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Out Of Turn
My eyes fluttered open, and I groaned against the pounding in my head. I attempted to rub my heavy, stinging eyes, but my arms wouldn't seem to move.
"Scheisse," a masculine voice whispered in the darkness, "she's waking up."
There was a sound of shuffling, and then a blinding pain in the side of my head.
I returned to the dark of unconsciousness.
The next time I awoke, the ache in my head was much worse, but it was the least of my concerns.
I was in an unfamiliar dark room, a dim candle flickering on a small table beside me giving off the only light. I tried to lift a hand to brush the hair from my face, but it didn't move.
I looked down to find my wrists chained to the chair beneath me. My legs were similarly bound. I struggled against the restraints.
"I think you'll find that is of little use," came a familiar voice from the shadows.
I froze and looked to where the voice had come from, unable to discern even the shape of the man in the inky darkness. "W–Who's there?" I hated the unevenness of my voice, the fear.
A humorless chuckle, then he stepped into the light.
A gasp slipped from my lips, dread rapidly replacing the initial shock of the reveal. "Prince Frey?" I asked, incredulous.
His hand shot out to leave a stinging backhand across my cheek. "Keep my name off of your foul lips," he sneered down at me, "you are not worthy of speaking it."
I bit back the whimper as the shock of the blow wore off, leaving behind an aching reminder of the reality of my situation.
He knelt down in front of me, an ugly, sadistic smile twisting his face, a gleam in his pale eyes that sent shivers running down my spine. "You are dirt, do you understand me, little human?"
I didn't answer, and his smile widened before he struck my other cheek, then grabbed my chin in a bruising grip, tilting my face until I had no choice but to meet his cold, blue gaze, "You will answer me when I speak to you. And you will look at me, as you did at the ball. Where has all of that confidence run off to, hmm? You had no problem meeting my gaze then, as if you thought you were somehow an equal."
He leaned in close to my ear to whisper, almost intimately, "Would you like for me to share a secret with you?"
I quickly nodded, afraid another strike would follow if I didn't.
"You will never be an equal," he pulled away to watch me process his words, "Without your little guard dogs, you are nothing. Nothing at all. A bug to be squashed. And, once my brother arrives, we will begin reminding you of your place. Of just how insignificant your puny life is."
"What are you going to do to me?" I couldn't keep the question from spilling out.
His hand lifted sharply in a threatening manner that left me flinching away. He chuckled, slowly bringing that hand down to leave a trailing caress down the side of my face. The moment our skin touched, I felt a sudden exhaustion that was bone deep, "What did I say about speaking out of turn?"
I sucked in a gasping breath at the indescribable sensation of having my very essence leached from me.
Then, another voice rang from the shadows, "Careful brother, if you drain too much from her so early, she won't be nearly as much fun later."
The hand left my face, and I struggled to recover, panting quietly as I scanned the shadows to try to locate Prince Eric. "Why, of course, forgive me. I allowed myself to get carried away."
The vampire Crown Prince stepped forth from the shadows, and my mouth fell open in shock at the sight before me.
He stood proud, though his shirt was nowhere to be seen, his pale skin ghastly in the candlelight. But that was not what drew my attention.
Protruding from his back, near his shoulder blades, jutted massive wings. They were not feathered, but made of a leathery, membranous flesh.
Like the wings of a bat, just as the stories had claimed.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat, unable to tear my gaze from the appendages.
He circled my chair, a look of appraisal plastered to his face, but when he spoke, it was directed to his brother, "Did you forget to tie her back to the chair?"
"No," Frey turned his unsettling eyes on me, "I like it when they can wiggle a bit."
My blood went cold the same moment I felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of my neck.
Eric chuckled, the wings on his back flexing with the action, "Shall we begin, then?"
He disappeared into the shadows, only to return a moment later, dragging a table to a spot behind my chair, where I was unable to see as he slammed something down on the wood.
There was no mistaking the sound of metal clinking against metal.
In a panic, I did the only thing I could do to try to stall the inevitable. I spoke, risking another slap if it meant postponing the use of whatever tools he planned to use on me. "You won't get away with this," I tried, "Gianluca will know it was you that took me. He'll come looking. But, it's not too late to stop now, I'll make sure it doesn't affect the trea–" Frey's slap was expected, but it didn't keep the pain from sinking in.
Eric smiled at my pained grimace when I finally turned my head back from where it had ended after the strike. I couldn't decide which sibling terrified me more. "Since you seem so certain that your mate will come to rescue you, I'll let you in on a very important piece of information you don't know."
I waited, heart beating loudly in my ears.
"Your prince will never make it to you in time to save your life." Whatever he saw in my eyes brought a smirk to his lips, "He was in a meeting, negotiating the treaty while my brother poisoned your tea and took you from your room. I made sure to keep him prattling on about the importance of peace and unity until well into the night, much too late to visit you in your separate room. He won't even know you are gone until the morning. We have quite a few hours to play before that time."
"He'll know it was you." I flinched, preparing for a strike that never came, instead Frey emerged from behind me, carrying in his hands a cruel, jagged dagger, twisting it between his fingers. A threat and a promise.
I couldn't tear my gaze from the blade as Eric spoke to me, "That may be true, but by then we'll have covered our tracks and he will have no proof to back his claims. To accuse princes of Geistreich of such a crime without evidence would be the end of his precious treaty."
"But, why risk it?" It was stupid to ask so many questions when it was clear that Frey was looking for any excuse to hurt me, but it made no sense to me. Their kingdom was full of humans that they could torment without repercussion, so why me?
Frey crouched down beside me, but I kept my eyes on his brother and away from the gleaming weapon in his hand. I refused to beg for mercy, even if it was the last thing I did. "Why, to test your mate of course," Eric said, as if it were obvious. "Our kingdom has little interest in a treaty with a weak ruler. His relationship with you makes him weak, he has proven that with his obsession with his human rights laws. We can't risk letting this ridiculous ideology spread to the rest of the kingdoms."
"This is because humans in this kingdom are getti–" My sentence was cut short when Frey dragged the tip of the dagger down my arm. It was slow, like a lover's caress, but it broke the skin nonetheless.
"What did I say about speaking out of turn?" He asked, sadistic smile beaming down at me.
Eric tsked. "My youngest brother always was such a stickler for rules," he told me, "but I will answer your question, regardless." He paced before me, "This," he shot Frey an almost imperceptible nod and I whimpered as the blade ran another shallow cut along my arm, the blood beading along the line, "is because you needed to know your place."
He knelt down beside his brother, smiling down at the single drop of blood that had splattered onto the uneven cement ground. "At the ball the other night, you pranced around like you were our equals. You even had that idiot Kristof referring to you as luna." I winced as he dragged a finger along one of the fresh cuts on my arm, drawing a casual swirling pattern in my blood while he spoke, "You dared to look us in the eye and speak to us as if we were equals. We will never be equals. You are livestock, nothing more."
Frey brought the dagger back to my skin, "And now we will bleed you like livestock."
He pressed the dagger into my arm, and I couldn't help but cry out from the burning pain of it. This cut was deeper than the others, and nearly ran the length of my forearm wrist to elbow.
There was so much blood, I felt the bile rise in my throat, but choked it back. It was a cut meant to kill.
Just as he raised the blade from my skin, seemingly pleased with his handiwork, a door that had been hidden in the shadows slammed open letting in a stream of light that blinded me for a moment.
Then two figures took form in the open doorway, sending my heart beating into overdrive, and a reverberating growl that I had heard only once before shook the room.
Gianluca and Matteo had arrived.