Page 106 of The Crown’s Temptation

"It will be done, Majesty."

He turned to the mirror and picked up the comb. Normally he tied his dark burgundy hair back without thought. Occasionally in front of his men he made sure he looked immaculate. But typically he did not care.

Colsar always looked immaculate.

He frowned at his reflection. Colsar used to look immaculate. But since leaving Veynar the man had turned into someone he barely recognized. In Shalvar his hair had been loose at his shoulders, almost unkempt, a copper strand there that annoyed Teorin because he suspected it always hung in his face.

He also suspected that Asharin liked the stupid strand. She probably liked his hair long, too.

He tried to remember and it came to him. Indeed, the night Asharin was poisoned Colsar was well groomed then too. But still not with his hair precisely slicked back the way he used to have it. He had looked well groomed in the way one would look if they were eating a nice dinner with someone they still wished to impress.

Asharin probably liked that version as much as she liked the stupid strand version. The confident one who let hair hang in his face and wore jackets with nothing underneath.

He stared at himself. His hair was straight, long and burgundy. Relatively harmless, but perhaps it was boring.

He brought one of the strands to his nose and inhaled. It still smelled like her.

“What do I do with it?" He asked himself silently in the mirror.

Perhaps he should let it hang loose today instead of tying it back.

Maybe she would notice the change. When she did, he would pretend not to care, of course. He tried to think ahead of what bored answer he could give her.

The room spun briefly. It was strange, he had felt so strong last night after dinner. Now he suddenly felt much weaker.

Admittedly, he hadn’t had release in weeks before last night.

If he was being honest with himself, it had been much longer than that. Nothing appealed to him. Worse yet, he knew that even in a world where he ended up inside her, he would never be able to truly let her see all of it.

No. He was a monster. He liked his women to scream in pain and bite him back until they let him win.

Nox had been good for that. She was just as monstrous as he was. Depending on the mood Nox would bring weak humans to their bed at times. He would fuck them, because he liked to hear them moan in pain.

She always found the humans, then found a way to get jealous. They rarely lived through the session, which proved inconvenient at times.

If he came hard enough to exhaust himself, he would wake up to a dead body at the foot of the bed.

Fine. But if things had been particularly intense, sometimes he would wake up to the familiar groan of an undead.

They would argue immediately. “Clean up your fucking mess, Teorin,” she would snap.

“The rules were simple. I feed from the soul, then you drink the blood.”

“I do not like leftovers. Or sharing.”

“But if you drank the blood after I fed, there would be no walking corpse in the bedroom at this hour.”

She would roll her eyes, undoubtedly. “It is not my fault you cannot clean up your own mess. Kill it before I fuck it in front of you.”

A knock interrupted his thoughts.

“Majesty, breakfast is ready.”

He looked in the mirror. Asharin probably wouldn’t notice his hair.

He frowned. Perhaps she had not stayed until morning because she found something about his anatomy unsatisfactory.

Doubtful. His anatomy was better than Colsar’s, of that he was mostly certain.