Witchtits!
My arm smacks into the covered painting in the room, but I don’t hit the ground. Kai is there, holding me up, drugging me with his intoxicating scent and the intensity of his fury.
“Damn cat,” I breathe.
I hate that I want to kiss him. That I want to lose myself in Kai, right here, right after he confessed to killing someone.
Kaison's gaze falls to a spot over my shoulder. It’s landed on my painting, the twisted, tortured expressions of my innermost demons.
The mostly done painting of a girl’s face, eyes closed as thorny vines surround her, dig into her flesh until red drips from everywhere they bite into her.
“It’s supposed to be you?” he asks in a low voice.
I don’t respond, because he already knows. I didn’t mean for him to see it.
I move to block it from view, a reflexive action born of years of hiding, of burying my pain deep where no one can see.
As Kaison steps forward to intervene, Lucifer winds around his legs, purring like a damned engine.
The insult isn't lost on me—the way this demon cat accepts the fairy prince without question, after attacking me for no good reason.
I can feel myself slipping away, retreating into that empty, numb space where nothing can hurt me. It's a defense mechanism, a survival tactic that's kept me sane all these years.
“I’ve never seen your paintings before,” he says in a voice that seems far away.
Usually, my work is covered up or turned away from curious eyes.
Unable to stop him from looking, I make my way to my dresser and pull out my pills. I dry swallow two of them, leaning heavily against the mottled wood. “Can we go now?” I ask.
“Yes, of course,” he says, his edginess all drained away.
As I slip on my glass slipper, ready to return to the poisoned paradise of Midnight, I can't shake the feeling we both gave up an important hidden part of ourselves.
Things that should drive the other way.
But it only makes me want him more.
Chapter 33
Moon River in Midnight
CINDER
Roaming the halls of a castle for vampire fairies alone with all this delicious blood pumping through my veins probably puts me in the dumb category. The same category as a girl who suspects there's a slasher murderer in her house before she loudly announces she is going to take off her clothes and hop in the shower.
I still haven't found the Ember of Midnight and my heart aches, stretching out toward wherever it is. The missing part of me. It must be in the castle.
Though it is always night in the realm, there are the same eight hours of rest afforded that there is to the Common World. It’s just offset which makes for a perfect complement of straddling worlds. Though it doesn't mean I get much sleep after stepping back into Midnight from the Poison Apple shift only to have to get ready and put on a show for the fairies.
Not to mention the intermittent fuck sessions with Prince Charming.
But right now, it's my time and I'm going to take it.
The halls are forbidding. The flickering candlelight casts eerie shadows on the ancient stone walls, making the portraits of long-dead fairies seem to watch me with cold, judgmental eyes. My footsteps echo in the silence, each too loud in this labyrinthine castle.
I pause before a particularly ominous painting, the subject's eyes seeming to follow me. A shudder runs down my spine, and I hurry the hell up to get away—the urge to find the Ember growing stronger.
As I turn a corner, a draft of cold air brushes against my skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. I frown, glancing around for the source. My gaze lands on a small, nondescript door, half-hidden, half-open in the shadows.
