The hip hurt where it caught my weight when he shoved me down, but my heart hurt more. I traced the side of his face with tear-filled eyes. “So you hate me?”
His eyes narrowed, staying on the council. “Yes,” he said, and I believed him—that single word and all its weight shattering everything I thought we had in those dreams. The council stopped talking then and glared up at the sound of my heart breaking.
“Why?” I sobbed.
“Stop talking,” he said.
“Then just help me understand what I did wrong, Jase.”
His shoulders hunched a little, going straight so quick I wasn’t sure I even saw him move. “I’ve nothing to say to you. If you were foolish enough to believe we were friends, you have only yourself to blame.”
“But you said you loved me.”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
“Yes, you did!”
Jason spun around, his arm folding diagonally across his chest before coming back down sharply across my lip and nose. I screamed, falling onto my elbow but coming back up again immediately by force of Jason’s hands on my face.
“I don’t love you,” he screamed, squeezing my head. “I never did. You were just a game to me.”
I moved my tongue over the blood dripping from my nose and into my mouth, trying to loosen his grip on my face. “I don’t…” I sobbed. “I don’t believe that.”
“Did you really think I would love you, you pathetic little whelp?” He scoffed, his tight hands shaking me.
Why are you denying it? I thought. If you lied to me, that’s one thing, but why deny ever having said it?
In that moment as the fear moved back and I read his eyes, I realized it was shame: he loved a Lilithian—something seen as impure and disgusting in his culture. That’s why he denied it, but I knew that part of his love was still in there somewhere. It had to be.
He shoved me away. “You disgust me.”
I pressed the back of my wrist to my upper lip and smoothed the blood away from the burn in my nose, my eyes slipping past Jason to the councilmen. They all stood motionless, watching the show with a hint of amusement.
“She has so much faith.” Jason addressed the Council. “I read it in her thoughts. She thinks she will be saved.”
Drake scoffed and went back to his discussion, no longer interested in our little show.
My chest tightened into my stomach as I sobbed aloud, gasping through each pause enough to catch a breath.
“Stop crying,” Jason said coldly.
My shoulders shook harder. I folded over, dropping my face as the tears rolled in lines of three down my cheeks and nose.
“I said stop crying.”
“I can’t,” my voice wailed out.
“Then I’ll make you stop.” He grabbed the base of my neck again.
“That’s enough!” Drake stood and swept toward us in a ghostlike movement, his dark cloak gliding over the stone, his feet seemingly non-existent.
My sobs quietened instantly.
Drake moved between us and reached down to me. “To your feet, young one.”
My hand trembled the slow ascension to his, and I pulled against it to force my shaking legs to a stand.
“Do you know why this is happening to you?” Drake asked kindly.
I did. I understood his personal vendetta against all Pure Bloods, his fear for what my venom could do to him. But I couldn’t answer him. My words were lost in the trance his eyes invoked. Up close, they were like a rare gem. If it weren’t for the malice festering in his soul underneath, the violet flecks over the brilliant blue would actually be very beautiful.
My lips sat parted, the air brushing lightly across them.
“Did you remove her voice box as well?” Drake turned to Jason.
“That can be arranged.” He folded his arms.
“Amara.” Drake’s hand hovered around my cheek, his lips tasting my name. “Princess Amara. Beauty beyond words, but a bite of death.” His rounded eyes studied mine carefully. “I must apologize for what we plan to do to you. Please understand, my lovely girl, this is nothing personal.” His eyes narrowed into slits. “Then again. Maybe it is.” He laughed wickedly, his high-pitched burst of air greeted with the crowing of the other men—all except one: a man whose face watched mine, studying me carefully, his intense eyes narrowed, familiar somehow.
“What are you going to do with me now?” I drew myself up stiffly.
Drake spun back to face me. “Well, of course, we plan to kill you. But before we take the young Warrior’s word, we must perform a few tests to make sure you are a Pure Blood.”
“What kinds of tests?”
“Ha! What kinds?” He turned to the Council. “What kinds, she asks. Oh, such a brave little girl to question a king.”
“You’re no king,” some stupid girl inside me said, running on nerves and adrenaline—so damn sick of being abused by these creatures. “You’re just the self-appointed head of a sadistic cult. And I’m not afraid of you.”
“That’s only because you’ve no idea what I’m going to do to you,” he said, his mouth suddenly on the bridge of my nose, his words spitting through his stark white teeth. “I’m going to make you cry. I’m going to make you scream, and if you satisfy my needs, I will eventually offer you the mercy of death.”
“All words,” I said, biting my teeth together. “I’m still not afraid of you.”
Drake’s voice echoed around the room in an uncontrolled growl as shoved me to the ground. I tumbled onto my hands like a heavy bag of clothes, the force bending my weight into my elbows just before my nose hit the ground.
“You will do well not to anger me, Amara, or my words will become action right here in front of these men, and one of those words will require only four letters and your naked body.”
The dark shadow of the king lingered for a second then tapered away, leaving me alone on the stone floor, my face angled to hide from the burning eyes of the Council.
I wanted to run away—to just get up and tell them I didn’t want to play anymore. But this wasn’t a game. And they wouldn’t let me go. They got me, they did exactly what David told me to be afraid of, only now it was worse because I wasn’t just a human on the run from the law, I was the creature they once so brutally destroyed.
“Jason?” the king said. “Undress her.”
“Your Majesty?” Jason looked up.
“You heard me.” Drake waved a dismissive hand. “The Council wish to taste her blood. Undress her.”
I rolled my face upward to meet Jason’s as he sauntered toward me, his arms still folded. “Jason. Don’t. Please, don’t.”
He grabbed my wrist and threw me onto my back.
“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest, clasping my shoulders tight.
“Stop it, Ara.” He broke my grip, pinning both hands against my chin to force my head to the ground. “Don’t struggle.”
“Please,” I screeched. “Please just don’t undress me. I won’t fight. I promise. Drink from me, I don’t care.” I looked over at Drake. “Please?”
“Why should I offer you mercy, when all you do is take to insult me in my own court?” Drake presented the room.
“Please?” I begged, unable to see him through the tears.
He squatted beside me, lifting his cloak a little as he did, revealing that he did, in fact, have feet. “You promise to lay still while they drink from you?”
I nodded, as much as I could with the cold stone under my head.
“Very well.” Drake stood again. “Jason, lift her dress. My Council enjoy the thigh.”
I closed my eyes tight and pressed my arms into the floor beside me, my head back firmly to the ground. Jason stood up from my body and gently rolled the lace up from my ankles to my knees, leaving it there.
“Higher,” Drake ordered.
My jaw tightened—too tight to quiver—while warm salty tears travelled down my temples, tickling my ears before dripping onto the floor. “Jase?
Please?”
“You better not move,” he warned, taking the dress up past my waist, exposing my lace undies to the room of men—one of them being his own uncle. Evil. So freakin’ evil.
“And what’re you gonna do if I decide to move?” I whispered spitefully.
“It’s not me you need to worry about,” he said and stood back as shadows descended around me, council members filling out the empty space one by one.
I shut my eyes tight. My body had been promised to their evil intentions, but I could go anywhere I wanted in my mind. It just wasn’t far enough to escape the fear, or the deathly cold of their hands fingering their way across my skin like a doctor feeling for a hidden lump.
Taking a deep breath to hold my squeal, I forced my nails into my palms. I just wanted it to end. But the five men knelt by my body, taking their time, hands searching for the ripest spot. And one by one wet lips formed seals above my hipbones on both sides, the soft flesh on the inside of my knee, and two more drawing my legs apart to suckle the plumpness of my inner thigh—way too close to my vagina. I felt their tongues circling the flesh as if tenderizing it before the bite. I wasn’t sure what it would feel like to be bitten by so many in such sensitive places but something told me it wouldn’t feel good.
“So soft,” said a man on my left, stealing my breath as his finger wormed into the rim of my underwear.
“Don’t…” I whimpered, wanting to use my unbound, more than capable hands to fight him off. Jason, please. Don’t let him touch me like that?
I waited, but he did nothing, probably enjoying watching this pervert abuse the boundaries.
“Be swift, Councilmen,” Drake called. “We’ve tests to perform.”
The intruding finger inched away, and the tight, unwanted pressure of teeth broke the flesh. My nails pressed tighter into my palms, scraping ditches of raised skin. I focused on the sting in my hand, willing it to be the only pain.
And though I promised to lie still, I just couldn’t. My back arched, and my legs stiffened as I fought an internal battle not to kick, not to fight them off. They held me down firmly though, so many hands all at once—stronger than my will to run—and I heard the suppressed scream rise in the back of my throat like a long-sounding mmmm.
The blood throbbed out past the moaning lips, oozing under my knees, my bottom, my hips—wasted, unwanted. They’d had enough, they were full, but they kept drinking, kept sucking.
“That’s enough, Councilmen,” Drake ordered, moving toward us.
The teeth loosened, popping out of my flesh one after the other, and like a deflating balloon each of my limbs relaxed when the hands dropped away, their evil presence shifting from my aura.
I cried aloud, folding my legs together again, my body finally free to shake.
“And there it is,” Jason said, his eyes fixed on my lower half. “Proof.”
I rolled up on my elbows and looked at my legs: purple bruises bubbled on the surface of my skin, droplets of red reeling, reversing into the wounds as they closed.
Silence filled the room, resting under the soft crackle of the roaring fire.
“Proof, indeed.” Drake stood motionless where he’d stopped. “Well done, young Warrior.”
I flopped back, my legs aching, wet and tired. I reached to pull my dress down, but Jason kicked my hand away, pressing my wrist to the floor with his heavy black boot.
“Don’t you move,” he said bitterly. “Not until the king orders you to.”
Each breath in my chest tightened my throat with a searing hot rage, my hands shaking under the angry clench of my fingers. I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how, but one day I would make him pay for what he’d done.
“Right, well I guess there is only one more preliminary test to perform,” Drake added, slumping down in the chair at the center of the table. “Bring in the prisoner,” he called to the side.
The door buckled as it opened, and two men dragged a blonde waif between them, kicking and wriggling. They threw him to the floor in front of me, his face hidden by the mop of messed hair, but I could tell immediately he was young, maybe no older than sixteen.
“I beg you,” he said. “Do not do this.”
“Silence him,” Drake said.
One of the men jammed his foot between the boy’s shoulder blades, flattening him in a swift kick. He coughed, pushing up on his hands, but keeping his face to the ground.
“Know your place, boy,” Drake added, “and this will end with less suffering on your part.”
Jason moved back then, and as soon as his foot left my wrist I sat up, whipping my dress over my cold legs and hugging them to my chest. The lace cover, though it was all I had before, now felt like the arms of a friend—safe, warm, protective.
“Amara?” Drake called. “Bite the boy.”
Confusion inched down my nose in a crinkle as I looked at Drake and then at the boy. “What?”
“You heard me.” He nodded toward the whimpering waif. “I do not have time for your games, child. Bite the boy.”
“No.”
Drake moaned, waving his hand in a sideways flutter at Jason. “Show our dear princess what happens when we disobey.”
The sudden feel of Jason’s fingers on my neck made me squeal. “I can force you to do this,” he growled.
“No.” I held my breath, reaching back to unwind his fingers, but they tightened like nails in a coffin. “Ah!”
“Are you going to bite him?”
I went to shake my head but couldn’t move. I’m not biting him.
Jason fumed. “Bite him.”
“No.” I arched my neck backward into my raised shoulders.
“I said bite him.” He shoved my head down into the boy’s body. He was so cold, but so tangible, so real. I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t take a life—not for any reason.
“It’s okay,” I whispered softly into his hair. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jason moaned, and his cold, solid finger slid around the lip of my mouth, forcing my teeth apart.
No!
“Bite,” Jason yelled, cupping my chin to roll my jaw over the boy’s flesh, and as it entered my mouth, pushing my tongue to the back of my throat, Jason struck the back of my head so my jaw smashed closed, piercing the skin of the innocent child.
A part of my soul died in that one breath, my wet lips falling away as my teeth popped out of his bleeding flesh. He dropped to ground with his hand over the wound, screeching like an old whistling kettle.
I scuffled back on my hands.
“Remarkable,” a man said from across the room.
The boy writhed on the ground for all to see, ripping at his own hair as the skin dissolved around the bite. But the sound of his screams faded to the back of my thoughts while the sweet, delicate tang of his blood reminded my lips of the hunger in my stomach.
I could do it. I looked over at him, pity dissolving. I could roll him over and tear his arms away from his neck—pin him down with my legs and rip his throat open with my teeth. It would ease the acid-sting in my mouth—the hunger, the need that burned like the will to run.
My hand edged closer, but a searing liquid rushed up my throat then, rolling on the back of my tongue like hot soup. I cupped my mouth, heaving as I folded over.
What had I done? What was happening to him?
“He’s dying,” Jason said.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe as the boy who suffered my existence thrashed about under the fiery grasp of Hell.
Then, the scuffling stopped.
The room went silent.
Breath was not enough. No tears could suffice. He was still, because I made him still.
I had ended life.
A loud clap echoed, and my eyes flung open. Drake waltzed over and lowered himself to the ground, lifting the boy’s head and studying him. “Dead,” he confirmed, slamming the boy’s face into the stone.
What did he do to them? Why did they make me kill hi
m?
I sniffled, looking at the dead boy who, in his moment of passing, brought a truth to the surface I wasn’t sure I could bear: I was Lilithian. I was a weapon, a creature of sin—punishable by death. I was immortal all along, and I never even knew it.
My stomach churned.
If we’d known; if only we’d known. We could’ve run. We could’ve gone from here and never looked back.
The curse. My eyes grew wide and round, everything I ever learned about Lilithians coming to mind. The curse was triggered, but they never knew how. But I did. It suddenly all made sense. From the first moment I ever drank David’s blood, nothing in me had been the same. That’s when I changed. That’s when I became immortal.
My spine straightened.
Immortal, but not undying.
A chorus of ghosts seemed to surround me then, chanting and calling my name in a hymn of eternal echoes. Silent, non-existent to the others in the room. But to me, their empty song chimed a shattering story of a girl whose life never had the chance to begin. I was the walking dead. I’d be killed in the most drawn out, most epically disgusting way: so horrid David never told me the stories, so painful Eric himself wouldn’t speak of it.
It once was Lilith, my ancestor, and now I would also play the protagonist in this sadistic tale: one of a ruined life, a tragic existence, and an unfortunate, eternally haunting end.
“Jason.” Drake looked past me. “You know what to do.”
“Happy to oblige.” Jason grabbed the boy’s wrist and dragged him across the ground. For a second, as I lifted my head, I saw his face—his pointed nose, his lips dark pink, like David’s.
“What are you going to do with him?” I sat up on my knees.
Drake looked back from the fireplace, his hands clasped in front of his chest. “Cremate him.”
“Oh my God.” I spun around and planted my face into my knees as Jason hoisted the boy into the flames. I couldn’t watch it. It was too horrible. Oh, God. Please. I prayed, hugging my knees, rocking back and forth. Please let me wake up.
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