He might be a mess sometimes, and he might stutter and stumble over his words and make an ass of himself, but he’s not a coward. He doesn’t just bail. And he would never abandon you, Ellen. For crying out loud, the guy’s head over heels in love with you! He loves you more than anything!”
Ellen did let out a small sob then, pulling away from Oliver so she could wipe her eyes.
“I love him, too,” she said, and her heart felt lighter, speaking the words out loud. “I really, really do.”
“I know,” Oliver said. He turned back to the desk and handed Ellen a tissue with a soft, gentle smile.
“Thank you.” She blew her nose and wiped the snot from her face. “Shit, sorry, I wet your shirt—”
“It’s just a shirt, Ellen,” he reassured her, his smile turning dashing. “Besides, it’s proof that I comforted an angel in distress.”
Ellen snorted, the dread and paranoia that had been filling her slowly receding to make way for hope to settle on her chest. She was so glad that Maddox had a friend like Oliver, and she was just as glad that he had become her friend as well.
“So,” she said, sniffling and resuming her pacing, “the only place where Maddox could be is at the palace of the Vampire King.”
“It does seem that way, yes.”
“His phone is turned off, which means he must be in the middle of something serious.”
“That’s my theory, anyway.”
Ellen stopped and looked straight at Oliver. “What are the chances that they’ll just let an angel walk in and demand to speak to the prince?”
“Zero,” he answered. “Minus a thousand. Not even other vampires can just waltz in unless they’ve been invited. Well, except for me, but that’s because the king knows me and because I’ve gone with Maddox a few times. He did tell you that we’re only friends because I snuck inside during a party, right?”
“He mentioned it, yes,” she said, smiling at the memory of Maddox telling her the story of how he and Oliver had met.
“So yeah, going to the palace and asking to talk to him will get you…” He paused. “Well, not killed, because we don’t do that anymore, but it’ll most likely get you banned from every vampire territory on Earth.”
Ellen cursed under her breath. She was already the vampires’ public enemy; it’d be a miracle if she could get close enough to the palace for anyone to hear her.
“Now…” Oliver’s mouth twisted into his characteristic, mischievous smirk, “if you were with the Vampire Prince’s best friend, who happens to know a few ways to sneak in…”
Ellen mirrored his smirk. Something told her that today might end up being a good day after all.
8
Maddox slammed his shoulder against the door of his childhood room for the umpteenth time with all the strength he could muster, and yet the door didn’t budge in the slightest.
He’d tried everything he could come up with, from kicking down the door to biting through it to scratching through it, and nothing had made even a goddamn dent on it. He couldn’t even break through the window leading to the back gardens.
He fell back on the ground, lying flat on his back as he gasped for breath, and winced in pain. Both of his shoulders and arms were a bloodstained mess, his shirt having ripped with all the times he had slammed into the door. His gums ached from his fangs being out for so long, and when he retracted his broken claws, his fingers were bleeding and his nails were torn apart.
Had his father brought in witches to magic the entire blasted place unopenable?
Maddox would have never believed the king capable of such a thing a week ago, but a lot had changed since then—mainly that he was now a prisoner in his own home.
When his father’s security agents had brought him back to the palace, Maddox had demanded to talk to him. He was sure that this was some kind of misunderstanding, and if he could just speak wit
h his father, he would sort everything out.
“Maddox!” the king greeted him when he walked into the throne room, followed by the men who had brought him, pulling him into a hug. “It’s so good to see you, mijo!”
“Father,” Maddox replied, “I won’t beat around the bush. Why am I here?”
His father grabbed his arms and stared at him. “Ah. I see now what they meant.”
Maddox frowned. “What who meant?”
“The vampires who told me that my son was consorting with an angel.”
The king hissed the word ‘angel’ as though it pained him to say it, and Maddox felt fury coursing through his veins like liquid fire, setting his insides ablaze. Even if he had noticed his fellow vampires whispering amongst themselves when they saw him, he wouldn’t have cared. They could say whatever they wanted about him: that he was crazy, that he was out of his mind, that he brought shame upon the Royal Vampire Family, that he would lead them to ruin, and Maddox wouldn’t care.
But he did care when someone spoke about Ellen like that—like she was somehow beneath him, like she wasn’t the person who made Maddox happier than he had ever thought he could be, like she wasn’t the most magnificent, amazing, caring, compassionate, noble immortal the world had ever seen.
“So what if I am?” he growled low in his throat.
“Maddox,” his father said. “Angels are not meant to mix with other immortals. They are meant to stay within their own species. Of course that doesn’t mean we want them to go extinct—they are immortals, just like us, and they are a vital part of our world. There’s a reason why they have survived this long and why they keep surviving.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Maddox demanded.
“An angel cannot produce an heir with a vampire, Maddox,” the king said, and Maddox was taken back to the first night he had been with Ellen. This had been her exact concern, a worry that Maddox had thought wasn’t, generally speaking, a big deal. He wasn’t expected to have a child anytime soon, and surely there had been previous rulers unable to biologically reproduce, so Maddox had been confident that they would come up with a solution by the time he was supposed to take the crown.
“Father,” he said, his tone disbelieving. “Did you send your men to kidnap me just to tell me this?”
“Ay, mijo, no seas ridículo.” His father shook his head. “They didn’t kidnap you.”
“Then why did you order them to bring me here by any means necessary and to take away my phone?” Maddox questioned, his hands clenching into fists.
“Don’t worry, they’ll give it back,” the king told him. “And they’ll escort you back to Elite Magic University, too, as soon as you promise you’ll never see this angel girl again.”
The fire in Maddox’s veins turned to ice, paralyzing him. “What? Are you insane?”
The security agents in the room took a step forward, but the king waved them off with a gesture of his hand.
“Don’t be dramatic, Maddox,” he said. “I know what young love is like, but that’s all this is. You’ve had your fun with your angel girlfriend, and in a few weeks, you’ll grow tired of her and decide that you’d rather date a wolf shifter—”
“How dare you?!” Maddox snarled, his fangs extending, his claws protruding from his fingers.
“Angels are not meant to be royalty, mijo, and you’re smart enough to realize it eventually,” the Vampire King went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’m just speeding up the inevitable.”
“No,” Maddox growled, outraged. “If you really thought that, you wouldn’t have forced me to come. You wouldn’t have taken my phone away,” he continued, feeling his eyes starting to glow red with the power of his rage. “If you really thought that I’d break up with Ellen after a few weeks, you wouldn’t have done anything! You would’ve just let me do it!”
“Maddox—”
“You know she’s my mate,” Maddox said, and he watched the king tense with a quiet gasp. “And you also know that I will never, ever walk away from her. Not unless she wants me to. That is why you had your men kidnap me.”
The Vampire King inhaled deeply and then exhaled through his nose. His eyes were cold, distant.
“I was hoping you would be reasonable,” he murmured. “But if you really want to behave like a spoiled child… Gentlemen!” In a second, all of his security agents surrounded Maddox, their guns trained on him. “Take the prince to his room.”
Maddox had been locked inside the palace ever since his fight with his father, with members of the staff bringing him meals every few hours, always accompanied by one of his father’s men to make sure he didn’t make a break for it.
“I’m sorry, Ellen,” he spoke through a cracked voice, tears of impotence spilling down his temples. “I didn’t want to miss our dinner.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you that I—”
“That you what?”
Maddox jumped at the sound of another voice. He sat up and turned his upper body to the window behind him.
“Hey, dude,” Oliver said, his arms resting on the sill of the open window. He whistled sympathetically at the sight of him. “Damn, you look like hell. What happened this time?”
“Oliver!” Maddox cried, leaping to his feet. “What are you doing here? How did you open the window?”
“I’m here because you vanished without a trace,” his best friend answered. “As for your second question, you haven’t forgotten how windows work, right?” Oliver moved back so that he could reach up, grab the edge of the window, and slide it shut. Then, to Maddox’s absolute shock, he slid it open again right away. “Easy peasy. See?”
Of course. That was why the staff could come in to deliver his meals yet he couldn’t break it down.
“Oliver, listen to me!” Maddox told him. “My father locked me in here! Both the door and the window can only be opened from the outside!”
“Shit, the king did that?” Oliver asked in disbelief. “Don’t worry, Maddox, we’ll break you out in no time!”
Maddox blinked. “‘We’?”
“Oh, yeah, right!” His best friend left the window, and when he came back, he was not alone.
Ellen was even more beautiful than Maddox remembered. He had not seen her in a week, but now that she was standing right in front of him, he felt like he hadn’t seen her in a thousand years. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had been crying for hours, and they widened when she saw him.
“Maddox!” Ellen screamed, and the relief in her voice and the tears of joy that started to fall down her cheeks almost made Maddox start crying again.
He rushed to her, and she received him with open arms, letting him bury his face in her hair, inhale her scent, hold her as close as he could with a windowsill and half a wall standing between them.
“Ellen,” he gasped, dampening her curls with his own tears. “Oh, Ellen, I’ve missed you so much—”
“Me, too,” she sobbed, pushing her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m so sorry, Maddox. If I had known you were here—”
“No, no, you don’t have to apologize, it’s not your fault,” he reassured her, pulling away to cup her jaw with his hands, his thumbs running over her tearstained cheeks. “I’m so happy to see you again.”
“Okay, well,” said Oliver, still standing outside the window. “I don’t want to interrupt the heartfelt reunion, but do you two lovebirds think you can continue it once we’re out of here and in my car on our way back to EMU?”
“Right!” they both exclaimed. Maddox didn’t want to let go of Ellen now that they were finally together again, but he didn’t know how long they had until his father’s men heard the ruckus and came to investigate.
Although it was clear that Ellen didn’t want to let go of him either, she forced herself to break away and step back from the window, giving him room to climb out.
Maddox had snuck in and out the window hundreds of times as a child, mostly to try to escape having to talk to the oth
er royal kids during the Vampire King’s balls, so he shouldn’t have had any problem climbing out through it now. The difference was that he was bloodied, bruised, and weak after trying to break down the door for the past couple of hours.
Ellen and Oliver each took one of his arms and put them around their shoulders, helping to pull him the rest of the way out. Once Maddox was standing on the grass outside, his knees buckled, the adrenaline rushing out of him and sending him to his knees.
“Maddox!” Ellen cried, her hand on his chest to hold him up.
“Jeez, dude, when was the last time you fed?” Oliver asked.
“Two weeks,” Maddox answered, closing his eyes. He felt woozy and lightheaded. He’d forgotten that he’d refused to drink the blood bag offered to him after being locked up. Knowing the lengths his father had gone just to keep him away from Ellen, he couldn’t trust that this blood had been taken from a blood bank and not from an unwilling human.
“Maddox!” Oliver chided him. “God, no wonder you can barely stand!”
“Why, what’s wrong?” Ellen asked.
“He hasn’t had blood in two weeks,” Oliver explained. “Add that to his wounded body and you get…well, how he is right now.”
“Can’t we get him some blood?”
“Not immediately,” he told Ellen. “We’d have to either sneak inside for a blood bag or go find a blood bank.”
“Can he drink from one of us?” she wondered.
“Not from a vampire, no,” Maddox said, keeping his eyes closed. Even like that, he felt like the world was spinning around him. “Our blood is like water to other vampires, it does absolutely nothing.”
“What about an angel?” Ellen said.
Maddox forced his eyes open to look at her and found Oliver staring at her in shock, too. She didn’t pull her gaze away from him, and Maddox could see the determination in it.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “We…don’t drink from other immortals.”
“But it’s worth a shot, right?” Ellen pressed, glancing at Oliver for support.