“You need to feed.” Eraldon’s voice, silkier now, but still edged in malice. “I can’t have the day queen withering away under my care.”
“Let me go,” I whimper.
He presses his cold lips to my ear. “No.”
I shove against him with all my strength, but he only laughs and crushes me more tightly to him. “I’ve never created one like you. A changeling. But also something more.” His cold fingers stroke through my hair. “You shouldn’t have survived, but I’ll make you strong. My venom is already inside you, pumping through your heart. Soon you will become fully one of my own or pass away to whatever the Spires has reserved for you.”
“Solano will destroy you,” I snarl. “Your father, too.”
He laughs, the sound deep and discordant. “My father is already being destroyed. I don’t need Solano’s help, but it’s nice of you to offer.” His hand travels lower, skating across my skin. I’m totally naked, and I feel that horrid sensation on my back again. I blink hard, trying to separate now from a memory. A memory of being whipped in the Moonhollow Square for daring to defend myself against a high fae. The way the guards had held my arms and ripped the dress from my back, the way the villagers blanched when I screamed. The blood. The scars. The look on my mother’s face when she discovered I’d fought off a high fae noble who’d tried to take me against my will. I was barely fourteen, barely more than a girl when I learned of such deep cruelty. Of pain, the kind that marks you and never lets you go.
The flutter comes again, the memory still echoing in my mind, and I feel like I might vomit. I move away from it, but that only presses me more closely to Eraldon.
“You’ve been hurt. Badly. But you can be strong, nightling.Ican make you strong. You don’t have to suffer the whims of the high fae. You don’t have to die.” His words whirl around me, echoing over and over. “I can save you. Make you more than you ever could’ve been as a changeling whore to the sun king.”
“Stop.” I don’t want to hear any more of his lies.Solano, where are you?
“I’ve never changed another fully, not the way I was changed. My seekers are drones, workers who follow my every command with a mindless intensity that I can appreciate. But you? You can be so much more. You already are. Whatever secret lies in your blood has manifested in your new, beautiful form.” His hand strays to my back, and he touches something. Something that seems to be … attached to me.
“What is that?” I shriek.
“Afraid?” He strokes lower, his hand on my hip.
“Just let me go. Are we in the Nightlands? I can go back to my village. I can just be Emma Druzy, not a consort, not a seeker, not—”
“It’s too late for that, little nightling. You belonged to the sun king. And now you belong to me.” He nuzzles against my neck, his fangs drawing across my injured skin and leaving a trail of fire in their wake.
I scream, but my fight is wasted. I’m weak, and he enjoys this too much. I get nowhere, more pain pulsing through me.
“Claimed by two princes.” He pulls back. “But only one can have your soul. It’s mine, Emma. You don’t understand yet, but you will.”
He falls silent. I shiver as he strokes my skin with his cold fingers. Closing my eyes, I try to focus on something, anything other than the creature who holds me captive. Can I talk my way out of this? Bargain? Charm him somehow? My mother would laugh at that. She said I had as much charm as a worn-out shoe. The bridge of my nose stings and my eyes water when I think of her. She’ll never know what happened to me, and that will hurt her worse than anything else ever could.
He walks his fingers up my side and to my shoulder. “So soft. No wonder Solano chose your cunt as his favorite.”
A shiver races up my spine, and I fight back tears. “Can’t you light a candle or something?” I try to keep my tone haughty and angry, but it comes out as a weak sputter.
“No need. I can see you just fine.” His hand travels lower along my thigh, and then he grips me hard, his claws digging in.
I scream, my cry muffled in whatever crypt I’m entombed in. When he moves his leg between mine, I realize we’re both naked. I’m trapped with him in the deepest dark, and I have no defenses, no way to protect myself.
“Solano,” I scream in my head. But it goes no farther. Any plea is caught here with me in the pit with Eraldon. His leg moves higher, his thigh pressing against my sex.No.
I can’t take the sheer overwhelming terror that ripples through my body like a current in the frozen sea. Something inside me breaks apart, and I sob. “Please, don’t. Please. Please, don’t.” I can’t breathe. He’s going to hurt me right here in this grave. And I won’t recover, not from this cruel lord with hands like ice and venom in every pore. “No, no, no,” I shake and try to push away, but I get nowhere. I’m nothing compared to this frigid rock of a heartless being.
“Shh, my little nightling.” He presses his lips to my forehead and retracts his claws. “I only need your desperation. Can you feel it when you scent your blood on the air?”
I try not to breathe, to keep the dank scent of dirt and rot from my nose. But it doesn’t work. I inhale and catch all those things, but I also get the tang of blood. Something inside me turns over and stretches as if from a long sleep. But it’s not a creature or a feeling. It’s ahunger. One I’ve never felt before. Eraldon’s venom has changed me, created something wrong and twisted inside me. And it hurts so badly I scream.
“Your cries are so sweet, little nightling. The finest sound. Did you enjoy my cries of torment when your mate had me under his blades and his fiery magic?” He asks it with true curiosity, not anger.
“It hurts.” I can’t seem to think past the roaring agony inside me, the gnawing emptiness of a dark place with no bottom. “It hurts,” I repeat the truth over and over like a litany as the hunger burns through me.
“I can help.” His finger pushes my chin up, and for the first time, I see.
His eyes reflect back at me the same as a wolf’s, and those two orbs hold me captive just as much as my pain. He shifts his leg higher, and his thigh presses tight against my core. “You’re still warm despite the change.” He makes a ‘hmph’ sound. “That’s uncommon, but not unwelcome. I rather like it.”
“I’m so hungry.” I can’t think past that need. It consumes me.
