The low bugle from the eldritch came from right beside me.
Sensing danger, I scrambled to my feet, taking two steps away from him. He caught me by the back of the neck and forced me into the sunlight.
His grip was almost gentle as I thrashed, the pain from the sun setting me alight.
My panic made me miss the root that speared out of the ground. It wasn’t until it pierced my chest, taking me through the lung that I realized.
Shock rendered me immobile as I stared into the terrifying face of the eldritch. It might have been my imagination but I thought I saw sympathy there before a second root punctured my chest.
I touched the two blood covered pieces of wood with a shaky hand.
They’d impaled me.
How very Vlad of them.
The eldritch stepped away as the strength went out of my legs and I sagged, the roots in my chest keeping me from falling over.
“She’s all yours to do with as you’d like,” the king informed Vitus. “The tree will ensure she doesn’t die. Have fun.”
Vitus closed on me as the king departed the meadow. “Oh, I will. I can promise you that.”
twenty-five
The ground beneath mesoftened, dragging me into the dirt almost up to my knees. From below, I could feel more roots wrap around my feet and ankles to hold me firmly in place.
As if a good old fashioned impaling wasn’t enough.
My macabre snicker cut off almost as soon as it started.
Oh, that hurt.
“You find your predicament amusing?”
I dragged my attention up to the vicinity of Vitus’s face, squinting to bring his blurry features into focus. The throbbing pain that had taken up residence in my chest made that more difficult than it should have been.
“You could say that.” I licked my lips, tasting blood on them. “I’m just imagining what kind of expression Ahrun will have when he realizes what a sycophant you’ve turned into. Oh wait. I bet he already knows. Is that why he never brought you over, Vi? Because you’re a bootlicker?”
Vitus backhanded me. My face snapped to the right, a grunt escaping as the force caused the roots to shift painfully in my chest. It got hard to breathe through the sensation of a boa constrictor wrapped around my ribs.
“You have the arrogance of all your line,” Vitus sneered.
“I guess that’s why I was chosen and you weren’t.” I relished the look of fury that brought to his face. “How does it feel knowing someone you look down on has everything you want?”
It was foolish to push the psychotic vampire in this way, but I was probably going to die tonight. Horribly and painfully. Might as well give as good as I got. That way I could say I’d earned my death when it finally came.
Well fuck. I was just as crazy as all the other vampires in my life.
Vitus squatted in front of me, the anger I’d expected to see missing. He picked up a piece of my hair, toying with it as he offered me a condescending smile. “Is that what you’re telling yourself? That you’re special in some way?”
Pain bit into my scalp as he tightened his hold, nearly ripping the hair from my head. I barely winced; the sensation lost among the rest of the agony currently wracking my body.
Vitus grabbed me by the throat, lowering his face to run his nose along the same path Liam favored when we were intimate. “Poor, poor Aileen. So misinformed.” His grip tightened to the point of choking. “You’re Thomas’s mistake. And you’re going to be his downfall. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. That the boy my father chose over me is the one who will bring ruin to them all.”
The smile he offered gave me a glimpse of the boy he must have once been. Roguish and charming with just a hint of mischief. This was the person Ahrun must have tried to save by adopting him.
“You don’t know,” I whispered in realization.
He thought I was simply Thomas’s. He didn’t know Ahrun had a claim to me too. The knowledge gave me a sick kind of pleasure.
