“Well, I have a family to feedandprotect. And I don’t have the privilege of working for the king,” I say.
His face softens, a swallow tracking down his throat.
I let my eyes burn with the honesty in my statement. “Please. No one knows I’m down here.”
His shoulders droop. “I hate this fucking job,” he grumbles and aims his sword down the hall. “Fine. You’re in front.”
I grin and stride forward, passing the disgusted man.
My magic keeps tabs on the distance of his footfalls behind me and the threat of his sword while we walk.
“Thank you.Truly.”
He grunts, and I hear him sheathe his blade.
“Left turn,” the guard instructs, and I head down the next hallway, passing through a round foyer of sorts, hallways jetting in every direction.
My eyes catch on the exterior dungeon door at the end of the tunnel, and I smile into the dimness.
“Stand aside. Hands on the wall.”
I do as he says, peering over my shoulder to watch him insert a key into three separate locks and slide the thick bolts as wide as my forearm out of the stone wall.
A complication. But we can plan for it.
“If you want to leave, you need to help me pull it open,” he says.
The iron door is so massive and heavy, it’s impossible to move with one man. And there’s no way a Hunter could rip it from its locked bolts from the outside. An intentional design by the vampires. I could pull it open alone if unlocked, but he doesn’t know that. So I help the guard heave the iron door, the scrape against stone echoing behind us through the dungeon.
The man’s sad eyes meet mine as he steps back to let me through, and he gives me a half-smile before I step out into the chilled morning and push the door closed from the other side.
The guard locks me out, peering through the small grate.
“Until next time,” I tell him with a wink, breaking into a jog across the bridge over the bay, knowing Riot is watching me through his telescope.
I throw two finger signals and make for home.
The dungeon is our way in.
CHAPTER 13
VEYA
Present Day
MY EMOTIONS STILL in chaos from the farm and the hunt, I watch King Nerian prance into his cellar.
If hell designed a pleasure den, it might pale in comparison to the theater I’m standing in.
In the freezing underground of the castle, cages laced in fire surround us. Twenty golden prisons designed to keep hungry vampires at bay and barely dressed human girls warm within them dot the expansive cellar, all of them blazing, apart from one in the far corner.
The vibrant red hair and not-yet-starved curves of the girl nearest me catch my attention, and her bright green eyes lock on to mine. There’s nothing but fight in them.
The siren within her calls to me.
I turn to Nerian and point. “I want that one.”
Emmanuel’s gaze flicks to me before he approaches another cage, following my lead. The soft, alert brown eyes of the girl behind the bars sear in my memory, a doe in a forest burningdown around her. “I want this one,” he says, and the doe flinches at his words.
