By the time we stepped into the impressive foyer, I was a wreck. A headachy, teary mess who really needed a nap.
Lucien groaned as he wrenched open the double doors and thunder rumbled. Clouds piled on top of one another, turning white to stormy grey.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. “It can’t rain. Not yet.”
“Why can’t it rain?” I asked, coming to join him as he stood on the portico. Whisper padded into the garden, his hackles prickling at the incoming bad weather.
Lucien glowered at the heavens as if he could personally smite the weather god. “They won’t fly the drones if it’s pelting.”
“The drones?” I scowled. “Why do you want them to spy on you any more than they already do?” An awful prickle ran down my spine. “What thehellare you up to?”
Turning to face me, he grabbed my wrist and jerked me into him. Our bodies slammed together. My free palm landed on his chest for balance as he smiled a vicious little smile. Bowing over me, he whispered in my ear, “You sound anxious, Rook. What’s the matter? Are you going to faint on me again?”
Rook.
He called me Rook for the second time.
That shouldn’t excite me nearly as much as it did.
I struggled in his hold as my heart went berserk.
I was seconds away from pouncing on this damn man.
I needed to know where I stood with him.
I needed him to kiss me, put me out of my misery, and tell me everything would be okay.
“Let go of me.”
“I told you, you should’ve taken my blood.” He let me go with a tight smirk, almost as if he’d shut down all his emotions in preparation for something I couldn’t see. “There’s still time.”
A shockingly terrible thought filled my head as he descended the steps as steadily as he could. I trailed after him in a horrified daze.
He wouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
Would he?
“Are you...” I swallowed hard. “Are you going to kill me? Isthatwhy you’re acting so weird and wanting me to be pain free?I’mthe one you’re going to kill?” I lost control of my tongue. “If it’s because of what happened, it never has to happen again. We can just stay friends. Forget everything else, okay? You don’t have to kill me.”
Stopping at the bottom of the steps, he smiled and held out his hand like a handsome suitor from a different dynasty. “Come here.”
Against my control, I went to him—almost as if I didn’t have a choice. As if he’d hijacked my motor control and manipulated me so completely.
My hand slipped into his. Cold to hot. Shaky to savage. His dark eyes tightened, the depths full of misery and chaos. “You’re right thatsomeoneis going to die today.”
I gulped.
I didn’t have the courage to ask who.
Wrapping his fingers tight around mine, he dragged me away from the palace. Down the gravel pathway, past rose bushes and sleeping torches, around fountains and over quaint bridges. Whisper kept pace, guarding us, despite not seeing any women. I supposed they were all tucked beneath a dry roof, preparing to ride out the storm.
We kept walking until the mosquito-like buzzing of drones echoed in the sky.
Four black smudges darted over the wall in the distance, skimming under the heavy clouds as if racing against the rain.
“What’s...what’s going on?” I squeaked as he stopped in the small space where maple trees had been planted in a pentagram, framing the white gravel with their auburn pretty leaves. “You’ve got to tell me before I go insane.”
