“To my own needs, of course.” He takes one last step, crowding me against the window. His towering frame engulfs me, which is no small feat, considering I’m on the taller side myself. I flinch at his closeness, but fight my urge to cower in front of him.
“Sorry to inform you, but I don’t fornicate with strangers I’ve just met, and especially not with abominable creatures like yourself,” I say, lifting my chin in defiance, trying to pry these damn cuffs from my wrists.
“That’s rich coming from an exotic performer, or so my men say you are.” His laugh is boisterous, and I flinch again. “I wonder how a noble Vaureghain ends up doing such a thing. Must be the scandal of the Fae court. Maybe I’ll have you dance for me one of these nights, mmm?”
His gaze lowers to my hands, and I still my movements. “I do apologize for the unwanted adornments, though. They’re just a cautionary measure until I can make sure that you’ll unleash your magic with me and not against me.”
My magic? A lightbulb goes off in my head, and a hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat and slips past my lips. I must be losing all my marbles. I’m staring death in his bewitching obsidian eyes and all I can do is cackle maniacally, taking him by surprise.
“Oh, Gods! Oh, my fucking Gods!” I guffaw, holding my middle in order not to topple over. “Your idiotic henchmen kidnapped the wrong sister!” My laughter dies in my throat as he pins me with one arm over my chest, the other enclosing around my neck and squeezing the sides hard, restricting my airflow.
“What. Are. You. Talking. About?” He enunciates every word, growling.
“I’m…I’m not…Aurora.” I struggle to say against his chokehold, as well as his shadows that have exploded everywhere around me. It’s so fucking vexing to see shadows wielded by a vampire for the first time in my life.
He takes a step back in shock, his shadows retreating, and I crumple to the ground.
“Then who the fuck are you?” he questions, throwing metaphorical daggers at me with his spellbinding eyes.
“I’m Aimee, the Vaureghain twin with zero magic, you fucking leech!”
CHAPTER 6
Aimee
Killianispacingbackand forth, back and forth, berating Blaise for the last, I don’t know, half an hour? One hour? Gods know how much time has passed since my identity revelation.
I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of the plush bed, munching on the tray of meats and roasted vegetables that was brought into the bedchamber a while ago by a servant that looked suspiciously human. My brain must have still been hazy from the drugs they used on me, because that can’t be right. How can the Vampire King have human servants, when everybody knows these leeches slaughter every human they find? I probably didn’t notice his fangs; that’s all.
The not-human servant also handed me a plush, dark blue robe that now covers my immodest modesty.
“How the hell did you screw this up so monumentally, Blaise? I trusted you with this extremely sensitive task for a reason! You’re my second-in-command, for Akaori’s sake!”
Ah yes, Akaori, the primordial vampire, the one that is said to have been the first of their kind, making him their version of a God.
Well, maybe their God is better than ours, because I have no faith whatsoever in those motherfuckers. They have abandoned me time and time again, including right now, so I never utter their names. They don’t deserve my reverence.
“You sent me to retrieve the Vaureghain daughter. I brought you the Vaureghain daughter. How was I supposed to know there are two of them?” Blaise says half-heartedly.
“That is your fucking job, to know! If there are two of them, you should have known. If one of them is utterly useless, you should have known!” Killian bellows, his shadows spiraling out of control.
I wince at that word choice.
Useless.
It hits a bit too close to home.
I inhale and exhale and furiously rub the raw skin of my reddening wrists. The cuffs are gone after they brought in a crone that can sniff out magic. She confirmed my lack of powers, and since then the pacing and the screaming began, and they’ve been ignoring me, since I am neither a threat nor useful.
“He couldn’t have known.” I say more to myself than to anyone else. But of course they hear it, with their supernatural hearing abilities. Two sets of narrowed eyes, one dark like a moonless night, the other bright like the sea at midday, turn my way.
“What?” the Vampire King seethes.
“He couldn’t have known, since my existence is not necessarily public knowledge,” I say in response. Killian’s gaze is scorching, and all I want is to defy him, consequences be damned.
“It’s not like my family is proud of having a magicless Fae in their midst. I can only imagine that after I ran away, they erased any proof. A noble Fae family, so close to the King, having a powerless heir, even a second-born—it’s such a disgrace.” The words taste foul in my mouth. Talking this way about myself, so similar to what my sister kept drilling in my head throughout my childhood, feels just so damn wrong. But it’s the undeniable truth, isn’t it?
“Why did you run away?” Blaise asks, curiosity obvious in his glare. He cocks his head to the side, regarding me as you would a rarity, an oddity. It makes me want to punch him in that defined jawline that looks like a witch sculpted it from marble.
