Page 57 of The Demon Prince

“Katherine!” Grace called out. “Don’t waste your time looking, just get to sewing. There’s two more on the front doorstep. Someone just dropped them off.”

With a pit in her stomach, she went to gather her tools. But she couldn’t stop thinking that this wasn’t right.

She didn’t think Gluttony had done this. But someone else certainly had.

ChapterTwenty-One

“So you’re not even going out and talking with the people in your kingdom?” Envy asked, sitting down in the chair across from Gluttony’s desk and splaying his legs wide. “Why are you not doing that?”

“Why are you still here?” Gluttony groaned.

He tilted his chair onto its back legs, dangling between falling and hovering, but he didn’t want to look at Envy right now. What he wanted was his space back. His privacy. He wanted everyone to leave his castle and by everyone, he meant his brother. He wanted Katherine to come back, which she hadn’t last night.

Logically, he knew that was probably the best circumstance for all of them. The longer Envy was here, the more likely he would be to take the young woman who had captured Gluttony’s attention. Not because Envy enjoyed her, of course, but because Envy kidnapped everyone he wanted. Any time he wanted.

And Gluttony would start a war over that. He’d do whatever it took to get his pet back, even if that meant tearing into his brother, who had never once lost a battle in his kingdom.

“I’m here because everyone wants results that you aren’t providing. Yet.” Envy leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. “I still believe you can do this, brother. But I will not take the fall for you if you cannot do this because a woman distracted you.”

“You have yet to understand what this feels like.”

“You believe you are in love.” Envy’s eyes flashed bright green. “I know what it is to covet someone so thoroughly that you would do anything to keep them. And isn’t that what you’re feeling?”

He wasn’t in love with her, that much he knew. Gluttony pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Of all our brothers, don’t you think I’m the least capable of love?”

“Look at Greed and Lust.”

“They were forged under extreme pressures. Diamonds of relationships that were thrust upon them without choice or reason.” Gluttony pointed at his door, as though he were pointing to Katherine herself. “I found her in the squalor of my own kingdom. I was the one who chose her, not for any reason other than that fate thrust us together. I found her, I took her, and then I did what I wished with her.”

“And now you are falling for her.”

Gluttony rolled his eyes. “It is an obsession, and you know more than anyone else that it will end. My thirst for blood will eventually be satiated, and then I will need to search for the next person to capture my attention. It is an exhausting existence and one that I will likely end after her. But for now, I am merely enjoying myself.”

Envy’s brows furrowed. “Yet here you are, quite certain that you would do anything to keep her.”

“I agree that it’s a strange combination of feelings, but I assure you, what I feel for her is nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve felt like this for countless blood donors before.”

It was a lie.

He’d never felt like this before. In fact, every blood donor before her had made him feel dirty. Used. Like he was only good for one thing, and that was money. Like he was hiring whores to come to his home and bare themselves before him just so he could get off.

He’d never gotten off with any of the others. He’d never felt this full body experience when he drank from them.

Envy leaned back, his lips pursed and his brows drawn down. “Oh, you are in so much deeper than you’re willing to admit.”

“I’m not.”

“I can see that expression, Gluttony. You want to keep her, not for a little while, but forever. And there’s something about her that’s wriggled its way underneath your skin.”

“Shut up.” He stood from his desk. The last thing he wanted to do was sit here and be berated about his own feelings. “You can leave whenever you wish. Clearly, I am making progress on the substance and soon enough, we’ll know what it is.”

“Not soon enough for any of our brothers.” Envy didn’t stand. He didn’t even move. He just kept talking as Gluttony approached the door. “Did you hear that Sloth was attacked a few days ago?”

Gluttony froze with his hand on the door. “I had not.”

“I suppose news doesn’t travel as fast here, and that’s quite all right. But he was attacked, brother. A group of people broke into his castle. Thankfully he has loyal guards, but if he hadn’t? Sloth would be gone, and we’d all have a much larger problem on our hands.”

He hated this. He hated that his brothers’ wellbeing rested on his shoulders, and there was nothing he could do about it.

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