He closed the gap and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her flush against him. “No. There must be a way. If you could only open your stubborn mind and your locked heart. I’d find a way.”
She pressed a hand to his chest, her chin quivering, her gaze resolute. “It was a mistake. It can’t happen ever again.”
“Was this a mistake?” he asked gruffly.
He pressed a bruising kiss to her lips, slanting to go deeper, though he received no reciprocal response. Slowly, he pulled away, fuming that she would dismiss so easily what had been the most precious intimate moment of his life. The passion had left her hazel eyes. She was cold and distant. She’d already cut him off.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Damn you, Arabelle,” he grated. “You’re a liar. And you know it.”
“This is a lie, Marius,” she said, gesturing toward the bed. “We let ourselves go too far. There is no place for us. I know that now.” She pushed out of his hold. He let her go.
“Now, please put your clothes on and go. I must fetch the princess and deliver her, or hundreds of my people will be thrown into the dungeon.”
He grabbed her arm as she rounded for the door, and commanded, “Wait.”
“Let me go.”
“Someone is coming.”
She finally noted the way he angled his head to hear better. “Who is it?” she whispered.
He clenched his jaw. “Your blacksmith.”
“Deek? Oh, hell.” Arabelle scurried around the room and gathered his clothes then shoved them at his chest. “Out the window.” She pointed and pushed him fervently.
Marius glowered, not budging from his spot as she tried to pull him toward the window, to no avail.
“No,” he said, slipping on his pants and then his boots.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” she asked in a yelling whisper. “You can’t let Deek see you. He will think—”
“What?” asked Marius, standing tall above her. “That we’re lovers?”
He slipped on his shirt, not bothering to button it up, leaving the ends loose and open before marching to the door.
Arabelle threw herself in front of him, pushing on his chest. “Marius. Please. You don’t understand.”
He shook his head with a sad chuckle. “I just said the same words to you. And like you, I also understand clearly,” he growled. “You’re ashamed of me. Ashamed to have tumbled in bed with the beastly monster you’ve been striving for so long to erase from this world. Well, that’s too damn bad,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders to set her aside.
“Arabelle!” bellowed Deek in a panic, most assuredly taking in the scattered furniture. Within seconds, his pounding footsteps sounded then…
The door flung open against the wall and Deek leapt into the room, launching himself at Marius. The two grappled to the floor.
“Stop! Please, Marius!”
Deek punched him across the jaw, then Marius launched him into the next room, where the blacksmith fell onto his back with a thunk. The smithy groaned and rolled to all fours. Marius stood. When Deek grabbed a fire iron leaning against the brick and swung it through the air, Marius grabbed it mid-swing and yanked it from him, as if pulling a toy from a child.
“That’s enough,” said the prince. “No need to bludgeon the enemy, blacksmith. I’ll be on my way.” Marius dropped the iron with a resounding clang and yanked open the door, pulling it partly from its hinges when it slammed to the wall. He glanced over his shoulder at Arabelle, fuming with bitterness at her rejection. “I got what I came for.”
He sped vampire-swift into the black night, feeling like the wretched monster she believed him to be.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“What in the bloody hell is going on?”
Deek rounded on her. He stood before the hearth with a mixed expression of rage and disbelief and possibly pain.
“Deek, I know how this looks.”
“It looks like you just swived the vampire prince!”
She snapped her mouth shut, heat flaring from her chest to her neck.
“Did you?” he asked in disgust.
Crossing her arms, she stood her ground. “Yes. I did. Though my personal business has nothing to do with you.”
He paced by the dying fire and thrust both hands into his hair.
“Arabelle, how can you say that? What have you done?”
“I don’t chastise you for tumbling into every woman’s bed in town. I don’t expect you to scorn me for—”
“You can tup every farmhand or barman in the village, but not the bloody fucking Varis prince!”
She winced at the rage rolling off of him in tangible waves.
Heaving in a deep breath, he walked toward her and started again in a steadier tone of voice, though still shaking with anger. “You are the leader of the Black Lily. Our greatest enemy is the Varis family. I rushed here as soon as I’d gotten word that every peasant in Sylus had been rounded up and brought to the Glass Tower. Under orders of the king.” He waved a hand at the door. “Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. He did.”
Deek stiffened his shoulders and leered down, pushing his bulk into her space.
“Did he now? Was that before or after he put his cock inside you?”
Arabelle hauled back her fist and cracked him across the jaw, the sting vibrating all the way up her arm.
“I can’t believe you’d treat me like this. After all we’ve been through. What are you really so angry about, Deek? That he put his cock inside me? Or that it wasn’t yours?”
He rubbed his jaw and glared, still fuming but silent.
Regret hung heavy in her chest. Not because what she said wasn’t true. But because it was. Deek had always longed for more than friendship between them. She knew it. But he also had a right to be angry because she hadn’t taken just any man to bed. She’d taken Prince Marius.
“Damn, woman,” he said. “When you cut a man, you go for the jugular.”
He marched for the door.
“Wait!”
Rushing between him and the door, she planted her hands on his chest. He didn’t resist, the fight seemingly gone out of him. He simply gazed down with heartbreak in his eyes.
“Deek,” she said softly. “Listen. I’m sorry for what I said. You’ve been my most loyal friend.” She inhaled a deep breath, then let it out. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have let this happen. But you’re wrong about Marius. He’s not our enemy. His parents still are, but he listened to me. He’s actually promised to find those who’ve been killing our own.”
“Has he now? When did he give you this promise? Just now?”
“No. Before.”
“And has he found the murderers? Has he brought them to justice?”
Her shoulders sagged, realizing she hadn’t even bothered to ask about his progress. No. She was too eager to climb into bed with him to worry about all that.
“No,” she finally answered, disheartened.
“I see. Well, our first priority is dealing with the princess and this roundup of the Sylus peasantry. What do you aim to do?”
“Give her back, of course.”
“The prince has an unusual way of bargaining to get his bride back,” he said with a smirk.
“He wasn’t bargaining,” she turned and walked through the doorway.
Deek followed her. The humped moon hung in a cloudless sky, stars twinkling like the glittering chandeliers of the Glass Tower.
“You’re right, too, you know.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “I have no right to butt into your business. You just picked the wrong man to finally bed.”
“Finally?”
“Aye. I’ve been hoping you’d land on someone. The boys have even been hoping it would be one of them.”
“Have they now?”
“I knew it wouldn’t be any of them. Not one of them caught your eye. Not even me.”
She pulled her gaze from the starry heavens and settled on Deek.
“I don’t know why you chose him,” he said, waving toward the woodhouse.
“It’s not as simple as all—”
He stopped her with a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“No matter, Arie. You were right about another thing,” he added, dropping his hand away. “I’d always hoped that you and I, well, that we might find our way together. But…we were always better as friends.”
“We are the best of friends, Deek. I wouldn’t have made it through the years without you.”
“Aye. That’s for true.”
She scoffed and punched him in the shoulder, immediately regretting it.
“Ow!” She shook her fingers loose.
“Damn, woman. Did you break your knuckles?”
“No. It’s fine.” Though it seemed she may have broken something.
“I’ve got some balm in the wardrobe. Let’s get inside.”
She followed him back inside and righted the chair Marius had tossed across the room with the table. Deek returned from the bedroom, face grim, with a cup of ointment in his hand.
She tried to ignore the tension bunching up his shoulders and filling the space between them as they sat facing each other while he doctored her knuckles.
“I’ll have to fetch the princess and her lady-in-waiting at dawn. Can you get Nate to send word that we want to trade at first light?”
“Aye. But I’ll do the trade. You should stay here. Better yet, go into Silvane and wait at Sienna’s cottage.”
“You know I can’t do that, Deek.”
“Why the hell not? They’ll kill you the first chance they get.”
“No. They won’t. Marius has promised no harm will come to anyone. And I’m the one who got the peasants into this mess. How do you think it will look if I bail on them now?”
Finishing with the ointment on her knuckles, he dropped her hand.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“I’ll still be going to escort you all the way there and back.”
“You shouldn’t. They just had you in the dungeon. And I’m sure you made no friends there. You should stay here.”
He gripped her under the chin and lifted her gaze to him.
“I will do no such thing. My dearest friend needs my help. And I will give it, while I have breath left in my body.”
She smiled, tears pricking her eyes.
“And what a lucky girl I am to have a friend like you, Deek.”
“Aye. You are.”
Laughing, she rose and retired to the bedroom, knowing he would keep vigil in the front room as he always did when they slept here together.
She fell into the bed, instantly smelling a familiar masculine scent. Burying her face into the pillow, she let the tears finally flow—for wanting a man she could never have, for hurting her friend who loved her so, for feeling less than the leader the Black Lily deserved.
The tide seemed to be rising, and she feared she may drown before it was all over.
…
“Have a bath drawn, Baines. I’ll manage this on my own.”
Fury still burned bright in Marius’s veins. He ripped off his coat then his vest that he’d redressed in after leaving Arabelle. He could’ve finished dressing in the dark of the bedroom where they’d made love. He could’ve concealed the truth of their coupling from the blacksmith, but she had cut him deep. Her shame of being with him had certainly drawn out his cruelty.
He left his clothes in a pile and slipped on a robe, then padded into his bathing chamber where Baines oversaw two servants pouring buckets of hot water into the marble tub.
Another servant stoked the fire bright to heat the room. She glanced at him before casting her eyes to the floor. Fear flickered in her glimpse. Marius never paid attention to the humans working in the palace. But now that he knew of the blood madness taking hold, he recognized the effect more clearly in those around him.
Another servant girl walked in, emptying her bucket into the tub. She wore her blond hair in a braid over one shoulder. She could not compare to his Arabelle, but she reminded him of her all the same.
If he thought it possible, he’d swear she was a witch, intent on ensnaring his soul for her own dark purposes. He ached even now—after her definitive rejection of him in front of her blacksmith—wanting one more touch, one more taste, one more night.
“That’ll do,” he said gruffly, dismissing them all.
Baines was the last out, closing the door behind him. Marius shrugged off his robe and stepped into the warm bath. Steam rose as he settled in and scrubbed his arms and body vigorously with the soap. He needed to remove her scent from his skin. From his mind, if possible. Hanging his head back on the rim and closing his eyes, he tried to think of something else besides her sweet, giving body.
It was no use. She’d infected him for good.
Despite her own regret for giving into her desire, he realized that he could not. He’d do it again if he could. And again.
But the truly painful part was that she was right. There was no place for them. His duty was to the Varis family. Her duty was to the Black Lily. The declared enemy of the royal family.
“Bloody hell.”
He lifted out of the tub so quickly a wave folded over the top and soaked the stone floor. Toweling off, he then padded back into his bedchamber and dressed in nightclothes before making his way down the long corridor to his mother’s royal suite.
Though anger still raged through his frame for Arabelle’s easy dismissal of him, he would not break his vow, even if his ego, and his heart, had been bruised.
His mother’s man, Radomir, stood on guard and lifted a hand to stop Marius from entering. Marius sped past him in a blur to avoid an altercation, wishing he’d heeded the warning.
Behind the gossamer curtain of the oversized bed was his mother atop her youngest bleeder. Thankfully, she was only feeding, nothing more. He knew her to take some of her bleeders as lovers, as did his father, but he avoided the reality when he could. The idea of their extramarital affairs never settled well with him.
She lifted her mouth from the young man’s neck and rose from her bower, opening the curtain to slide off the bed.
“Marius. This is an unexpected visit.” She took a white handkerchief from a bedside table and wiped her mouth.
“I am sorry to intrude. But it is imperative that I speak to you tonight.”
The bare-chested boy stared after her, reaching out a hand, his eyes glazed with euphoric desire as blood trickled from two punctures. She hadn’t sealed the wound and apparently planned to continue feeding when Marius was gone. He’d keep this brief.
“Tell me.” Her tone warned she was still angry with him because of their argument earlier today.
“I have made contact with the Black Lily.” He averted his gaze to the floor as she drew closer, wearing a sheer gown of green. “They have agreed to return Princess Vilhelmina and her lady-in-waiting at dawn. Unharmed.”
“Wonderful news.” She slipped into a lacy wrap then stopped before him, so he could no longer avoid her gaze. “And what are my son’s feelings on this fact? That his bride will be ready for her groom tomorrow evening.”
“Will she be ready to marry after such a traumatic event?”
He must tell her the truth, that he had no plans of marrying Vilhelmina, or any woman, for that matter. But he needed her to keep his promise to Arabelle and get his mother to release the people of Sylus before he did so.
His mother, regal, beautiful and perfect in every way—flawless skin, her high cheekbones, her cool, blue eyes. She rarely shifted her expression beyond anything but the tranquil and indifferent gaze of a true queen. Her expression shifted to one of grim determination, as if she knew the thoughts swirling in his head.
“She is a vampire princess. She will be ready for her prince. And you will be ready for her. Will you not, my son?”
Clenching his jaw, he steered away from her question.
�
��I have promised the Black Lily that no harm will come to them. We will exchange the peasants for the princess. And let them go free. I need your assurance you will speak to Father and be sure that this remains true. There must be no retribution.”
She drifted back toward her bleeder and paused beside her bed. Letting her wrap fall to the floor, she pulled back the curtain, gazing upon her meal.
“You have my word, Marius.”
He stormed toward the door, anxious to leave before she set to feeding again. His fangs cut into his bottom lip, his thirst a painful pang in his stomach. Reaching Larissa’s chamber, he paused, his hand shaking as he braced himself on her door, longing to enter and slake his thirst. But he couldn’t. Some inner turmoil stirred and brewed at the thought.
He could not feed without giving of himself in return. The thought of lying with another woman repulsed him. Wrenching himself away, he sped to his chamber and slammed the door closed, facing his new reality.
Tomorrow, he would turn one hundred years old. He must break with the Princess of Arkadia and possibly with his parents once they heard the news. And he must force all thoughts of the golden-haired vixen who’d stolen his heart and soul behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Arabelle steered Willow up the trail, though her mare knew the way. Princess Vilhelmina had remained quiet behind her for the duration of the trek through Silvane Forest. Sienna and Kathleen followed on Duchess behind them. Hugo had remained close on their right within the woods. Kai on their left.
“This place feels heavy,” said Mina, snapping Arabelle from her reverie on whether she should step down as leader of the Black Lily.
“Does it?” asked Arabelle. “There is magic here, they say. Though I’ve never seen proof of it.”
“Are you sure?” asked Mina, pointing toward the trees where a black shadow zipped in and out of view.
“Yes,” said Arabelle. “The hart wolves certainly hold the magic of this place.”
The Black Lily (Tales of the Black Lily) Page 20
