“And I bring you peace.” I turn my head into his bicep, nuzzle his warm skin, and inhale his scent to store that along with his words. “You’re at odds with peace, but I see it.”

“I am not at odds with peace.” His gaze rolls over me, soft but pained. “I am suspicious of it. If I let it live inside me, even when with you, my humanity will not survive losing it.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” I whisper, drifting.

I think I might be in love with you, and that is quite fine. I can love you now and wish you farewell when the time comes.

Senseless for him in this moment, high on him and us and everything we are right now, that when he moves away from me, I almost lunge for his arm. But I do not.

He stands, then slides the gold sheet over my body, looking down at me, defiance moving in his blue eyes.

What did I do?

I sit, the sheet sliding down again, exposing my nipples to the bite of air. “My king…?”

My hope gutters as he stares at me, eyes empty and cold, his looming figure a brawny, detached silhouette.

“Nothing lasts forever?” He chuckles coldly. “Very well. Tomorrow night, little creature. No need for the veil. I want you gazing into my eyes when I fuck you, when it hurts, so you remember me when I send you away.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Eighteen

Rome

The Missing Moon must be at its highest peak in the sky, though I can’t see but a muddied glow of its presence.

I avoid sleep, her, and “nothing lasts forever.”

How willing she is to accept this. How brutal her words were after I shared my need for her. Dammit—that ‘I breathe better with her.’ Fuck.

And she will retire to a Sired Mother, leave this dark, murderous chasm I carry around, and take all my air away, leave me suffocating on her memory…

‘Nothing lasts forever’ imbeds deeper than a bullet.

Well, that is quite fine, little Silk Girl. The perfect product of The Trade. Not an individual.

Not mine… But theirs.

I snarl. I told her I would kill the man who interrupted us, in turn, it was me. Always me. Self-hate found a home within me the day Tuscany was mutilated, and it’s been breeding ever since. I no longer recognise it as hatred, but as a part of me.

She must already see it.

Must already want to be rid of it.

Soft, rhythmic music sails through the piazza, coiling around my entertainers, moving them to its seductive rhythm. They share intimate encounters. Dancers, House Girls, clad in barely-there slips of fabric, touch each other and moan.

I lean forward on the throne, rubbing my jawline, watching them, finding them boring, unattractive, even. Pointless. This entire hedonistic last-moment gathering was my attempt to sabotage whatever feelings I have before it is too late and I am unwilling to let her go.

A memory slams into my mind, further foregrounding everything I expect from her once she sees me for who I am, once she sees the bleak, black chasm of my heart.

My bloodied hands shake with rage and my teeth bare on a growl as I enter Tuscany’s quarters with the dripping head of our father.

I scan the room, and, as always, the bed is made and empty. The kitten she was gifted months ago is now taxidermized on her nightstand.

I stomp into the bathroom.

With her back to me, she lays in the glossy ceramic bathtub, her slender arms draped over the lips; the water is as still as her body.

A hysterical scream bounces around the small, tiled bathroom as a member of The Queen’s Army gapes at the severed head of their king in the tight fist of their prince.

But Tuscany doesn’t even flinch.

So I storm forward, circling the tub, towering at the foot of it, angry at myself for leaving her that night, furious at The Trade.

As lost as her.

I have our revenge.

You can get up now, Tuscany.

I lick the blood gushing down my jaw from a talon-deep wound that carved my lower lip to my chin. The metallic taste stokes my hatred.

So, I hold the head out for my sweet, broken sister and slowly, she lifts her blank regard to meet the lifeless eyes of her father, of her betrayer.

She blinks once. “Rome.”

“Not anymore. Now, they will call me Sire.”

“He was your father, Rome.” Unmoved, she looks down, her gaze disappearing into the bath, swimming in her watery grave.

She gives me nothing for my offering, not standing and shaking off the sorrow, not throwing her arms around me and thanking me for her revenge, not healing, not⁠—

I drop the head into the bathtub.

A long hiss of anger presses through my teeth, hatred becoming a solid form in my very cells. “I did it for you!”

She stares blankly at the bobbing head as the dangling veins move like tentacles in the water between her knees, marbling the clear fluid with their blood-red ink.

Then she peers up at me.

The disappointment in her broken eyes shoves me backward a step. After what I’ve just done. This is for her. This is her revenge. To lift her up, to bring her back.

To bring her back to me.

Shocked, I empty my humanity.

My soul blackens against her gaze.

“Very well.” I lift the head from the bath. “I’ll give it to Cairo,” I snarl. “He can put it in a glass case, store it next to the vase that holds your womb.”

“Sire?”

Slowly, I lean back into my throne and ram the memory down. With a long, rough breath, I turn my chin to acknowledged Aster’s Watcher.

“Speak up,” I say to her.

She leans into my ear so I can hear her over the hypnotic music that matches the writhing bodies in front of me. “You asked for an update on Aster. Her basal body temperature dropped since yesterday, Sire. It's unlikely she'll be in prime condition to breed tomorrow night. I will repeat the routine again in three weeks after her body runs a natural cycle.”

Relief and anger both war to respond to her soft, nervous whispers. “Very well,” I state.

“Do you—” She hesitates and then swallows. “Do you wish to know about the other Silk Girls?”

A girl in front of me paws at another young thing’s breasts, and I feel nothing. “You know that I do not,” I answer, never removing my eyes from the spectacle, challenging the erotic scene to get me hard… like she can. “You don’t need to pretend. You know who she is. So shut the gossip down. And if anyone speaks her name in hushed tones, in corners, you come to me.”

Her exhale is heavy. “Not Master Cairo?

“He will not be back for a few months.”

“I understand, Sire.”

“Good. You can leave.”

And so can I. If she is no longer ovulating, I can accompany the CR Guard to the Black Matter Mines, show them my support for their Meaningful Purpose, and gift them some House Girls. I glare at the sleazy creatures ahead of me. Obviously, they are no use to me anymore.

“Paisley,” Kong calls from his station behind me. “You look exhausted.”

“I haven't slept well,” she says from a small distance away, and I turn my head to stare at her for the first time this night. Dark bitten-moons cup her hollow eyes.

“Perhaps she should take a break now, Sire,” Kong offers. “She's not needed around at all hours to monitor the Silk Girl. Now is the right time.”

I shut it down. “She is needed at all hours.”

With a polite bow, she walks away, and I prepare myself for Kong’s imminent insight.