by J H Spade
I can’t help myself. We were lovers once[1][2][3][4]. Going as far as we could without him drinking my blood and taking my virginity because . . . before our lives took a turn for the worse, he wished to save me for our marriage bed. My lips seek his at the sight of the blood bubbling in his perfect, gasping mouth as he chokes, and I can’t help but think my inquisitively soft kiss most likely saves me from being shred to pieces by his claws. I pull away just in time to catch the look of rage he firmly plants on his face. The pure violence shining bright can’t be because I’m pulling away when he’s bleeding out. He seems angry that I would leave him, and I almost want to apologize.
What am I supposed to say?
Sorry, I would[5][6][7] have killed you if I could but . . . you want to fuck me in front of my ex and then have me kill him.
That’s beyond absurd.
I drop low to snake out from underneath him, but remain close to his side where the blade looks very incriminating. I want to pull the knife out and run it over my lips . . . and then seal his wound as I offer my blood as atonement.
I instinctively know he would allow it.
The things I want make me question everything because I don’t make any sense to myself.
He reaches for my soul with his eyes; traps it in these precious last few moments he has. There’s an unwavering focus in his now black eyes that frightens me, alerting me he’s more animal than male while possibly reading my thoughts. All he says through lengthening fangs is, “Run. You should definitely be running right now.”
I know the chase makes it more enticing for him, but fuck me for hesitating! It’s really hard to move because of the venom. It directs me to be with him, chasing all of my needs with his body. Blessedly, when his face fills with fury, it’s enough to get me moving. There is too much violence hardening his sculpted features, promising me a trip to purgatory as he’s staring at the bloody knife protruding from his chest. I don’t think he ever thought I would try to strike him dead, so I don’t need to be told twice. Clear snapshots of all my times with Darius flash through my mind like I’m about to kick out of this life, and I have one great regret. Not telling Darius that I love him while taking the chance to say goodbye. With no thought to anything else, I trace, high-tailing like my ass is on fire out of that dark corner and head straight to the light. Hoping against all the odds I get the chance to see Darius one last time.
Chapter_: Give Me Something to Believe In
Emma
Shackled by fear, I blindly walk through the misting doors of The Latus Hotel. Yes the doors here turn to mist to make way when you walk through them. Upon stepping inside, Zoraya tries to stop me, but I can’t bring myself to be still, not even for the brief moment it would take to listen to her. I’ve succumbed to my fear for Darius and thus to the bloodlust, starving for more death and sex.
The hotel lobby looks deserted, but I can’t stop long enough to check what in all the gods’ names is going on. Where has everyone gone? Taking quick, angry steps, I head straight for the elevator. Right before the glass doors meet, turning solid in the middle, I see Zoraya rushing towards me, screaming that Eros is waiting upstairs.
The doors fade to black glass, and in the same instant, so does my soul. With a trembling finger, I press the button for the last floor in this highrise and become lightheaded as the elevator zips me to my last destination for the night in what takes just one blink. The doors lighten before they disintegrate. My breaths come stuttering out of me, too afraid of what I’m about to find.
I’m delirious with need and hunger.
What awaits me in the hotel hallway of my suite is a bloody massacre of my guards. The lights have dimmed, blinking off and on, and there is blood and water everywhere. The once luxurious pale-silver carpet makes a squishy noise when I step forward. It is sodden and splotched in dark crimson. My body rebels when I hesitate. I begin shaking with unease because I want to run to Darius, but I’m so afraid for him. Too terrified of what Eros has already done. Afraid . . . of what I’m capable of doing in return.
At no point, is there a thought in my mind of going to the bodies and trying to see if any have survived because it is grislier than anything I’ve ever seen.
That is not the reason I stand absolutely mortified without being able to take a single step forward. I hesitate to look at what lies further than the carnage in this hallway because beyond it, I can smell so much of Darius’s blood and seed. That is enough to finally set me off. Instead of forming any type of plan, I fly into action, aiming for total destruction, yet armed with no weapons other than my body and mind.
Except at the very moment I think of crashing through the double doors and face head on whatever it is I find inside, my spirit crashes to the ground to lay bare from fear for all I hold dear. All that holds my mind intact from splintering every part of me to lie wasted with the dead bodies is beyond those doors, and I don’t know how I didn’t realize it until now.
My hand falls heavily on the cold doorknob, my pent-up breaths release, and I try to listen. All I can hear is the rampant static drumming of my heart. There’s nothing on the other side of the door, completely futile trying to find any signs alerting me to any life within. One thought strikes doubt through me capable of defeating me, What if I left Darius vulnerable—tied up to the bed, making it easier for Eros to kill him?
I lock my knees to keep myself from falling in desperate supplication that will not gain me any favors because the gods have stopped listening to my prayers long before now. Instead, my endeavor is even more hopeless because I hide for a time in my mind, going back to when I wish I had done things differently.
CHAPTER __ Darkness Unveiled
Emmaley, Realm of Luxtentros, In the Kingdom of Ethereal Light and Everlasting Dawn.
Feeling anxious because Darius hasn’t returned after overseeing the training of his men, I asked my ladies in waiting to draw me a bath. All I really wanted to do was have him fly me back to our cave and lose myself in Darius’s body rather than think of my mother’s surprise birthday ball she’d been planning for a little under a month.
I’ve had enough bad memories to last me a lifetime from my time at last year’s masquerade ball, of knowing how Eros suffered at my father’s hands after I practically tried to end Eros myself, depleting his strengths and making his capture so much easier. I don’t need the constant reminder of it with tonight’s celebration and of looking over my shoulder all night.
Eros has been back for some months now, but so far there has been no sign of him.
I know he’s returned because my mother sees him secretly, though, he has not been back at our kingdom.
I have tried many times to have her followed, and no one can tell me how she slips away. It’s truly inexplicable. Either done by magic, or as I’ve come to suspect . . . a spy with means of swiping the mind of my informants. I refuse to get anyone else involved, afraid of possibly endangering them should they be caught.
Every day that goes by, I worry Eros is just waiting for me to slip and for the truth of who I truly hide in my mother’s household to come out. Could my own mother be conspiring with Eros against me? Do they somehow know the truth, that Darius isn’t just an ordinary warrior, but a prince in his own lands, hiding in her castle at my request? Would they both benefit if Darius should be captured?
I can’t help but constantly worry for Darius’s compromising position if he were to be taken prisoner, knowing it is my fault he remains here to be with me.
Pacing my room, I come to the realization that if my birthdate was to never be celebrated again I would then truly be at peace.
The sound of the streaming water fills my ears, so I head for my dresser and begin loosening the soft strands of hair tipped in silver along the length of my long braid.
Ruffling my mane over my shoulders, I look at my reflection in the mirror, asking myself what’s my next move. I’m still trying to determine—unsure of how much of the news I’d found out today during my morning
ride I should share with Darius. I didn’t want to have him worry because it was more than likely I was just being paranoid.
Clarissa helps me to strip out of my riding clothes since the ladies know I don’t like too many hands fussing over me when they’d be better used somewhere else. Besides, Clarissa and I have gotten into enough heated debates over her helping me in the past, ending with me saying I can always use my dagger on the laces of the corset because it is the only thing I do need assistance to remove, if she keeps insisting on smothering me as an invalid. She has said, she doesn’t put it past me since most days I’m more beast than lady, much less a refined princess. Refinement will not save me from the beasts that will try to claim me, so I’ve said as much to her. As it is, I think my small arsenal of daggers always hidden in my boots is insufficient.
I place those daggers on the dresser with some hesitation after what happened this morning. She pointedly looks them over and tells me my birthday has managed to unsettle me.
I smile, letting out a sigh while I shake my head, my eyes cast down to avoid her eyes, intentionally ignoring her comment, pretending she isn’t too close to the truth I’m trying to hide, possibly even from myself. I lay my breeches over the chair to be laundered and walk over to the bed. Then, I take my sheer soft-blue robe to wrap its silky softness over my shoulders as it hangs loose over me. Snapping shut the gold leaf clasps over my breasts and middle—the silks fall batting the air around my legs like butterfly wings as I make my way through stone pillars that surround the bathing pool. I bite my bottom lip in worry, watching pale high columns give way into the open balconies beyond my bathing room. The soft flicker of candlelight—casts an amber glow against the darkened skies.
Today, there will be no light.
The early dawn broke over the horizon in shades of pewter, midnight blues, and deep magenta, and it will be the same dark hues bleeding above for the rest of the day until there is an onyx night with an array of stars illuminating the skies.
A gift from the gods on my birthday, or so I thought because it’s always been the only day in the year when Eros could walk freely. My birthdate from early dawn is cast in endless night until the break of a new dawn.
It isn’t received as a blessing any longer as my eyes look out and see how truly dark it’s become. A blessing would be scorching daylight to protect Darius and I.
A shuddering breath escapes when my eyes cast down in worry. The black tuberose flowers that only grow in Eros’s land are the first to greet me when I look at the pool, catching my attention as they silkily drift over the opaque water, its satin film created by the scented oils and mineral rich salts.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell Darius the scent he loves on me is Eros’s doing since Eros brought the flowers from his realm and planted them under my balcony.
I’ve been bathing with the black flowers ever since I can remember.
“My lady princess, would you prefer for me to ask your ladies to wait for you down below in the gardens?” Clarissa asks, softly whispering it in my ear. Clearly, she knows me too well. She must sense my displeasure today, and how company is not appreciated at the moment. I have many thoughts in utter turmoil inside to keep up the pretense in front of the four of them.
I simply nod my head with a wavering smile on my lips, my eyes too focused on the open skies and what tonight might bring.
I hoped they all mistook my weariness for riding my mare too fast and long this morning, but I see Clarissa isn’t fooled.
In a much louder voice she says, “I overheard trinkets are being hidden in the bushes of the maze for tonight’s festivities. Why don’t you ladies go and try to spy for the hidden places, so we can make out with the largest treasures?” She says it excitedly while she makes her way towards the rest of the ladies, joining their hands and leading them into my connecting rooms.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I quickly lower my robe over my shoulders, watching as it slips down my body to pile on the stone floor.
I glide through the perfumed water and lean my head back, sinking my hair under and wish for a different time as I hide my own tears from myself beneath the wet splashes of drops on my face. One wish for peace is all I ask, but it’s like something inside of me warns it will never happen. I’ve been absolutely foolish in thinking Eros would have forgiven me for leaving him as I did. The way I did it . . . could have brought forth a war. I suppose it still can.
I swim back to the pool’s stone edge, and lean back to place my nape on the rounded ledge, my hand moving to cover my mouth as I hold in a sob—finally going over what happened this morning during my ride.
I was afraid of facing my strange encounter, of trying to determine how much of it was real or simply paranoia getting the best of me. Will I see Tessa tonight at the ball?
*****
When Tessa wasn’t in the stables, waiting for me as she said she would for our ride, I instantly had a premonition something had gone terribly wrong for my mother’s best friend.
She had said in her cryptic message the night before, that there was news of Eros my mother had shared with her. I was to meet her, and she would divulge the information only if I snuck away from my guards, and then we would ride out to the Ashwood tree.
When I didn’t find her in the stables, I raced my mare to the portal connecting into Eros’s realm by the ancient tree.
Immediately, I felt the crack in the seal I had placed to keep Eros out of my mother’s lands, but as I jumped off of my mare before coming to a full stop, the small frayed break of magic was not what struck me.
It was the hand that emerged from the narrow gap in the shield, elongated and elegant, gripping tightly at a small scrolled parchment.
I knew Tessa was dead from the stiffness and lack of color in her skin even though I couldn’t see more of the body that still remained on the other side of the portal in Eros’s land. Her brilliant emerald and diamond gold ring, identifying her further as my mother’s friend was at such odds with the grayish tone of her still hand. The jewelry adorning her flesh was a favorite of Tessa’s and the same one only worn to mark special occasions. She must have worn it today in preparation of my birthday celebration.
Blindly, I reached for the scroll holding back a pained cry in my throat.
When I lightly tried to pull back on the parchment as to not disturb the dead, and it would not release, I was given no other choice but to yank harder with utmost force as the hand tumbled free to land at my feet.
It was the distraction that caused me to be bitten. To further carry a poison I know nothing about, and why I must beg Darius to return home without me.
My shriek was hidden by the cries of the vultures who had been waiting unnoticed in the trees until this very moment, but now they looked as if they’d conspired against me and held out just long enough for me to pull the thin paper from her hand.
I stepped forward, thinking of stepping through the barrier—only to search for her body, so Tessa might have proper burial.
The vultures were now on land, alert, and hopping mischievously, closing the distance to where the morbid hand still lay a few steps from my feet. Waiting for me to cross and possibly bring them back more of her or even myself. Looking at the large birds and trying to decide on what to do was when I first felt the bite of the scorpion that had been freed from the forgotten parchment I still gripped.
I staggered as it climbed over my hand where it first struck to find it was making its scurry climb to my shoulder and neck.
Thrashing my arms to get the scorpion off me, my feet dragged as I stepped further away from the portal. On shaking legs, I lost my balance when it struck a second time at my neck, and I stumbled to the ground.
My breathing slowed, and no longer could I feel the benediction given to my feverish body from the refreshing dew clinging to the wet grass at my hands and nape.
CH_ Lying with The Enemy
When I find myself in Eros’s throne room with him leisurely sprawled at
his elaborate throne made of the pure gold taken from the crowns of all of the fallen kings he’d defeated, feasting over a woman’s neck, I all about come crawling out of my skin.
I recognize her immediately as my night servant.
It is not his looks that has me reacting this way . . . no, it’s the bodies and the stricken expression of horror on their twisted faces. In fact, I ignore everything about his looks: his soul-wrenching, bright jade eyes and how they seem to look, seek, and see everything inside of me. How the power in their depths speak of our history and how I can’t hide the slightest piece of myself no matter how much I’ve always tried. I know that, with time, I haven’t gotten any better at it because no one knows me like he does. It’s utterly disturbing and beyond tragic since all we know how to do is hurt one another, and we do it too well. There’s also no use hiding anything from him because it’s only a matter of time before he learns the truth.
I shake myself from my thoughts and continue to do what I must—ignorance is bliss, they say. So, I choose bliss and continue to ignore how his black hair is so dark it reflects glossy streaks of midnight-teal. The combination of the way his hair shines in hues of blues and black and the brilliant green of his eyes, framed by the darkest lashes . . . the uniqueness of those colors speak of being underneath a blanket of stars as he steals my innocence away after I beg him to.
His lips I ignore with even more fervor.
Shutting my eyes, I ignore how I’ve tasted sin and heaven at once on those lips.
I don’t see them now, laughing at me over her pale neck while his fangs lengthen. And they surely don’t remind me of the sinfully wicked fantasies I dreamt about when I was discovering my body and wished myself to sleep because I wanted to discover his.
Lips created of a cherry-wine hue to make anyone in their presence go crazy with wanting, thinking of all the things he could, or rather should be doing, wringing out orgasms simply by watching him speak. Because his speech is erotically deep, a velvety smooth caress that can create vivid images as it travels over your buzzing skin.