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“It is,” he confirmed, and I realized I had spoken my thoughts out loud. Aurelius inspected his nails—flawless andpristine, just like the rest of him. If only that shiny, golden, charming exterior wasn’t the exact opposite of what lurked beneath—a rotting, infested corpse that served only himself.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to fight.
I wanted to do something—anything.
But I couldn’t do a damn thing because like my heart, my body had betrayed me.
His lips thinned. “Don’t look at me like that, Aurelia. I am not the monster I can see you making me out to be.”
“You are raping and killing women. I fail to see how that doesn’t make you a monster,” I said, my voice too calm—just as he had commanded me to be.
He laughed at that. “Although I am immortal, I do not possess the stamina to breed so many. For some, all that is necessary for them to conceive is my touch over their abdomen. I am the God of Life after all.”
“And for the ones that do not conceive that way?” I said, the anger behind my words lost to my soft tone.
“You forget that I am the King of the New Gods, and that the vast majority of Edenvale praises my name.” He leveled my gaze. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a female that isn’t willing to go to bed with me once they learn who I am. Your lady’s maid, the strawberry blonde, included.”
No. . .
The morning Aurelius left for the countryside was the same morning Cataline had left to go home—or so Brunhilde had led me to believe. I thought of the never-ending line up of carriages. There had been so many.
Cataline would have been in one of those carriages—possibly scared and afraid.
If I could have vomited, I would have.
“You are disgusting,” I said, much too monotone.
Aurelius chuckled. “You didn’t seem to think so that morning before my departure.”
Once again, I regretted sleeping with another male.
And once again, Von had been right. His words sounded in my head—you have horrible taste in men. Truly. Truly, I did. The bastard was right.
Aurelius rose from the bed, took the goblet from the bedstand, and walked over to the bar area. He left the goblet there, a smear of blood dried on the rim, for one of the housemaids to clean up.
“The dressmaker . . . Why didn’t you take her with the other women?” I asked.
His eyes, as luminescent as the glow of the morning sun before it emerged above the horizon, shifted to mine. “Because, just like you, she was cursed to be barren. Once I learned that, I lost interest in her.”
A cacophony of bells rang out, severing our conversation instantly. The ringing was so loud, the castle trembled. But Aurelius’s expression was unperplexed. If the loudness of the bells bothered his immortal hearing, he didn’t let on.
The chiming bells lasted thrice as long as it did for morning praise.
After they stopped, I asked, “What’s going on?”
“Those are coronation bells, princess.” He smiled an ethereally handsome smile, the architecture of his features . . . breathtaking. Not that I could say the same for what was on the inside. “Edenvale looks forward to welcoming its new king. In precisely one hour’s time.”
“And I suppose that would be you.” My tone still sounded like the morning waters of a lake—flat and calm.
“You are correct,” he said proudly, not a single strand of silky-white hair moving out of place as he walked to the side of the bed. He carried perfect posture, his broad shoulders setback. White lashes flickered, his gaze falling to mine. “A new dawn is upon us. As Edenvale’s king, I will make good on my word. I will march my army to the east, to the Cursed Lands, and there, I will wipe the slate clean.”
Ezra, Harper, Ryker, Lyra, and Graiyson—their smiling faces flashed through my mind. The prisoners and everyone who occupied the Cursed Lands . . .
They would all be gone.
“Please do not do this, Aurelius,” I pleaded far too softly. I turned to the only bargaining chip I had. “If you unchain me, I will figure out a way to bring the Endless Mist down. Think of it, you could go back to the Immortal Realm then.”
