Page 47 of The Crimson Princess
“Areyou?”
“Only for you, princess. And you didn’t answer my question. Are you hunting?”
“Training.” I sigh, somehow beyond games with Toren. “My mother always taught me, use it or lose it, and at this point I don’t even know what I have to lose. My birthday didn’t come with a card that listed out whatchangedmeans.”
“Let’s find out. Let’s train. Fight me.”
I gape at him and laugh. “You want me to fightyou?”
“Yes. Fight me. Test yourself by testing me, but I’m not a werewolf, Satima. I’m an ancient vampire, unlike anyone or anything you’ve ever faced.”
“In other words, you’re an old man.”
“Experience equals pleasure. I think you know that.” His voice is silky seduction.
I feel those words in the hollow he’s left between my legs, but I manage a fast retort. “Why is everything about sex to men? Arrogance does not age like fine wine, Toren.”
“But the rest of me did?”
I roll my eyes. “You’re impossible. And I know how powerful you are, Toren.”More than my father,I think, but I don’t say that.
“And you need to know how to fight someone like me.”
“There is no one else like you.”
“Wrong. My brother is just as powerful. And when you face a lethal warrior who’s rotten to the core, he’ll fight dirty.”
Evil to the core, and this is who my father is risking partnering with the sorceress and the druids. Toren curls his fingers at me. “Come on. Bring it.”
“I’m not without my own skill,” I say. “You know that, right?”
“I, too, know very well how powerful you are. The problem is, you don’t.”
He’s not wrong and if he can read this in me, can others?
He quirks an eyebrow. “Afraid, princess?”
“What if I hurt you?” I taunt.
“It’ll hurt so good, Satima. Of that I can promise you.”
My cheeks flush with his flirtation and I throw a ball of energy at him, a skill I acquired at a very young age, and mastered while working as my mother’s shadow. It does nothing to him. And I meannothing. He doesn’t so much as flinch. The next thing I know he’s blinked in front of me, his hands on my arms. “I told you. I’m like no one or anything you have ever faced. You should have already blinked away.”
“I can’t blink.” The words are like claws in my throat.
“Yes, you can.” His tone is absolute.
“No.I can’t.”
“I can feel your magic, Satima. You’re still allowing your grief to suppress it. You need to stop.”
“Ican’t blink.”
A blade appears in his hand, glinting in the beam of the sunlight, the cold steel pressing to the delicate skin of my throat. “Blink away,” he commands.
“I can’t,” I hiss.
“Blink away or die.”
