Page 111 of The Nightblood Prince

I wanted and wanted and wanted until my legs were weak, until I could barely stand by myself.

Something inside me called to him. I could practically feel my blood vibrate for him.

My mouth was so dry, and the only thing I could think of was his blood. His sweet, nectar-like blood that filled my mouth and poured down my throat and made my body come alive in ways I didn’t know were possible.

Gods.I was melting in his hands, and he knew it.Touch me,I desperately wanted to tell him.Touch me. Touch me. Touch me….

“You and I, we are the same. I have known this since that night in the cave. Since the moment you drank my blood and I felt the power in you, so much like my own. In this life, you’ll never find any equal but me.”

With that, he bit me gently, teeth pulling and sucking at flesh. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to send my body into a burning torrent of wildfire. The sound I made was something caught between a cry and a whimper.

He chuckled. “It’s incredible how easily your body reacts to mine. You can hate me, despise me to your very bones, but your blood will always heed my call. You will always burn for me when I command youto.”

“You—” I gasped, pushed him away with all my strength, lost for words by what he was doing to me.

Like a veil slipping from my eyes, the glimmer of everything he’d made me feel slipped away like icy silk.

The fevered hum turned spine-chilling.

“Is that why you gave me your blood to drink, why you saved my life so many times?”

“You always assume the worst of me.” He laughed, a hypnotizing sound. I knew that what I’d just felt was not real, but the shimmer of it all lingered on my skin like dusted sugar, glittering and entrancingly sweet. “Both times I gave you my blood, it was to save your life.Thiswas an unexpected bonus. I didn’t know it was something I was capable of until recently. Most people whom I give my blood to, well…They don’t exactlystayhuman. Or alive.”

My mind was reeling. When he said he could command me, he couldn’t mean…“You have no right to make me feel those things! I’m not a puppet for you to play with!”

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Those feelings were always there. I can’t coax a fire without some sparks. And if you want me to touch you, all you have to do is ask.”

I went cold. “You can hear my thoughts as well?”

“No. Ifeelthem. I feel a lot of your emotions, actually. It doesn’t matter where you are; my blood inside you calls to me. But when you are close enough, I feel everything you feel.”

I picked up my bow, abandoned when he began to touch me. “I should kill you for this.”

The sound of his laughter was more beautiful than anything had the right to be. “I’d like to see you try.”

I raised the bow, nocked an arrow, and pointed it right at Yexue’s heart. Even this wasn’t enough to wipe that infuriating smile off hisface.

“You are not going to waste an arrow on me, are you?” he said. “Even if you strike me in the heart, it will be an immediate forfeit. No points unless your arrow lands on that sheet.”

I remembered how my knife had bounced right off him the last time I had tried this. But Siwang’s silver knife had cut him. The tip of the bow would be a perfect weapon, but did I actually want to stab the Prince Regent of Lan?

I turned, directed the arrow toward the target, and caught a glimpse of gold before firing.

Bull’s-eye.

“You are not my equal, Lan Yexue.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Yexue picked up his own bow and arrow and fired.

Bull’s-eye, slightly tilting left, but he hit the center without question. He was good. Vexingly so.

I picked up another arrow.

“Are you really choosing Siwang?” Yexue asked just as I drew the bow. “You know his heart is rotten; you just don’t want to admit it.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I thought of Siwang’s feral eyes when he’d tried to justify his decision to burn Changchun just to weaken Yexue.

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