Page 47 of How Does It Feel?

I could barely pay attention to the spark in her eyes as the pad of my thumb trailed against her jawline. I watched her face, wondering what I was feeling; I’d never felt it before.

“Do it,” she whispered, drawing my attention to her full bottom lip. “Know that even a weak, innocent human died unafraid of you!”

She was lying, of course. I could feel her fear—could taste its sweetness on my tongue. Absently, I brushed my thumb across her full lower lip and reveled in the feel as it moved against my pressure. Her skin was like nothing I had ever felt before. Silkier than the finest fabric, softer than anything had a right to be. The feel of it coated my skin with curiosity.

I liked her angry and full of madness. I could feel the fire she camouflaged so poorly. She bore little fear of me in that moment, only hate. Probably still riding the high of escaping death from Alistair.

What the fuck was I doing?

I stepped back, startled at my own actions.

I shoved her face back away from me with disgust as I stared at my hands, the feel of her still lingering on them.

She tripped and fell on the forest bog that was trying to poke his branches in her leg. He no longer dry humped her, likely because she was angry and not afraid. They were only drawn to fear, not anger. He would take care of that though. He’d make her so fucking afraid she’d piss herself.

I turned and shook myself out of whatever daze I had been in and walked out of the door, hardly able to believe what I had just done as I left the human to die.

By the stars, I would be rid of her and these treacherous feelings by tonight.

She would be gone, and with her, whatever poison she had put in my mind.

Chapter 13

13. Strengths and weakness

Callie

I scraped myself off the dirty floor and stared in a stupor at the closed cell door. What kind of an animal could hurt an innocent person like that? I had done nothing to deserve any of this! When he let Alistair go without killing him, I had my first glimpse of hope. Maybe he wasn’t as merciless and unfeeling as he was rumored to be. I had heard the guards talk of him. How he ran the kingdom with cold efficiency, annihilating anyone that went against him. He was a killer. You could see it in the way his muscles formed, the way he carried himself with arrogant confidence. The man everyone seemed afraid of. Even the commanders of his shadow army, the men that were his closest friends, seemed to rightfully have a healthy fear of him.

The forest bog returned to stabbing pointed twigs and branches into my thighs. He was trying to frighten me again.

I stared through the iron bars at the ghost of the smoky prince. His face had been softer when he touched me, almost intimate. The way his eyes had tracked my skin with fascination just before his thumb had grazed it. Before he threw me to the ground.

I was tired of being thrown around like a doll. In the human world, I was treated like a doll, always mentally underestimated because of my face and body. Even here, I couldn’t escape it. Only here, they treated me like a disgusting rag doll left by the trash, thinking they could do whatever they wanted. I almost wished they viewed me with a bit more beauty here. People were usually nice to things they thought beautiful.

They also underestimated them.

I caught the bog off guard when I kicked him in the face as he was about to shift. He grinned viciously at me but remained a child-sized log with rows upon rows of pointed teeth. Anything was better than the frog thing. His arms and legs were long sticks that kept switching out leaves for different-sized thorns. I had noticed he seemed to draw more power to shift when I was afraid. Now he kept warping slightly but not changing, as if he were trying to shift but was unable.

I ran to the dark corner and grabbed the spoon I had used to scrape out the mortar of bricks for brown rat.

“Hiding again?” The bog rasped. His voice quivered, causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. His black eyes glistened as he watched me. “First, I’m going to smash your pretty face in against those cell bars over there.” He pointed to the bars at the front of the cell. “Then I’m going to dump my cum into your mouth after I fuck it raw,” he hissed.

I ignored his threats and took my spoon to the front of the cell and began banging wildly against the bars as I shouted angrily. Mendax had only been gone a moment, and the hallway was long.

He would hear me.

I screamed and yelled as loud as my voice would get.

“Shut the fuck up! Fucking banshee!” the guards shouted at me, but no one bothered to come closer.

If I could get Prince Mendax back, maybe I could make a deal, some type of negotiation.

The bog had followed me to the iron bars.

My anger briefly stuttered when he stabbed me with his sharp wooden arm. He had shaped it into a wooden blade and stabbed the meaty part of my ass.

“I’ll fuck you he—” he started, but the spoon I used to dig out his eye must have caught him off guard.