Page 16 of The Crimson Princess
Toren’s eyes spark, the first hint of anger I’ve seen in him. “I think you know full well I can.”
My father’s lips twitch, no anger in him, as if he’s achieving his goal by proving the vampire king to be vulnerable to his needling. “Very well,” he replies simply. “You may have the royal cottage through the closing ceremonies.”
The entire idea that the portal being open on Challenge Day equals vulnerability to an attack implies the portals that guardians protect offer the same. Perhaps even to a higher degree, without my father and the book at their disposal. But there is also a reason I’m home, a reason I was not named guardian or shadow upon my mother’s passing. Maybe this threat Toren speaks of is why I need to be in Ravengale. I open my mouth to ask Toren his opinion on this potential added vulnerability, but my father stands abruptly. I quickly follow him to my feet, as does Toren, and find myself forcefully dismissed. “Give me a moment with Toren,” my father commands brusquely.
Everything inside me screams in objection, but when I hesitate, my father adds, “Now, Satima. Now.”
The whip of his command and the promise of his punishment, which might well be denying me the portal, are enough to submit me to compliance. “Of course, father,” and I do not dare linger, nor do I dare meet Toren’s gaze, not when my father’s mood has gone from bad to worse. I risk being shut out of the details of a problem that everything inside me screams involves me.
Chapter nine
Thewrathofmyfather will surely find me before the night expires into daylight.
The minute I’m in my room, I strip out of the silk of my dress and replace it with my favorite faded jeans, a tee, combat boots, and a hoodie. Of course, my father won’t approve of my attire, but this is how I dress to feel like me, shadow to my mother, warrior princess, as she sometimes called me, and I need to be that connection to her right now. It’s the only way I know how to survive her loss. But once I’m changed, I’m not all better, not even a little better. I’m antsy, pacing about and wishing I could just get my tongue lashing over with and be done with it.
I need to do anything that keeps my mind and emotions in check, and when pacing fails as a solution, I sit down at my desk and grab the journal I’ve kept for ten years now, detailing every night I’d spent hunting with my mother in San Francisco. Our duty was never to simply guard the portal, but rather to fight all the nasty beings that escape the tiny cracks in its barrier: demons, zombies, hades, and sometimes even monsters.
And this journal is meant to remind me how to deal with every challenge we’d faced.
The single challenge missing is “that” night, the night I lost my mother, and I force myself to fight through the dread of reliving her death. With a trembling hand, I begin to write down everything I remember. It’s all I can do to push through the events, but that was the night that stole my mother from me, and that means something went horribly wrong. I can’t cope with her endingwithout understanding it, and what if we as gales can’t survive without a plan that doesn’t end the same brutal way? Once I’ve placed pen to paper, memory takes over and emotions flood every pore of my body, every tortured crevice of my mind. But the words flow, and by the time I’m done, tears I do not remember crying drench my cheeks. I shove away from the desk, my lashes lowering as I replay every moment of the event, but I don’t know what transpired before I arrived.
I don’t know enough to find peace in knowledge, but then, I don’t know if there will ever be a conclusion that offers me any such accord. I push to my feet, and I’m pacing again, willing any memory that might help me recreate the failure of that night to the surface, but I find nothing. I certainly do not find peace.
A thunderous knock jolts me, telling me exactly who is at my door and what his present mood is. With knots wreaking havoc on my stomach, I force myself to walk to the door, my knees wobbling in the process. I can face a zombie or two or ten, but my father is another story, especially now, this day. He doesn’t care that I’m grieving. I’m not sure he even cares that she’s gone, and I hate him for that with all that I am.
Those feelings driving me, I yank open the door, much like one would rip off a human Band-Aid, to find my father standing there, still adorned in his formal king attire; his expression grumpy as I remember him all too often in my childhood. Back in the day, I’d sneak out to the village and pretend to be a commoner, wanting so much to be a normal girl despite my green eyes that label me a highborn. I’m sure my father was relieved when he saw my eyes, as he’d mated with a commoner. Though my mother was something no one really understood, who lived as a commoner, and as such, she should have possessed no magic. Instead, she bore the purple eyes of a sage, gales who are linked back to our ancestors, but not as powerful as the highborn. Only my mother was more powerful than any living highborn, outside of my father, of course, at least while he holds the book. Without it, I wonder whose magic would have dominated.
She was an anomaly.
I think it was her differences, her roots as a commoner, that made me want to understand them, to fit in and be with them.
When I’d refused to stop my visits, my father had blown up. Once he even threatened to send me to the Third World for a day and see if I could survive. I’d been ten at the time, and I one hundred percent believed he really intended to do it, but as always, my mother stood between him and me.
Now there is only me and him, and that truth cuts cold and deep, with more force than I’ve ever swung the guardian dagger I’ve carried for the past ten years. In this moment, as my father stomps into my room, slams the door, and proceeds to order me to sit on a chair, I miss her profoundly. And not because I need protection from my only living parent, either. It’s so very difficult to truly wrap my head around losing my rock, and she was that and so much more.
“You do not call Torenking,” my father snaps. “Do you understand me?”
He towers above me where I sit on my desk chair, his handsome face pinched pink with fury, but the truly unappealing display would do nothing to stop the many women who rush to his bed from doing so again. I wonder how many of them wish to be there now? “No,” I say, my chin lifted in defiance. “I do not understand. He’s the reason we’ve lived in peace with the vampires. And respecting a title causes us no harm.”
“It empowers him.”
“Perhaps it empowers us. With respect comes the ability to live in peace.”
He kneels in front of me. “You’re too like your mother.”
“I’m proud to be like my mother,” I hiss, my voice quaking with pride and grief wrapped in defiance I possess no will to contain. “And it’s an insult that you suggest otherwise. Did you even love her?”
His chin dips to his chest, and his shoulders lift with a deep, cavernous breath, seconds ticking by before he slowly liftshis head, his eyes shockingly bloodshot. “I loved her, more than you can possibly know, but I am king, and you will listen to what I command. Toren is dangerous, and you have already proven vulnerable to his charm.”
I bristle with rejection. “Perhaps it is he who is vulnerable tomy charms, and that is an asset against someone who could bring war to Ravengale.”
“Stay away from him.” His words are steel, his stare impervious to my resistance.
My adrenaline surges, and my magic whips about inside me, wild and on fire, tingling along my skin, and the scowl on his face tells me he knows; he so knows. He points a finger at me, gritting his teeth. “And this, this ridiculously out-of-control reaction you’re having to me right now is exactly what I’m talking about. You are not ready to go toe to toe with Toren. It’s the lack of control you’re displaying that will get you killed. And worse. You just came of age.”
“What does me coming of age have to do with Toren?”
“You’re weak with emotion and unable to manage the new power you’ve been given. If you think Toren won’t use that against you and me, you’re wrong.”
