“You’re hurt,” she remarks, her eyes moistening as if my pain pierces her worse than it does me.
“S’nothing.”
She bites down on her lower lip, like she wants to argue but doesn’t have it in her right now. Instead of staying by my side, she limps back into the carriage.
I hate the sight of the red ribbons streaking down her leg, but she doesn’t complain. She simply tosses me a smile tha’s supposed to reassure me, but in my heart, I know I’m to blame for this. My mate’s blood is dotting the dirt of my homeland. I shouldn’t have let Mutt distract me. I shouldn’t have left her for the briefest of seconds. I won’t make tha mistake again.
I take the supplies from the lad without a word, put them in the carriage, tie up the dead body next to the moaning and bleeding General on the roof, and heft myself back up onto the coachman’s seat. With my head lowered, I crack the reins and take off toward the mansion.
3
Vera’s Love
Destino
Sunlight is the bloody worst. It takes us twice as long to get to Salem’s mansion in Jacoba, since they’ve taken on the handicap of traveling with me. Probably would’ve been three times as long if he hadn’t secured us the carriage. When I finally cross over the threshold, my exhale of relief comes out in a joyous cry that wakes the house. “Apologies,” I say to the housekeeper who comes bounding around the corner. “Hallo, Vera. Did you miss me, lovely girl? Made it in here just before the sun rose.”
Vera loathes me, so her snarl isn’t unexpected. I don’t know why her overt disdain always makes me smile, but despite being tired and thirsty, I chuckle as her messy gray curls swish around her round face when she shakes her head at me. “Wake me before the crack of dawn again, and I’ll lock the doors when I see ye coming next. The sunlight seems like a good place for ye.”
“You minx. Tell me how much you’ve missed me. It’s been ages. Has it really been a year? You poor thing. To have lived that long without my smile. Resilient thing, you are.”
“How long are we stuck with ye this time?”
“That’s up to Salem, but I think you’ll have enough days and nights with me to get your fill of my face. You’re so lucky.”
“I’m already sick of your gob. Out ye go.”
The door opens and shuts again, and Salem marches past us with Lily in his arms. The sight of her heats my insides and draws my eyes. Though she’s been snuggled up to me for days, she’s been too despondent for conversation.
“Ack! Prince Salem, what are ye doing with tha fae? Get her out!”
Salem growls at Vera, though how she could’ve known Lily belongs here now is anybody’s guess. Still, Salem doesn’t care about reason. He only cares for Lily, the brute. His snarl grows until Vera recoils. “Take a good look at this lass, Vera. This is Lilya Klein. She’s going to live with me in the mansion, and I won’t hear her disrespected in her own home.”
“What?” Vera screeches, her jowls shaking with confusion and indignation. “Prince Salem, tha’s enough nonsense! Take tha fae out of here right this instant!”
Vera’s been with the family forever, and is probably the only person who can order around the Butcher boys with any real gusto.
But Vera doesn’t know all that’s changed in the boy she raised, and her racist mouth’s about to get her into more trouble than she can handle.
I push Salem toward the hallway before this gets any worse. “Take her to your room and get her settled in, brother.” Then to Vera, I ask, “Vera, my lovely plum, could you call us a healer? My wife was attacked on our way here.”
“Pity it wasn’t ye some clever shifter took a bite out of.”
Oh, Vera.
Salem leaves down the stone hallway with Lily, who’s clinging to him with her face buried in his shirt.
Vera turns to leave, but stops short when my words sink in. “Wait, your wife? Who’s your wife? Please don’t tell me we’ll be forced to provide lodging for ye and another vampire.”
I give her my best fake laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it. That was my wife, just there. That luscious fae you saw in Salem’s arms, who still needs you to call her a healer, by the way.”
She blinks at me and chortles. “Ho, tha’s a good one. Ye almost had me there. Go on up to your usual room and try not to burden us all with your peculiar blood habits. And Prince Salem better not be taking tha fae woman to his room.”
Yes, my peculiar blood habits, like survival.
“The healer, Vera. I need you to call one, yeah? I’ll wait.”
She shakes her head at me. “To look at tha fae lass’ leg? You’ll have to pay a pretty coin to convince a shifter to treat a fae. To be honest, the healer who’ll agree to look after a fae is one tha’s probably not worth the paper his degree’s been printed on.”
Fair point. “My sweet, Vera. Are you ever not honest? Every word that slips from your lips is pure poetry.”
I sit on the counter—a move that draws scandalized gasps in Faveda, but here earns me a swat from the dish towel. I love it. My own mum wouldn’t pay me such attention if I lit myself on fire. Vera despises me, but it’s our game. I’m fairly certain that she loves me. Beneath the venomous hatred, that is.
Vera grumbles at me and then shuffles toward the door, shoving her feet in her boots. “It’s almost six in the morning, ye realize. I’m going out to fetch a healer for some fae woman at nearly six in the morning. The things I do for those boys.”
We both know she has to hate me, but if it was just me who needed a healer, and not a random fae, she would do it. It would involve the same amount of grousing, but it would happen. I’ve known Vera since I was a boy, and while the old prejudices run deep, I was a very adorable child. “Sorry I kept Salem away longer than usual. It’s been a bit busy, what with my wedding and all. Needed a best man.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, your vampire marriage to a fae. Hilarious. Tell me, did a shifter officiate?”
“Actually, yes. A shifter from Neutral Territory.” I smile at the memory of Lily and me huddled in Judge Pohl’s dreary living room, signing papers and holding each other’s hands while we made history by moonlight.
“Of course. Nice touch, adding in Neutral Territory. Ye kept my Salem away too long. Justice has been needing him. Gets lost if they’re apart for too long. He’s afraid to make any decisions without Salem here. I don’t have it in me to sit back and say nothing.”
“No, you? But you’re so quiet and meek.”
She scoffs. “Tell Salem he needs to stay for a while. There’ve been rumblings.”
“Rumblings?”
She nods sagely. “Of fae trying to break through our borders to steal our plumapples. Can ye imagine? As if they don’t have enough in life. Taking what’s ours and giving nothing in return while our people are rationing out a cup of water.”
I cross my legs as I get comfortable on the granite countertop. “What do you reason would be a fair trade for something like that?”
Her mouth draws to the side. “I wouldn’t say no to a few more wells. The fae can shoot water out their arses. Ain’t no reason they couldn’t fill our wells. Make our land just as nice as theirs, selfish pricks.”
I consider her wisdom, which always comes to the tune of criticism. Whenever Alex comes to visit, he refills their wells, but it doesn’t last forever. They need maintenance, and Alex is being too much a brat to bother with us now.
Vera tosses her dishrag at me, but when I move to catch it with my dominant hand, my limb still doesn’t obey. I try not to worry when I say “Oops” as it smacks off my chest and drops to the floor.
A frown puckers her lips, and then she throws a shoe that’s resting near the back door at me. That one, I catch with my left hand, though I fumble a bit first.
“What’s wrong with your right arm, lad?”
I swallow down my panic and don a confident smile that’s seen me through many a hardship. “I guess I’m not infallible after all. I was stabbed on my way here.”<
br />
Despite her insistence that I’d be better off dead, she stiffens. “Who’s daft enough to attack the Prince of Drexdenberg?”
“A great many people, actually. Salem’s got the offender in your prison. Dropped the lowlife off on our way here. The fae General shot me with a silver-tipped arrow.”
She gasps and runs to me, not caring that she’s tracking dried bits of dirt all over the stone floor. “What? Ye can’t be serious. Ye would’ve died! How, Destino?”
I jump down and turn around, taking my shirt off to show her the entry point. “Anything to get my clothes off me, you old flirt. But I told you, I’m a married man.”
Her fingers trace the tender spot that really shouldn’t still be sore to the touch. Then again, by all logic, I should be dead. We’re in uncharted territory, I guess, so I don’t complain about it as she prods at the wounded area. “How?” she breathes, every bit as worried as I am.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. I know it was Lily, but how she did it, I couldn’t say. “I could really use that healer, after they finish looking at Lily.”
“Who? Oh, tha fae woman. This is more important than any fae taking ill with a broken nail or whatever it is tha troubles the delicate folk.”
I turn my chin over my shoulder. “Be better than common, Vera. You know she was bloody and couldn’t walk. She was injured enough to scare Salem, and you should care about what scares your prince.” Though, to be fair, if Lily sneezed twice, I’m fairly certain Salem would be just as finicky.
“Scolding me, are ye?”
I reach behind me with my left and hold onto her hand—a thing I only do when no one’s around to catch her being kind to me. “Find that healer, Vera. I’m alive, but I don’t have any feeling in my right arm at all. Can’t move my fingers. Can’t lift my wrist. Nothing. If that’s the trade I have to make for keeping my life, so be it, but if it can be helped, I’d very much like to hold my wife with both arms, and rule my territory with my right hand as well.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Since when are ye in line to rule? I thought tha ship sailed.”
News often doesn’t travel to the neighboring territories at all, since no one likes each other all that much. “King Ronin decreed it after he found out my father was poisoning him, trying to pollute his mind and get Ronin declared unfit to rule. Ronin retaliated by murdering Father right in front of me and the entire kingdom, and then announced that I would be taking the crown in a year’s time with my new wife.”
Vera clucks her tongue and shakes her head. “I’m not sure if congratulations are in order, but if they are, well, good for ye. Or would condolences be best? I’m not sure. Being responsible for a land of vampires seems like a life sentence, not a reward. Though, I am sorry ye had to see your da die, nasty prig though he was.”
“I’m past the pain of it all,” I lie.
“Aye, of course ye are. Heartless vamps, the whole lot of ye.”
“Easy, Vera,” I warn quietly, letting her know she’s pouncing on my soft spots.
She pats my good arm. “Fine, fine. So who is she, this woman who’s finally making an honest lad of ye? And don’t start up with tha lie about her being fae. Tell me who she really is.”
“Her name is Lily, and once you stop hating her, you’ll love her.” I can’t keep the anxiety completely scrubbed from my voice. “Vera, hurry. We need that healer. Quick as you can.”
“Aye. I’ll see to it right now. And I won’t settle for sub-par healers, neither. Only the best to look at your arm. They’ll want to see this. A vampire surviving silver? Never thought I’d see the day. Whatever luck ye live by, pray to the clouds it never runs out.”
As she crosses the room and pushes open the door, I follow her advice and hope for the best.
4
Healed and Broken
Salem
I hate this. Letting another man touch my mate is torture on a good day, which this is not. At least Healer Wesley looks to be about sixty, and not interested in anything other than Lily’s injuries. “Curious. Though, I’ve never treated a fae before, so perhaps this is normal.”
“What?” I practically shout when he pauses in thought for too long.
My volume startles him, and I feel a wee bit guilty for putting everyone in the room on edge. Lily reaches up and strokes my arm. “Easy, pup,” she soothes me as only she can.
Healer Wesley studies our touch with curiosity but doesn’t address it. He seems wholly focused on her bite marks tha are tearing at my insides. I would never tell her, but my leg’s been hurting in the same spot since about half an hour after she got bitten. I’ve heard of shifters taking ill when their mate gets sick, but I always kind of wrote most of it off as dramatics. But my leg aches when I walk now, so I know she’s in pain.
“Now, I don’t know enough about fae to tell ye what to do, so I’ll only tell ye what I’d tell a shifter child. Best err on the safe side of things.” Healer Wesley has rust-colored hair with gray wisps and a wide nose, which twitches whenever he excitedly stumbles upon a new facet of the mysterious fae. His eyeballs are overly round, so when he widens them at my manic volume, it looks like they might pop out of his head.
“That sounds okay. Go ahead and do what you need to. Salem’s a little anxious, but you’re a good guy, right?”
The question in her casual tone hits my nerves like a gong. She’s scared of him, and not because he’s a shifter. Well, not just because of tha. He has kindness in his eyes, and though I want to shove him across the room for touching her ankle like he knows her, part of me appreciates tha he’s making an awkward situation not so hard. “When was the last time ye saw a Healer, lass?” he asks her.
“My mom was a shifter healer, so I guess all the time, though I haven’t lived with her in a few months.”
He quirks his eyebrow at her. “Ye have a shifter mammy?”
She nods. “I’m from Neutral Territory,” she explains without explaining, and then sighs. “I don’t really want to talk about it. How busted up is my leg? When can I run around on it?”
“You’ve got a few lacerations tha need stitches, but I don’t know what kind of thread and needle to use. Fae are so delicate. What did your mammy do for ye?”
She shrugs. “Same needle and thread she used to fix up the shifters and vamps who came to us for help.”
I fight back a whine. “What sort of injuries has she had to stitch up on ye?”
She pats my cheek. “Easy, pup.”
Des wanders in, and for a second, it all feels so normal—him checking up on us, Lily sitting on the chair in my room. “How’s my bride?” he asks, claiming her in front of the healer more naturally than I’m able. I need to tell Justice first. I have loads of questions about all the ins and outs of being mated. Never paid much attention to the details before.
“I’m alright,” Lily replies, gripping the arms of the chair as Healer Wesley pours alcohol over the wound.
She grits her teeth through her hiss of pain, and before I know it, I’m fisting the man’s collar, kicking his legs out from beneath him and dragging him away from her.
“Salem, stop!” Lily cries, which is the only sound I listen to anymore.
I pause and turn, releasing the man with a mix of gruff chagrin. I don’t know what my deal is. I know he’s helping her. “He gave ye pain,” I explain, sounding like an oaf.
Lily’s patient with me, and luckily Des helps Healer Wesley to his feet and dusts him off. “Salem, you have to let him look at my leg. He’s going to give me stitches, and it’s not going to feel wonderful, but it’s necessary.” I see a decision click in her eyes. “Into the hallway with you.”
“But I…”
She points to the door. “Des can stay with me, if you’re worried about the healer going off-book. Just five minutes, pup.”
Des pokes at the skin under her eyes. “She needs vitamin C. Can you get her some orange juice or something, Brother?”
I’m already out the door and jogging down the
halls toward the kitchen.
I need to make it nicer in my bedroom. There’s nothing but a bed, a chair, a desk and a chest of drawers for my clothes. It’s a huge room, but it’s never felt bare before today. And the kitchen needs to be stocked with her favorite things, not tha I know what they are. She likes baking those cookies, I know tha much.
I grab a bag of oranges from the hanging basket and set to work juicing. Everything is stone here—lots of grays. I never minded it before, but Lily just came from the ivorum palace where everything was bright and sparkling with cleanliness.
Justice trots into the kitchen, throwing his head back in relief at the sight of me. “Salem, Vera told me ye were home, but since ye didn’t come say hello, I thought she must be telling tales. I missed ye, Brother.” He claps me twice on the back of my shoulder.
“Aye,” I grunt and keep juicing. “Good to be back.”
“Where’s Alexavier? The wells are dangerously low. Is tha where he’s at now? I tell ye, if he wasn’t fae, I’d kiss the bastard for bringing water back to our land on his visits.”
I really don’t want to talk about this. “Alex isn’t here, and he’s not coming to Jacoba for the foreseeable future.”
Justice stills. “Don’t tell me the unbreakable trio had a rumble. Never thought I’d see the day.” Then he grips the counter’s edge. “Ye can’t mean he’s not coming back at all, only tha we need to hold on a little while longer, right?”
“Alex isn’t coming back, maybe ever. We’ll have to find another way to get Jacoba some water.”
Justice grips the ledge and slowly shakes his head. “No, Salem. Whatever it is, ye have to make it right. Our people will die if the water isn’t replenished.”
I grab for another orange and split it open, then grind it on the juicing wedge. “I brought General Klein to decorate our dungeon. Ye can put him to work, if ye like, though I’m not sure I’d drink a damn thing tha man makes.”
Malicious Prince: A Reverse Harem Romance (Territorial Mates Book 3) Page 3
