AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Definitely an intentional ploy sent by the queen. But why? For someone who pretends to value all life, this seems a bit extreme. Though I suppose if I kill the girl, the queen will simply tell herself it was an accident. That she wasn’t at all involved.
If I kill the girl.
I wait for the shudder, to recoil at my own morose thoughts, but it seems I’ll be waiting forever.
“Did the queen send you?” I ask. My neck cranes to the side as I focus on the red blotch staining the girl’s collarbone.
The girl nods, and it causes her neck to fold right around where her pulse gently hammers.
“Did she say why?” I ask.
The girl swallows, her pale throat bobbing. “No, miss. Just that she thought you might be hungry.”
I frown at that. Surely the queen isn’t sending me a gift out of the goodness of her heart. It seems more likely that this is some ploy to get me to break, to drive me to kill. To force Nox to see me for what I really am, for what he made me.
Perhaps she hopes that if I become a murderer, Nox will despise me.
It seems like a fairly hypocritical take, considering Nox is a murderer himself, but given the queen’s opaque view of her own faults, I wouldn’t put it past her to assume everyone else possesses the same lack of self-reflection.
“You should probably go,” I say, my voice silky, if not tinged with disappointment.
There’s nothing I want more than to rip into this girl’s throat, but given that’s exactly what the queen wants from me, I think I’ll pass.
My stomach can twist into knots, my canines can rot from my gums before I’ll make a move that might bring that female any satisfaction.
But when the girl turns to go, something primal takes over. Something that sees the prey beginning to run and reminds me I’m the predator.
That this is my natural right.
Her blood is my natural right.
Heady desire floods my veins, burning with rage as the girl practically flees to the door.
I make it to the threshold before she does.
It’s as easy as sidestepping, and though she was several paces ahead of me, I block her path.
Fear bulges in her already wide brown eyes, and there’s something about it I find displeasing, so I say, “Sh. Don’t fret. It won’t hurt.”
I know this to be the case, yet it tastes like a lie.
The girl stills, and fear drains from her cheeks. She even cranes her neck to the side, exposing her artery like she’s offering me dessert to go with my dinner platter.
My canines expand, my mouth salivating.
“Just a sip won’t hurt, don’t you think?” I ask, though I’m not sure who I’m asking. The girl is soothed enough by my compulsion that she can’t exactly tell me no.
She can’t tell me no.
The thought barrels through me, snapping my bloodlust at its roots, pouring icy water over my head, spilling it through my burning veins.
“Get out of here,” I tell her, and she does.
I have to dig my fingernails into the stone walls to keep from chasing her, and when her scent fades from my senses, I fling myself across the room and down the bowl of lamb’s blood lying stagnant on the floor.
In the end,the lamb’s blood does its job. It doesn’t quite quench the cravings, but it does assuage them, and I’m able to redirect my mind from the servant girl, who I’m still fairly sure I could track down if I wanted to.
I do want to, but I won’t.
