“Get your disgusting tongue off me.” I wrench out of his hold, and his blood-covered nails claw my skin. His gaze dips to the fresh scratches, hunger flaring in his eyes.
“You have no idea what I had to threaten to keep my men from devouring you if they managed to catch you. They were going for the birds—to hold for ransom and force you into the open. But you walked straight into the trap. So convenient. And you spared me from having to fight Bale. Bravo. You’re already so useful.”
I stare at him in shock. “Fight Bale?”
“That was the official plan, but I made an alternate one while he wasn’t looking.” Rannigan smacks his lips, his cheeks flushed and his eyes gleaming. “You are truly delicious. The sunblood scent from that cut is making me ravenous. I’m surprised my soldiers resisted.”
Cold sweat pricks my skin, and Draywood stabs at my memory and senses again. I fight my rising panic, desperately hoping Rim isn’t here because he escaped and went for help. Bale will come. The team and the warbirds will come. I’m not alone. I’m never alone here.
“Breathe, child. I prefer you conscious.” Dropping his hungry gaze, Rannigan lifts my right hand and inspects my inner wrist. “Good. You still bear my mark.” Sharp fangs descend from his upper gums, and panic spikes so hard that my vision darkens. “Let’s renew our vows.”
I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, and all I can do is scream in pain when he bends his head to my wrist and pierces my flesh, sucking with a deep groan of pleasure.
“Idallia!” Fyrestar’s desperate screech breaks my heart. Sol chirps wildly, and it’s not even words. It’s pure fear.
Pain and devastation rattle a hoarse shout from me as my pounding heartbeats launch my blood into Rannigan’s mouth. I struggle savagely against the ropes, and Rannigan’s free hand shoots out, roughly circling my neck and pinning my head to the column with a hard thud.
I wince. My head rings, and gray colors my vision. Deprived of air, deprived of blood, I feel my strength slipping away. My mind dulls, and a chill creeps over me. A sob works its way up my throat, but before I let it out, Rannigan ends his bite and lifts his head.
The sight of him sickens me. My blood coats his lips. He licks it off with a slow, deliberate show of tongue that makes my skin crawl. “My first sunblood. Scrumptious. But unlike mindless soldiers, I can control myself. It’s a shame I have to turn you. It would be sublime to sip from your sun-filled veins for centuries.”
I spit in his face. “Fuck you, you revolting bastard.”
“What a little brute. I love it.” He smiles cruelly. “You’ll fit right in back in Bloodwold.”
“I will never go to Bloodwold.”
His chuckle terrifies me. Then Bale’s roar thunders through my fear as the Dragon King dives through a window and lands in a crash of fire.
“Get your hands off her,” Bale snarls, already in skin. Rim is by his side. I exhale sharply. Thank the stars. Rim caws my name, and I look back at him.
Rannigan whips around as the rest of the Elite Wing swoops into the war room with their wing guards. “On the contrary. It’s my hands that belong on her.” He pulls out a knife and slices through my bindings. Roughly, he hauls me to my feet. I sway unsteadily, my head swimming, my muscles cold and stiff. Spinning me, he jerks my back against his front and holds me there, inhaling loudly against my neck. “I smell you all over her, Bale Cinderheart. Not only did you steal my wife, but you’re fucking her,” he growls.
My mind slowly catches up with his words as I find my balance. “Your wife?”
Rannigan wraps a hard arm around my ribs, pinning me to his corded body. His other arm locks tightly around my throat, forcing my chin up. “Shall you tell her? Or shall I?” The challenge is for Bale.
I turn to Bale in desperation, terrified by how guilty he looks, stock-still and pale and not meeting my frantic gaze. I still don’t understand, but horror sinks into my bones on a whole new level.
Bale’s eyes burn a furious amber. He still doesn’t look at me, his entire focus on Rannigan.
The other members of the Ellonrift Council suddenly burst into the room from the stairway. Rannigan swings us toward them, and I see who I now know is the Human Queen and the Were King. The new Fae Queen slips in with them, hiding behind their shoulders. Rexton Hale emerges behind her, and my lips part in disbelief. Even he’s here to witness this?
Bale stalks forward from the window side, forcing Rannigan to turn us back to him. His voice dangerously low, fire-filled and grating, Bale says, “Tell her how you massacred her entire family? Or how you left her alive so you could steal her destiny from her?”
“You stole her destiny more effectively than I ever did. I’d have put her on the Council two hundred years ago,” Rannigan snarls.
“After turning her into you!” Bale snarls back at him.
“You’re no better, on your high mountain, lording over the world. You turned her into you, and then you didn’t even give her a seat at the table.”
Bale flinches. My heart thrashes in my chest, my pulse beating like a storm that’ll break down all the walls of my body. These words…I think I know what they mean, but it can’t be true. My family—massacred. My destiny—taken.
“I’m the Vampire Queen,” I whisper.
“Glad to see she’s smarter than you,” Rannigan snaps in Bale’s direction.
Bale stares at me, spine stiff, shoulders back, eyes blazing. I stare back at him, the feel of him on me, inside me, still vividly immediate and so intimate that I’ll never recover. My love for him implodes like a dying star, crushed inward by a force so powerful it shrinks to a burning pinpoint. He had so many chances to tell me the truth. Lifetimes of them.
