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Sunny lifted a single shoulder before meeting my eye. “You’re his mate. He knew it the moment he saw you in that study. He’d have given you anything you wanted had you asked it of him.”
Sunny’s words leveled me.
And I didn’t know what to do with any of it.
I stared at the ground, fingers tingly and head spinning.
I had to get out of there. I needed to talk to someone. Someone that wasn’t a part of this craziness.
“I’ve gotta go, Sunny. I need some space to think about things.”
She stiffened, her tablet falling in her lap. “There’s plenty of space in the compound, Eden. I’m sure you can—”
“Sunny, I need to go. Away from here.” I needed Jaxson. I needed to tell him everything. We could sort this out, now that I knew we didn’t have to keep secrets.
“Eden, you know I can’t let you leave the compound. Not with everything you know, and especially not now that the kings are discussing the endgames.”
“Sunny, I don’t know what that means, and honestly, I don’t really care. I need to go. I need to be in my own space. Work at my job and talk to my friends. I’ll come back. I just need some time to process.”
Sunny’s bottom lip went right in her mouth. “Eden, I’m so sorry. I can’t let you leave. King Julian left strict instructions.”
My body stiffened, humming like a swarm of hornets just under my skin. The sensation roared through me and now that I was aware of what it could do, what that sensation was, I felt it ten times more.
Ten times more aware that all I had to do to make it stop, to get what I wanted, was set it free.
The idea was intoxicating—making Sunny do what I wanted.
Not what Julian ordered.
I didn’t.
I shoved it all back down, forcing the buzz back into the same ephemeral box I kept my magnetism and compulsion in.
I wouldn’t compel my friends, and I wouldn’t dominate other vampires. Living or not. Whether they were wrong or not. Whether I liked what they wanted or not. I wouldn’t cross that line.
I’d done it too many times before.
I had compelled people to stand silent and still while I drank away their lives. Or compelled them to forget I’d drunk from them at all when I thought I’d gotten the bloodlust under control.
I hadn’t.
It had only ever been a stop-gap.
Compulsion was a door I could only risk unlocking in dire circumstances. Like Roofie Chad. Otherwise, I was afraid I’d slip down that slope and end up face-first in a human’s carotid with no idea how I got there.
“Fine. But you’re showing me the nicest, best, biggest room.”
Sunny face brightened. “Of course.” A mischievous smile lifted her lips. “How about I show you to the king’s room?”
Fifteen
If the courtyardwas dead center, and the wing with the Tzarina’s Cooch Diamond, which was now safely stashed in a small safe in my apartment, was at about seven o’clock, then the king’s wing was at noon.
But as much as I was curious about the other wings, Sunny had deposited me neatly in the center of the royal pain in my ass’s bedroom, so I took it upon myself to exercise mymatelyduty and make sure his room was fit for, well, a king.
And by that I mean I snooped the fucking hell out of it.
I put my hands on or in everything. Every drawer, every pocket, everything.
