Page 65 of War and his Queen

She’s directly in the middle, her arms to her side and her face on me.

Void. Expressionless.

“Halen…” I step closer, fighting with myself to not rush forward and slap the shit out of her for dipping, only the closer I get, the clearer I see. Her face pales and her pupils bloat until the entirety of her eye looks black.

She collapses as her eyes roll to the back of her head.

I dive forward to catch her before she hits the ground, my arm tensing around her small waist as I lower her down slowly, gripping her chin to force her focus back onto mine.

“What the fuck have you taken today?” I shake her face gently, even though I kind of want to fuck her up to wake her. “Hey! You’re fucking fifteen. Get off the Molly.”

Her eyes split, and when she gazes up at me, my panic subsides.

“You’re a bitch.”

Her mouth curves upward in a smirk. “Maybe. But you caught me anyway.”

My brows tense together, and I look between her eyes and the swell of her lips. The perfect bow dips in the middle, surrounded by skin so polished my fingers itched to touch it. She’s the kind of perfection you want to terrorize because it simply should not exist.

She smiles. She fucking smiles, revealing the two dimples on either side of her cheeks.

“I’ll always fucking catch you, Halen.” I move away from her as we both stand. “That’s the fucking problem.”

They’ve been gone for three hours. I hate them anywhere near this shit, but I respect that they need to be.

“Thoughts on Katsia and her suspicions of the girls?” Priest lowers onto the bed I use while we’re in Perdita. The Hutt is tucked adjacent to the Perdita mansion. When we decided this was how we were going to handle enemies going forward, we knew we’d spend more time here, so we had a shack built on the same property as Katsia’s, without being too close to her.

“You and I both know there’s truth in it—” I push up from the sofa and make my way to the bar cart that’s near the floor-to-ceiling window which overlooks the edge of the cliff and sparse ocean. Right now, it’s showing nothing but darkness, blanketed by the caliginous night. “It’s only a matter of time until everything comes out.” I pop the cork off the bottle of scotch, pouring just enough.

The silence is tumultuous as liquid pirouettes in my glass. Not much bothers me, but the perpetual stench of death that continues to rot at the base of my throat isn’t helping my drinking habits.

Priest leans over the bedside table and swipes his phone. “Let them do it at their pace. I enjoy watching them squirm.”

I raise a brow at him from behind my glass. Alcoholism starts at an early age in our families. Probably has to do with trying to drown out that infamous stench. “You wanna talk about me and Halen?”

His eyes turn cold. “You both knew what you were getting yourself into. I won’t pick sides when shit goes down, because you know shit will go down. You’re both too messy. Too volatile. But there’s a distinct difference between the two of you that I’m not sure either of you have realized.” He plays on his phone, brows knitted in concentration, before tossing it onto the bed. His broad shoulders lift in a shrug. “And the difference is that she needs it more than you do.”

Whiskey rages down my throat and I hiss through the aftermath, placing my glass on the counter as my door swings open.

Vaden lazes through with bloodstains littering his white shirt.

I angle my head. “Been having fun without us?”

Vaden removes his shirt from over his head and flings it into the corner of my room. He wipes his hand over his stomach, which only leaves streaks of cruor on his abs. Plucking one of the bottles from the bar, he drops to the wingback chair in the corner of the room.

“She ran.” Vaden raises the bottle to his lips. He swipes the residue with the back of his hand. “So I chased her.”

Priest and I share a look, before going back to Vaden.

He shrugs. “And then killed her.”

I roll my eyes. “I think we’ve topped our yearly record.”

“Eight isn’t bad.” Priest blows out a cloud of smoke.

“It’s March.”

His teeth glisten through the veil of smoke. “I guess there is that.”

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