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My brow furrows. This guy thinks he’s in a kingdom? I glance around the room again and it all starts to make sense. I’ve been kidnapped by some cult. It’s the only explanation. “Look, whatever you’re about here, I don’t want anything to do with it. Can you please just let me go?”
The man on the throne stands and the people seated around him rise. He walks toward me, the dark blue fabric of his shirt shimmering in the rainbow light of the stained glass. “Your mother didn’t tell you anything, did she?”
“My mother is dead,” I say, more defensively than I intended.
“I know, that’s why you are here.” He’s standing in front of me now and I realize for the first time exactly how tall he is. I have to lift my chin to meet his gaze.
His expression is cold and his eyes feel like they’re penetrating me. It’s unnerving.
I swallow hard and self-consciously tug on the bottom of my shirt, playing with the fabric in-between my fingers.
“Harper Love, your mother made a deal with me. Twenty years of freedom in exchange for eternal servitude as repayment.”
“My mom killed herself,” I say. “So whatever your freaky cult wants with her, it’s too late.”
“Her life was not hers to take,” the man says. “She belonged to me.”
I’m starting to understand better about why my mom felt like taking her life was her only option. Was this guy sending her threats? “People don’t belong to other people.”
He grins. “Your mom wasn’tpeople.Your mom was an angel.”
“Is that some kind of pet name? Cause I know my mom got around, but if she owed you something, that’s not my problem,” I say.
“Your highness.” The violet-eyed man next to me bows. “She was hanging out with humans when I found her. I suspect she knows nothing of our ways.”
I frown. It’s bad enough that these assholes brought me here after killing my friends but this dude thinks he’s a king? “Look, I’m going to go now.”
“Adrian,” the king drawls.
I turn and someone grabs my upper arm. Adrian, as I now know the violet-eyed man is called, has a tight grip on me. “Let me go.”
“Where will you go?” he asks.
“Home,” I say. “To clean up the mess you made and grieve for my friends.”
“She grieves the dead humans?” the king asks.
“I told you,” Adrian says. “She has no idea.”
I tug my arm out of his grip. “You killed my best friends and you’re both insane.”
“Sit down.” The words come from the king. Booming and filled with an authority that scares me down to my bones. It only makes me want to run more. Instead, my body betrays me and I’m walking toward one of the pews. I try to resist but searing pain spreads through my body and I scream.
“You can fight me, but it’ll only make it hurt more,” he says.
Glaring at him, I sit on the bench. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Silence,” he says, throwing that same authority behind the word.
I try to open my mouth, but my lips are glued together. Heat grows low in my gut as anger simmers inside me. I want to lash out against this man. I want to run from him but I also want to make him hurt.
The emotions startle me and hot tears prickle the back of my eyes. Since when was I the type to jump straight to violence? The thoughts make me feel guilty even after what they’ve done to my friends. I’m not like that. I’m not like them.
“As I was saying,” the king says. “Your mother owed me a debt of servitude after I helped her remove her wings and escape her bonds as an angel. Even death cannot break you from that punishment. So as her only heir, it falls to you.”
“She will not serve you well,” Adrian says. “She might as well be just a human.”
My brows knit together and I look at him. Is he trying to defend me? Or is he just mad he didn’t get to kill me when his partner killed my friends.
