Page 27 of Heart of the Raven Prince

“How’s your back?” she asks, and I huff out a laugh. Rolling my shoulders, I take a sip of my whiskey and shrug.

“Itchy. Sore, mostly. Thank you again, but Doran should not have gone to you. You know you did not have to come.”

She makes a show of rolling her eyes as she tips back the rest of the cordial and leans over the tub to set the glass on the floor, sloshing water over the edge in the process. “You’re a stubborn man, Caden. Doran came to get me exactly because he knows that about you just like I do.” She crosses her arms over the ledge of the tub and rests her chin on them, spearing me in that deep brown gaze. “I’m just sorry it happened at all.”

“I’m not,” I say, before I can stop myself.

Are you trying to sound like a great self-loathing prick?

My burdens are not Yasminda’s, and I have made an effort to never drop them at her feet. It’s not my fault she seems to disarm me. I had not expected our relationship to blossom the way it has, and I have very few guards in place when it comes to her.

She was nothing but a Vessel to me at first. Just another face that I wanted to forget, a necessity I despised. On the nights I am not required to dine in the palace with my mother, I would feed in the privacy of my home. Most of the Vessels that visited my home were terrified, and rightfully so. Until her. Yasminda has always been unapologetically herself with me, even from that first day. Unflinching in my presence, unafraid of me in a way few are.

I saw it first in her posture, in how tall she stood in my presence, how easily she met my obsidian gaze. But even still, I was not prepared when I sank my fangs into her neck, to hear her whispered plea for me to touch her. I was so startled I had pulled my fangs from her and reared back, only to see a coy smile gracing her lips.

If you’re going to take from me, the least you can do is give something back.

I did not touch her then, no matter how she whispered dark, filthy things to me the entire time I drank from her. I didn’t touch her the second time we met either. Or the third. Yet I kept requesting her presence. By the fourth time, my resolve was slipping. So when she grabbed my hand, and placed it on her breast, I snapped. It had been so long since I touched someone in a way that did not bring pain, and suddenly I found all I was desperate to do was provide pleasure.

After that first time, when the sticky coating of guilt and shame returned, I told her there would not be a second time. She only smirked.

I disagree.

I tried a different approach, narrowing my gaze and stating there could never be hope of a relationship between us. She cannot desire me, not really. Because there can never be choice between us. Not with the power imbalance tipped too heavily in my favor. I’m the only one who holds any real power. The only one who actually gets a choice in this. I am painfully aware of what it’s like to be stripped of your agency. Another reason why I do not have preferred Vessels, why I relegate them to faces I will try to forget. Then she said the words that have stayed firmly rooted in my mind since the day she uttered them.

You’ve taken so much from me already, prince, are you going to take this momentary bliss as well?

I had been stunned. No one spoke to me like that, so openly. I had wondered briefly if perhaps she thought I would kill her for it. I wondered if she wanted me to. Instead, I took her gently into my arms and kissed her deeply. I would say we made love after, but there was no love between us, there never has been. What we engage in is purely a carnal act, fueled by burning desire. Even all these years later, our relationship has been purely transactional. Blood for pleasure. Sustenance in exchange for a temporary escape.

I know she cares for me, in some twisted way, perhaps only because of the comfort I provide her. She is housed in a private unit in the city, away from the other humans. Yet, I know she spends her time in the Alley, though she does not have to report to any of the shops to work. I suppose I care for her as well, if only because the moments of providing her pleasure are my own selfish way of trying to scrub some of the grime off my soul. Because she could never love someone like me, and I can certainly never love a human.

Never again.

“Are you staying the night?” I ask as she rises from the bath, soap and water sluicing down her naked body. She holds out a hand and I oblige, walking forward to take it. She uses me to steady herself as she steps out of the tub, wrapping herself in the fluffy white towel I hand her. She flashes me a what do you think look, before trailing back into the bedroom.

No, of course not. She never stays over. I honestly don’t mind; it would only complicate our already complicated relationship. Yet, on nights like tonight, I find myself missing holding someone while I sleep.

You don’t deserve the company.

The demon lurking in my mind reminds me forcefully. I down the rest of my whiskey and follow her back into my room. After assisting her into her gown, I open a rift directly into her home. She leans up on her tiptoes, planting a kiss on my cheek as she says, “Get some rest, Caden, try to remember you’re still healing. I would hate for all my precious blood to go to waste by you reinjuring yourself.”

“Goodnight, Yasminda,” I say quietly, pushing her toward the rift. She walks through, turning and waving as the rift closes. My wings droop the second she is gone; I am once again alone with my thoughts. I want so desperately to do as she says and actually rest.

Fuck, what I wouldn’t give for a night of peaceful sleep.

Frowning at my room, I trudge to my bed before I collapse on it. Exhaustion hits me like a wave, and I am pulled ruthlessly under.

She smiles at me, her midnight blue-black hair spilling over her shoulders and tickling my face. I’m lost in her sparkling blue eyes. They’ve always reminded me of the sky. I want to reach out, to touch her. To place my hand against her cheek as I’ve done so many times before.

But I cannot.

Something is holding me down. I jerk my arms, but that doesn't matter. I can't control them, and they remain useless at my sides. She continues to smile at me, and I try to pull strength from it, but there is a relentless panic that is building within me. Because I’ve been here before, and I know only too well what happens next. I try to change the outcome, try to grab the reins of this dream and lead it in the way I wish reality had gone. The dream does not listen, and a mutated and twisted version of my past plays before my eyes like the nightmare it is. Melding together the true events and whatever fucked up scenario my mind decides to add this time.

“Sorcia,” I say, her name pulled from my lips like a whispered prayer.

“Shh,” she breathes, silencing me. “It won’t be much longer now, Caden.” She places her finger over my lips, the taste of her skin so familiar to me. She moves, pulling her free hand up, and I think perhaps she means to caress me, but then my eyes snare on the glinting blade she is raising over her head, the point of it aimed directly over my heart.

“Don't do this. Not again,” I plead, agony splitting my voice and my heart in two. I want to cry, to scream, to beg, to do whatever it takes to stop the inevitability of what has already transpired. But there are no words, or maybe I just don’t have the strength to speak them. Most likely the latter. That soft, gentle smile graces her full lips, her eyes shining bright with devotion as she moves her finger and strokes it down my face. I think I have her, for one foolish, love-blinded moment I think I have pulled her back from the brink.