Page 14 of The Crimson Princess
“Wishing me dead, Toren?” my father asks dryly.
“Death finds us all, Killian, no matter how immortal the world might think us. Will the princess be joining us?” he repeats, a tug of his magic waving my direction.
I’m aware of this vampire king in ways that some might call dangerous. I’m certain my father would not be pleased.
“She will,” my father replies, “but if she’s smart, she’ll call you Toren, not King Toren. You are not her king.”
“But I am a king,” Toren replies, not missing a beat, “and it is mutual respect that is needed between allies.”
“We aren’t allies,” my father states. “Until the vampires submit to the rule of Ravengale, we will never be allies.”
“I certainly hope you reconsider that position,” Toren replies, “for the safety of your people.”
I bristle and dare to overstep my role with two kings present, issuing Toren a challenge. “Is that a threat?”
His eyes, those incredible blue eyes, land heavily on me. “You’d know if I threatened you, princess,” he says, and somehow those words are as darkly seductive as they are lethal.
Idris and two of our most decorated warriors appear behind my father, and if their appearance is meant to be a sign of strength, or more likely intimidation, it fails. They reek of nervous energy, and Toren doesn’t so much as smirk at their presence, as if they aren’t worth a reaction. That is, until my father says, “My men will escort us to the meeting space,” and motions Toren to follow them, an action that would force Toren to offer my father his back, an action of submission between warriors. It might as well be a cat offering up his belly to the alpha.
There’s a bristle of Toren’s magic that prickles along my skin, and I do not think my father’s power play sits well with him. I walk down the steps, leaving the pedestal where our thrones sit behind me, to join Toren,my backpresented to my father and our men. “I’ll be your guide,” I offer.
Toren’s expression is unaffected, any surprise he might feel at my action carefully schooled, but his voice is low and warm with appreciation. “A true princess.”
I can feel the eyes of my people resting heavily on my back, their attention burning me with contempt, but I do not risk a reaction. My focus remains on the vampire who I know to be lethal in oh so many ways.
“I’m learning,” I reply. “I’ve spent more time away from this place than present the past ten years.”
“You’ve learned well,” he assures me, offering me his arm.
I shiver inside at the idea of touching him, but I cannot refuse, nor do I seem towantany such thing. I’m drawn to Toren in some deep female way that is most likely far more dangerous than any day I’ve spent guarding the portal. Even knowing this, I swallow deeply and settle my hand on his upper arm. Warmth seeps through the silk barrier of his suit jacket and burns down my arm, and my lashes lower in an effort to disguise the reaction from him and our onlookers. I willnotallow the vampire king to know hisworld-famous power of seduction has worked on the princess of Ravengale.
Somehow, though, I look at him, and my magic flutters about inside me as if I were a young girl with no control, and I do not know what about him creates such a reaction in me. He feels it, too. I see it in the dilation of his eyes, and this is more information than I wish Toren to possess, but I comfort myself in the knowledge that it’s expected.
He knows all too well the reactions he creates in others.
I rotate forward, and my gaze punches into Idris’s. “This way,” I instruct, though commands do not slide easily nor comfortably from me. I’ve been at the portal, fighting, bloody and beaten, not in the palace, acting my role of princess, but this one flows easily enough this day, as I add, “You can follow us.”
Idris glances at my father, who inclines his chin, his expression now as unreadable as Toren’s, but I have no doubt I will feel his wrath this very eve. Idris offers me a small bow. “Yes, princess.”
I step forward, and with Toren as my willing guest, we walk around the thrones and to the rear of the room. Toren leans in close. “You do know a warrior never places his enemy at his rear, correct?”
“We’re not your enemies,” I say, daring a look at him and adding, “not yet. I hope never. And you’re too powerful for it to matter anyway.”
There’s a tilt of his chin, an indication of curiosity. “And you know this, how?”
“I can feel your power,” I admit, exposing some of my own magic to him but as magic knows magic, my mother often said trust breeds trust.
Interest piques in his expression. “Can you now?”
“I can, but why don’t we make that our little secret?”
He studies me a heavy beat and says, “I’d be honored to share a secret with the future queen of Ravengale.”
For reasons I can’t explain, I believe him. My mother warned me of him, but at the same time expressed admiration for him aswell. She believed it was Toren, not my father, who forced the peace between our lands, but I was never to repeat this to anyone.
I guide Toren left and then down a set of stairs. Once we’re in the hallway, the remaining path is a short distance.
We reach the grand, towering gold entryway to my father’s study, and Andreas is already there waiting on us. He opens the door, a real task with the considerable weight of the gold, but he is tall and fit, well-practiced at his task. He’s cleared our way in no time, and I guide Toren inside an ornate room that even I, the princess who grew up in the castle, finds truly spectacular. The walls curving into half circles, many of which are lined with ancient books of magical spells and tales of our ancestors. The ceiling towers high, a dome above us decorated with the most beautiful art of the now extinct dragons that once lived in our lands.
