Dahlia is silent a moment and then adds, “Just because you’re not the heir, doesn’t mean you have nothing to offer.”
That sentence is a blade.It slices through my ribcage, severing every vein, artery and capillary in my body.
My eyes sting, my chest tightens and my throat swells shut.It’s like she’s cut me open and wrenched my insides out.
“Ugh,” I groan, and sink under the water.
I hate Dahlia even more.
Chapter7
Dahlia
Idon’t know why I told her that.I’m not sure I’ve ever admitted it out loud.Not even to Octavia.Sure, we’ve reconciled and Red was a huge part of that.But to actually confess, to say the words out loud, that I was jealous, insecure.That I felt overshadowed by everything she was, even when she was at her lowest?
My stomach knots, heavy like an anchor.I don’t do guilt or remorse, haven’t got time for it.I unfurl the tangle of emotions and shove it away.The fact I admitted the truth to a total stranger concerns me more.
“Thanks,” she says, her voice flitting in from the bathroom.But my body is hot, and I don’t want to talk to her anymore.I want to get away, to crawl inside my skin and bleach the words out from under my gums.What kind of fucking voodoo magician is she to pry truths from me?
I wander around her room, tightening my towel.I’ll need to get my case and clothes from the carriage.She has so many nooks and crannies I can’t help but poke, opening drawers and wardrobes just to have a nosy.
“I guess you’re right,” she says, and she must be washing because the water tinkles and splashes.“I just didn’t want to admit it.”
I let her talk to herself while I scour away the ugly pieces of me.My fingers brush a pile of papers and magazines on her desk.Mostly fashion, some Daily Imperium newspapers.
I knock a load off and halt.Beneath the newspapers are a pile of letters that make my fingers tingle.Written in red ink, with large flowing letters are page after page of death threats, each one more twisted and sicker than the next.Some threatening physical violence, others threaten her belongings, the palace, her reputation.The last one my fingers stumble upon makes my hands tingle.
Rape.Torture.Forced pregnancy.
What kind of sick fuck writes this shit?
I scrunch up the papers, lobbing them in the bin and march to the bathroom.
I punch the door open; it slams against the wall.
“What the fuck?”Penelope shrieks and yanks the curtain across the bath.“I’m naked.How dare you come in?Again!”
It takes an unnatural amount of strength not to roll my eyes.“You have the same anatomy as I do, and after the threats I just found on your desk, I don’t give a fuck what you’re wearing, I’m no longer leaving your side.Period.”
“Get out of the bathroom!”she shrieks.
“Have you read those letters?There could be a predator lurking in here.”
She screams in frustration.“The only predator in here is you, Dahlia.”
“I’mthe fucking predator?”I yank open the curtain and eyeball her.I have to bite the inside of my lip to stay focused on her face.Especially when every cell in my body is begging me to be a dirty perve and drag my eyes downward.
I don’t.
Gods, I’ve grown.Look at how mature I am now.
But I am also a lowly, blood-hungry vampire, so what I say instead isn’t much better.“I’m only a predator if you want your pussy eaten.”
And then my eyes roll down her body anyway.
Oh well, the thought was there.
I devour every inch of her skin.Sweet Mother of fucking Blood.She is perfection incarnate.Her legs appear even longer in the water.Her neat little pussy shaved bald glimmers under the rippling water.
