Page 25 of Ruthless Monsters

When he turns toward me, his eyes flash with amusement and a bittersweet smile lifts his lips. “She would have loved you, you know.”

“She?” I take a step closer to him.

He faces the wall in front of him again, and I follow his gaze. There’s a large frame there, and before my eyes tiny shards of crystal move together until I can make out the image of a young female dressed in long robes. Her hair is dead straight, reaching down past her hips, and her eyes are soft and kind.

Curiosity gets the better of me. “Is she your mother?”

He chuckles, and then his smile turns solemn. “Try my lover.”

I’m about to crack a joke about that being impossible because he’s clearly heartless, when I note the flash of genuine pain in his eyes. He blinks and the emotion is gone, but it’s enough to shock me into silence.

When I don’t speak, he goes on, “Her spirited nature was what drew me to her, and it wasn’t long before I was lost and entranced with her. She made me forget all I had lost, and for a time, it was enough.”

I frown in confusion, staring at the flickering flames of the fire, and scanning the small room. On each flat section of wall there’s another frame, though the others are all blank. “We’re still in the water, aren’t we?” I say, somehow still feeling the warmth of the water sliding over my skin, even though my mind isn’t in the lake anymore.

“Your body is,” King Celzar confirms. “And while we’re here it will be as if no time has passed though eons could go by.”

I grimace at the idea of spending eons in this room with him, and he smirks. “You flatter yourself, demon. I have no wish to keep you here for eternity.”

“Then whyamI here?”

His gaze softens, and when he walks to one of the empty frames, I follow him. Again, tiny shards of crystal appear in the frame, this time forming an image of the same female. Her arms are in the air, and her robes are twisted to one side as she spins in a circle.

“I never bothered to tell my other brides about her. They were too broken by the time I found them, so lost from the absence of their power, that they were more than happy to surrender to me. All for the chance to feel their power again, even if it was only for a moment before I took it all away.” He turns to me, and there’s a vulnerability in his eyes that makes me uneasy.

“Look, I don’t need your life’s story—” I say, because I still fully intend to kill him when I get the chance, and I don’t want to feel any sympathy for him.

Before I can finish, he cuts me off. “But you…you’re an outsider. And behind that,” he swirls a finger in the air, “harshdemeanor, I get the feeling you understand the struggles of responsibility.”

I want to argue that while that’s true, it’s obvioushedoesn’t, but I don’t. It’s painfully clear he’s in a talkative mood, so I figure I’d better let him. If he wants to use me as his therapist, I’ll play along, and maybe I’ll learn something useful.

“Okay, so you had a lover,” I say. “And then what? She died? It’s a sad story, but it doesn’t justify what you’re doing to your kind. Let me guess, the witches stole her from you? Or was it?—”

“Me,” he replies abruptly.

“What?”

“She died because she loved me.”

I stare at him blankly, not liking where this is going.

“I never was good enough for them, my mother and my siblings. The royals of Perstalia. While my siblings thrived under mother’s gaze, I was the black sheep, the outcast. No matterwhat I did I was never good enough,” he says bitterly, and he walks to another frame where the image changes to show a younger Celzar crying with his head in his hands. “And then the day came when my mother named my sister as her successor rather than me, her eldest son. And I, despite all that I had done and given, was banished from the kingdom…”

I listen, not daring to interrupt.

“But I didn’t leave empty-handed. One of my mother’s most powerful advisors had just created an enchanted object. He became fanatical and swore that it would lead to new lands, and new opportunities for allies. But mother wouldn’t have it. She banned the object and forbade it from being used. Of course, I knew that was a mistake.”

A new object?My gut churned. “So, you used it? And you found her?” I say, referring to the female he’d been talking about.

“Yes,” he replies with a small smile. “Yenna was the one who found me wandering around that foreign forest. She called herself a witch, though at the time I didn’t know what that meant.”

My stomach plummets.A witch?One-hundred questions pop into my head.

“She lived in the forest, you see,” he goes on. “She helped heal me on the inside, and for the first time in a long while, I was happy. Those were the best months of my life. But then came the day when she told me she had to return home. I was desperate to keep her with me.Marry me.I asked her. And when she agreed I could have sworn the stars themselves danced overhead.”

The image before us changes, showing the two of them dancing. Yenna is now wearing a flowing dress covered in flowers, and their smiles are so big and joyful it makes me grin as well. I stare at the side of King Celzar’s face, and for oncethere isn’t cruelty in his expression. Now, there’s something soft tinged with sadness.

“But it doesn’t last,” I say slowly.

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