Page 65 of Xantera
The other remaining Chosen Ones are each stumbling away after a servant, but not me. My vampire presses me forward, making sure I’m steady and upright as we step over the dead Chosen One’s bloodstains still smearing the floor.
When we break off from the single file and take a grand staircase lined with gold and red carpet, he finally speaks.
“Saskia, you can call me Arad.”
I snort. “I’d rather not.”
That’s probably something I would have held in before the whole blood-sucking thing made my head feel like it’s floating off my body. I whip around to gauge his reaction and just barely catch the tail-end of his jaw tightening in anger. “It will make it sweeter then, when you change your mind.”
“Excuse me? I won’t.”
The Third Guardian takes a step into me. I take a step back against the railing, my body now frozen by the intimidating snarl that rises from his throat. “Mark my words, Saskia, you’re going to end up screaming my name just like the rest of them. Either from pleasure or pain. To beg for release or mercy.” He shrugs, as if he’s said this a thousand times before and watched his wishes come to fruition. “I don’t care which.”
For a moment I wonder if it would actually be possible for me to explode from the surge of Lucan’s white-hot rage.
I got it,I tell him. And I do, because with the current coursing through me, I feel as though I could burst through the Wall right about now.
“I feel sorry for you then, because your name will never leave my lips,” I promise, twisting out of his caged presence and resuming our trek up the stairs.
Arad clicks his tongue after we reach the last step like each one progressively helped to reel himself back in. “That’s the thing about all of you humans though. Youaremine for the next few months, and longer if I so choose. You’ll fall in line with the rest of them.” A pause thickens the air. Then his red lips lift into ahalf-smile that exposes one long fang like he’s imagining me bending to his will. “Eventually.”
I swallow, swallow again. The lump grows like a ball of energy, and I may just vomit on his shoes. But he stays silent, just a moving statue using his fingertips to turn me right and the base of his palm to turn me left when the hallways split.
Finally, he stops in front of a wooden door intricately carved with roses and unlocks it with a large brass key he produces from the folds of his velvet cloak.
My heart leaps, even though I know instinctively that it wouldn’t fit in any of the doors I’m most interested in.
That one’s in the white drawing room in the north wing. Under the glass cloche. That I’ll steal from right under his sharp nose as soon as he’s looking the other way.
Like he knows what I’m thinking, Arad’s nostrils flare.
“Did you know you smell like strawberries and roses?”
Lucan growls.I know you’ve got this, little nightmare, but when it’s my turn, this motherfucker is going to get two spikes up his nose before I kill him for even daring to breathe you in.
A smirk forms on my lips as I imagine that exact scene playing out.
“Something funny?” Arad asks.
I clear my throat. “You’re not the first one to tell me that,” I say before I can think about the logistics of what I’m confessing. “That I smell like strawberries and roses.”
The Third Guardian audibly grinds his teeth, eyeing my neck. “Too bad you’ll never see your partner again,” he says, and I realize with a relieved jolt he must think I’m talking about Malcolm, “except from a balcony.” He licks his lips like he’s savoring something, and a new sensation washes over me: murderous rage. Except this time, it’s my own. “And by the way, your blood tastes even better. You’re lucky I have such self-control—unlike the others.”
I swear the necklace vial jumps against my thigh before Arad’s long fingers wrap around the doorknob and he swings the door open.
“And the thing about me,” he adds above my shoulder, “is I learn my Chosen Ones intimately. Everything you find in here has been handpicked by me.” I sway on my feet before he gives me one good shove across the threshold. “Enjoy. I know I will.”
Then the monster locks me in my room alone with my guardian.
Even though we both just heard that heavy key slide the deadbolt into position with a loud thunk, Saskia immediately whips around to try the doorknob just for the hell of it.
She balls up her fists and slams them into the door over and over when it won’t budge.
Hey, I try to soothe her, even though nothing about me feels even remotely soothing right now.
Don’t ‘hey’ me, she bites back.That asshole has my mother—and the key.
I wish I could rage and claw at the door alongside her. Her anguish and confusion and anger feels like they’ve fractured every part of me that matters, but I can’t let her know how much this has affected me. It isn’t about me. And I have to be her voice of reason, her foundation when everything’s falling apart.
