When they shake their heads, their glorious manes tumble around them like disintegrating ash. Then they wrinkle their noses, sniffing.
“Oh, fuck a troll,” I whisper.
They’re looking for me.
The lions’ glowing eyes zero in on me, they wrinkle their large noses, then they tip back their heads and roar in tandem.
Instantly, with an unnatural speed, another figure joins the lions through the shadows, resting his hand on their flanks in thanks.
The shadows recede from around him, revealing Lanlin Sin, the Shadow Vampire King.
Standing between two monstrous demonic lions, he should look small.
Safe.
Except,he doesn’t.
Wreathed in shadows and an incense scent that already has me in a daze, is the monster of my nightmares.
Also, the most impossibly beautiful person I have ever seen.
As if the lions are the only bodyguards that he needs to appear in the center of an enemy court, King Lanlin Sin stalks down the middle of the room toward Aurelius.
Yet his wine-red gaze never leavesme.
This is my beautiful monster…?
The nightmare who has haunted me from the moment I was born?
The son of the enemy who killed my family? The vampire who has stalked my dreams for three years?
Spellbound, I almost stand to talk to him, but Daire keeps a firm hold on me, yanking me back to my knees.
The Blood’s lips quirk, as if he knows the impact he had on me.
His dominant pheromones become stronger.
Then Lanlin’s gaze slides over the way that Daire and I are kneeling and the iron bracelets that are burning Daire’s pale wrists, before rage flashes in his eyes.
His lips pull back to reveal long fangs.
Mesmerized, I can’t look away from him.
All the times that I have dreamed of Lanlin, I have still not been able to dream of someone like him.
He stands alone in a court of his enemies — the Golden Dragon, Maximinus, War, Wraith, and an entire dragon shifter army — and yet still feels like the most dangerous person here.
Powerful magic shimmers around him.
Lanlin is startling looking. Tall, lean, and willowy.
He is dressed in a black, pleated robe that glitters like he has torn it from the night sky but is also woven with violet ribbons. The same ribbons are wound through his silky black hair that hangs to his waist. His kilt is threaded with gold, and his robe is parted down the middle to reveal his olive-skinned chest.
He is wearing a striking obsidian beetle pendant.
Lanlin uncomfortably reminds me of the vampire who Aurelius burned in this hall on the memorial feast for Tarquin’s deathday. Beyond their looks, however, the two vampires are nothing alike, in the way that Aurelius isn’t the same as Hadrian.
Lanlin wears beautiful glittering black gloves that are tipped with sharp, iron claws. Two ornate bronze daggers are strapped at his waist, which makes my palms itch to steal them.
