Sterling started to protest, but Grigori cleared his throat. “It was determined by popular vote. I’m sorry, Prince Sterling. But the council will not be crowning her. Not unless her father says otherwise. Let’s not forget that the entire reason she was brought here was that he’d passed. But if it’s true, and he has returned from the dead, then there is no more need for this nonsense. It was ridiculous that we ever considered making someone like her our queen anyway.”
Sterling’s brows flickered while the rest of him remained deadly still. “Someone like ‘her?’ And what do you mean by that?”
“Well. Someone so…common. She knows nothing about our kind, or hers for that matter. She’s nothing but a Helsing whore, just like her mother.”
Sterling moved so fast if I’d blinked, I would have missed it.
He punched Girgori square in the face so hard the vampire was knocked to his back. Before he had a chance to get up, Sterling’s polished shoe pressed over his skull.
The Elder cried out, but the sound was muffled by the priest’s heel.
“It doesn’t matter what the Elders have decided, Grigori.” Sterling sighed. “You’ll all be dead within two days’ time anyway. You chose your fate the moment you decided you’d welcome the king back with open arms. I was going to allow you to die honorably when the fighting broke out. But you don’t speak that way about the Lockheart women,ever. And certainly not to me.”
We all stared in dumbstruck silence as Sterling raised his foot, only to slam it back down into the Elder’s skull, crushing it in a sickening spray of bone and bits of flesh.
Sterling’s lip curled, shaking his shoe clean of the gore.
“Even a man of God has his limits.”
Chapter thirty-seven
Hold Her Open
Sometimesitwaseasyto get how ferocious my men were. Especially the Silver Prince.
“So. We’re officially rebels now?” Corry’s hands glided over my front, one tracing my collarbone and the other slipping beneath my shirt to idly trace his mark over my heart.
“Viva la revolution.” Sterling chuckled as he delicately picked off a speck of brain matter from his shirt and flicked it away.
“Good riddance.” Eros got up from the bed with a grunt and stooped beside Elder Grigori’s smashed head. He swiped an index finger through the mess and examined it through the incisive slits of his eyes before popping the digit into his mouth and giving it a taste.
“Shit.” He whistled. “This fucker wasold.”
“All the Elders are.” Sterling chuckled. “Would you believe I’m the youngest of the council?”
“Yeah, you’re a regular spring chicken compared to those wrinkly fucks, Ster,” Eros cackled.
I angled my head in Sterling’s direction. “So… what now?”
“Now we prepare. The vampire king will be here tomorrow night. That leaves tonight alone for preparations. We can go to Boston and collect Erik Thorne’s forces. Or we can follow the blood thread and find your mother. We may not have time to do both. Whatever you want to do, we’ll support you.”
I had an impossible decision ahead of me. Rally a four-hundred-man army. Or find a single woman who might not even want to help in the first place. I wanted to find my mother. As a Helsing, she could be worth more than an entire army. But there was no guarantee she’d help us.
The smart, safe choice would be to secure Eric Thorn’s army.
To leave the coven and go on a hunt for my mother when there was no guarantee she was even close enough to find in one night was selfish.
My head said to make preparations here and to prepare the army.
My heart said to find my mother.
And my body wanted to do something else completely.
“I’m not sure. I need some time to think. We still have some daylight left, anyway. I could really use a shower. The steam might help me clear my head.”
I was relieved to be back home, but the real struggle hadn’t even begun.
I wanted to believe we were going to get out of this alive. No, Ineededto believe it. But I couldn’t shake this gut-wrenching urge to slow down and enjoy the paradise that was my mate’s company.
