But shit...starts to go down before we even leave the room.
The king bursts in, red-faced and panting, and behind him, there’s the tall, dark man with yellow eyes and a pinched but handsome face. There’s a weight behind those eyes that makes my stomach drop.
“Rumpel,” Vyce says, smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t sound worried, but there’s a tightness to his shoulders that’s scaring the shit out of me.
“Vyce,” the man says, pushing the king into the room with a hand on his lower back. Vesnic looks at me like I’m twice as weird as I was before. Fantastic. What the hell is going on now? “Sorrow, Wolfe. I’d like to apologize to you,” Rumpel says as the king just stands there and glares at me with something odd and unreadable in his eyes. “But your bargain.” Rumpel twirls his hand in the air my stomach drops. “Is null and void. Not only is this woman already royal, but she already belongs to me.”
He smiles at me as I feel my stomach drop.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sorrow asks, stepping up beside me, almost protectively. But no fucking way. No way a dude I’ve known for a handful of days gives two shits about me. I’m on my own here.
“This is the daughter of the last Verenim king, and Vesnic’s sister.” Rumpel delivers this news like it doesn’t mean shit, but I swear to God, I almost pass out right then and there. I can’t breathe; my throat is tight. White spots dance in front of my eyes as I struggle to get out a single word.
“Mom was already pregnant when you made the deal with her,” I choke out and Rumpel smiles. I don’t care that I’ve just confirmed that he’s right. Doesn’t matter. The second he decided to come here, he knew. There wasn’t going to be a chance to lie. My only hope now is to run...or fight.
“No, she wasn’t,” Rumpel says with a long sigh, like this is all a serious inconvenience to him. “She became queen with the use of my magic, became pregnant with the king’s child, and then she ran.” He takes a few steps toward me and leans down to look into my face.
It takes everything I have inside of me not to lunge at him.
“Not only do I already own you, my dear,” Rumpel says as Vyce and Wolfe exchange a glance over my head. “But you are in breach of contract and yet, you used the magic I gave you anyway.” He reaches out to touch my chin, but I jerk my head away.
I’m only going to have one chance to run here.
One chance.
And then it’ll all be over.
“So I’m taking what’s rightfully mine,” he continues, nodding to the three Stiltz boys in turn. “You’re dismissed,” he tells them, just before I turn and run as fast as I can toward the open window. I can survive a fall like this. But so can he. Still, it’s the closet exist and the only one that isn’t blocked.
But I don’t make it that far.
Instead, Rumpel’s fingers tangle in my hair and jerk me back. Magic washes over me in a wave and I collapse to my knees. The last things I see before I pass out...are the three faces of Rumpel Stiltz’ kin, men that I’m coming to like...but who I’ve had no chance to love.
I pass out before I have the opportunity to count my many, many regrets.
The smell of decaying leaves teases my nostrils, making me sneeze as I come to and sit up, blinking into the solid blackness of a forest. The city never gets this dark, not even when I'm hunting a badass undead vamp and all the streetlights go out, all dramatic and shit. They like to do that, vampires, cause all that drama.
"Where the fuck..." I start, just before it all comes back to me.
Rumpel Stiltz.
He knows who I am.
Chills chase across my skin as I wrap my arms around my chest and squint against the faint flicker of a fire. The flames are an unnatural blue-green color, and there's no heat coming from it at all. In fact, it feels colder in that direction and to be quite frank, it's cold as fuck out here.
I don't bother asking where I am or what's going to happen to me, blah, blah, blah. What's the point? The bad guy found me after all these years and it's over. It's over. Harry was right. Hopefully when he has a drink and toasts my memory, it'll be something that's properly mixed and doesn't taste like gin and tequila. Either that or a nice, clean Scotch. Shit, I hope he marries Miri and they make cute little ogre mixed breed babies together.
As I adjust myself, I feel the thick, heavy length of rope at my ankles. When I reach down to touch it though, there's nothing there, just magic.
"Fucking hell," I curse, putting the palm of my hand up to my forehead. I'm still dressed in that nightgown from earlier, sans panties. I can feel the wet, mucky ground leaching through the silk and soaking my ass and cunt. It's beyond uncomfortable.
As my eyes adjust to the darkness, layering the forest in fifty shades of gray (see what I did there?), I notice a pair of yellow eyes watching me from a nearby tree stump. Rumpel Stiltz was a handsome man in his day, and although he's an immortal undead vampire, he's been through a whole hell of a lot of shit. Magic has twisted his face into something unrecognizable, scars from battles with mages or faeries or angels that can't be reversed.
To say he's repulsive would be an understatement. Not only is his face reminiscent of melted candle wax, but his smile is dark and empty of emotion, and those eyes...I can't look away from them. My guess? He was wearing a glamour when he confronted me in the castle and now, this is his true form. It's hard to go around such beautiful people looking like a monster. Trust me, I know that from personal experience.
"Your mother..." Rumpel begins with a long sigh, his voice as beautiful as his fake face was just hours earlier. Or, at least I think that was mere hours ago. It's hard to say, considering I passed the fuck out in my attempt to flee. Some badass heroine I am. "She was clever, wasn't she? Just enough to be impervious to magic. That's a one in a million trait, you know. It means you're quite special."
I tuck my legs to the side, like a mermaid. They might be bound together, but I can still move them. Inside my chest, I can feel that constant running trickle of magic that Sorrow broke open with a single kiss. I know it's not enough to fight this man though, not even close. But if I could get by myself a small opening to escape, that should do the trick, right?
"Can we bypass the whole bad guy speech and just get on with it? You going to kill me or what?"
"Kill you?" Rumpel asks, rising from the stump with unnatural movements. His legs don't look right. Instead, they seem to be bent backward at the knees, like a cricket or something. I find that I can't look away as he hops down and moves over to me, yellow eyes sparkling. His pupils are the square shape of a goat's and they're freaking me the fuck out. "I've been searching for you for over two decades. What a waste that would be. Besides, you have such useful skills."
"Sooo," I started, reaching up to pick rotten leaves from my hair. They're wet and slimy from the recent rain; my stupid curly hair doesn't want to let them go. Plus, I mean, I don't just have freshly fucked hair today, I have orgy hair. Orgy hair is substantially more tangled and hard to deal with. "Why did you drag me out into the middle of a dark and ominous forest?"
"Does that get you far in life?" Rumpel asks, reaching out and taking a handful of my hair in his long, gnarled fingers. "Being clever like that? Because I don't find it amusing." He jerks me forward and stares into my face for the longest time.