Total pages in book: 230
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Tobias drew back, and I could practically feel his gaze roam over my chest and then my stomach, and I knew what he saw. Not smooth, unmarred skin. Pale, shiny scars that covered the entirety of my stomach. Teeth marks. Multiple ones that had healed and faded to a shade or two lighter than my normal skin. Deep groves made by sharpened claws. All of them a permanent reminder of the night nearly two years ago when the fae who’d supported the defeated Winter Queen had sought bloody vengeance and commenced wholesale slaughter. They hadn’t even fed on us. They’d just wanted us to hurt.
And we did.
The night my mother, who had already suffered so much at the hands of the fae, had died, nearly ripped apart by their teeth and claws.
The night I should’ve died.
His hands clenched my hips, digging into my skin. “What the hell?”
I lowered my chin as he tugged on the chain and the small, circle medallion pulled free from the dress. I knew the exact moment he recognized the encased four-leaf clover. Tobias knew what that meant.
I wasn’t under his glamour.
Tobias’s pale, furious gaze flew to mine. I smiled then. “Remember me?”
Powerful muscles coiled underneath me as recognition flared in those eyes, but I was faster than I had been that night, than I had been for my entire life, and the Order had gotten smarter at hiding our weapons. I twisted my right wrist and the wide cuff bracelet disengaged a collapsible iron stake. The deadly metal shot out over the palm of my hand. Clutching his shoulder, I jabbed my right arm out, slamming the iron stake deep into the fae’s chest.
Surprise parted his lips as he gasped out, “Bitch.”
“Yeah.”
Then it happened.
As quick as a heartbeat, the sick bastard collapsed into himself as he was sucked back into the Otherworld, locked away and as good as dead to me. Falling forward, I caught myself on the back of the chair, my knees slipping across the cushion. I disengaged the stake, hearing the mechanical click as it folded back into the bracelet.
Dragging in a deep breath, I held it as I squeezed my eyes shut. There had been five of them that had found my mother and me. Five of them that had gone after an old woman and her daughter. Three were now as good as dead, and that left two more. A fae and a—
An odd thump hit the wall outside of the room, causing my eyes to snap open. Pushing off the back of the chair, I spun around and dragged the straps of my dress up my arms. There was a hoarse shout and then the sound of the door unlocking from the outside was like cannon fire in the room.
Damn it. I hadn’t planned on anyone coming in this quickly. I needed time to—
The door swung open, and terror poured into my chest as I saw who filled the entirety of the doorway. It was….
It was the Prince.
CHAPTER 4
The fae didn’t scare me anymore, not like they used to, but this one… this one terrified and enthralled me in ways I couldn’t understand. Ways in which I really didn’t even want to try to figure out.
Air lodged in my throat as his gaze immediately zeroed in on me, and I didn’t need to pretend to be entranced. I was frozen, rooted to the chair by invisible vines.
I hadn’t seen him in what felt like forever, and I wasn’t even sure that I had seen him at the hospital after the attack or if that was some kind of bizarre hallucination. I’d been on a lot of powerful drugs. I didn’t even know he was still in New Orleans. I’d figured he’d gone to Florida, to the community his brother oversaw.
The Prince was what was called an Ancient, fae that had lived for hundreds of years, if not more, and were not only capable of a hell of lot more than a normal fae was, but they were nearly impossible to kill. Stabbing them with iron did absolutely nothing beyond pissing them off. You couldn’t send them back to the Otherworld. You had to kill them, and that was only accomplished by separating the head from the body.
And good luck with that.
Ancients were the most powerful of the fae and they could be Knights or Princesses or Princes or Queens.
Or a King.
They didn’t look like a fae. Their skin wasn’t silvery and the point to their ears was hardly noticeable, which enabled them to blend in with humans and escape the Order’s detection until it was too late.
He was supposed to be good, so why in the hell was he here, at Flux, in a club frequented by the enemy—his enemy?
The Prince cocked his golden head to the side while my heart threw itself against my ribs. Did he recognize me? There was no way. I was well disguised, even beyond the wig. I’d discovered that I had a flair for makeup. I basically reshaped the features of my face with contouring and a keen eye and steady hand.