“Do I?”
“Loved her…?” My voice wavered.
Lanlin licked across his fangs. “I hated her.” My eyes widened in shock. “Because she betrayed me. That is something I can never forgive. Do you understand how it feels to have someone who should love you, instead destroy you?”
Don’t react, don’t react, don’t…
I paled, trembling.
My heart raced. My pulse thundered in my ears.
I slowly counted to ten in my head, focusing on each part of my body, as Wraith had taught me to stop me from giving myself away. “Yeah, I do. My first mate rejected my bond.”
Lanlin’s eyes glowed with fury. “Cursed cur. Tell me his name, and I will gift you his pelt to keep you warm in the winter.”
“It hurts too much to talk about.”
Bard, you owe me.
Lanlin’s expression softened. “I never wish to hurt you, dearheart. I don’t talk to anyone but my rats about these things,but you… I feel like I can with you. Hating my mother became more complicated after she was killed by that villainous fae, King Daire.”
Oh, fuck.
My heart beat even more wildly. Lanlin must be able to hear it. Even my pulse is throbbing in my throat. His gaze is fixed on it.
“Weren’t they fighting a battle?” I ventured. “It was a fair fight in war. Plus, she was decades older than him. Look, I’m glad that we have peace now because this war has killed too many people. It’s just that?—”
“It was an ambush,” Lanlin snarled. “It’s not that Mother died. Soldiers die in war. It’s what happened at the funeral. It’s everything that it has led to after.”
“I don’t understand.”
“To survive my court, you must understand that my brothers and sisters were raised here to rule. I wasn’t. But that was why they all attended a private memorial at the tombs in White Lotus, while I and the consort and her sons didn’t. We were too low status. During funerals, you drink from a holy pool beside the tombs. My family didn’t know that Maximinus had poisoned it with silver. For months after, the royal family sickened and died one by one, until I was the last vampire left of the House of Sin.”
Horrified, I reached up and clasped my arms around Lanlin without thinking.
He flinched, but for the first time, he didn’t pull away. “Don’t...don’t stop holding me.”
Surprised, I pulled him closer, stroking my hand down his back.
Lanlin was still stiff, but I tried to show as much affection and support as I could without overwhelming him.
Had he ever been held like this?
Certainly, not by his asshole mom. And I couldn’t imagine that he had been by that freaky Nebet in the Scarlet Temple.
Has he been shown love by anyone?
“I was fifteen,” Lanlin whispered like the words were being wrenched from deep in his soul. “On my heart, I still hoped that once my training was complete, my family would wish to see me. But then, they were all gone, and the Crocodile House locked me into their punishment pits. I don’t know how long I was locked in that dark. My half-brothers would take turns trying to break me. They didn’t but they came close. I was only released because the kingdom was falling apart into civil war — risked losing to the Shadow Dragons — without a king from the House of Sin on the throne. The people believe that our dynasty is blessed by the Void Devils. Kingship, power, and status are nothing but dancing shadows.”
“You mean bullshit.”
Lanlin’s lips twitched. “On the other hand, they are good weapons to fuck our enemies.”
Now, I follow this vampire, who I understand more than I did before, through the labyrinthine corridors that echo to sighs of pleasure and sensual music, yet don’t understand at all.
He is king in name. Yet he is as much a rejected, outcast orphan, as both Daire and I are in reality.
“Do you have a Blood Lover who you feed from, when you leave me at night?” I ask, carefully. “It’s been days, and you haven’t drunk from Dove yet. You must be starving otherwise.”
