Desecrated Beauty (Twisted Fairy Tales #1) (17 page)

A knot of tension balled in Quill’s stomach and she pulled her stake from her jeans again, feeling better the moment it was in her hand. She kept a tight grip on it as she entered slowly behind him, looking around the room taking in everyone who was standing there just staring at her.

“
Father.
”
Her throat tightened instantly as her eyes fell over the familiar figure that had once towered over her to incite fear. The general nodded his head, just the smallest of a smirk playing on his features before she looked at Nero. He was sitting casually in a winged back chair, nursing one of his mixtures of wine and blood. She wasn’t sure when she had grown so accustomed to his facial expressions that she could note the tension in his casual grin, but it was there. She could read him so perfectly now, knowing that while he looked comfortable on the outside he was far from being just that. Instinctively her hand wrapped tighter around her stake as she stopped by Clovis’ side.

“
I’m glad you could join us, Isabelle.
”
Her eyes jumped to the third man in the room looking as smug as her father did beside him, but this time she noted the similarities between him and Nero. They both had the same angular nose, a chiseled jaw that came down and was finished off with full rosy lips and dark soulful eyes that spoke of horrors she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“
You may call me Manning.
”

“
Manning?
”
She couldn’t help the tone of incredulity that slipped out in her question. It wasn’t the name she was expecting from someone supposedly old enough to be a Viking. Although he did look the part.

“
The powerful and valiant.
”

“
Ah, right, of course,” she said rolling her eyes as she looked at Nero. This time his amusement was real as he watched her, but there was still a tension lingering in his body language like he knew the dangerous line she was toeing.
“
Listen, I hate beating around the bush. Let’s jump right into why I’m here, or why you’ve taken your own son hostage and what I can do to free him.
”

“
Nero isn’t a hostage, he’s here willingly, aren’t you son?
”

“
About as willing as a whore.
”
He sipped his drink and she looked back at Manning and then to her father.

“
Crude, but fair. As I taught you.
”
Manning lost no smugness as he carried on,
“
well, as you are familiar the agency has diverged from the plan that was developed for them when we originally created the city. I am apt to blame the Desecrated, they have a foul habit of ruining things they don’t understand the bigger picture of. The agency was created to keep the humans within the cities walls, obviously they have failed and in their failure grown far too curious and power-hungry for their own good. It was necessary that we right their wrongs and among that is the council and their errors.
”

“
Okay,
”
she said with a frown, glancing at Nero.
“
And what does that have to do with the two of us? Nero and I want nothing to do with the city or the council. We’ve lived away from it all-
”

“
You are our legacies.
”
Her father cut her off and she turned to look at him with narrowed eyes.

“
I’m nothing like you.
”

He laughed,
“
on the contrary I believe you’ll find you’re quite a bit like me.
”

“
No, I’m not. I have a heart - and a soul - and most importantly a conscience.” She tried to feign conviction if only to convince herself.

“
Do you?
”
he asked with interest.
“
Nero was telling us all about your
“
relationship
”
and you seemed quite reluctant, in his tales, to give him your heart. He also spoke about your ability to kill a man without blinking and how that is what most attracted you to him when we first introduced you.
”

“
You didn’t introduce us, Nero was stalking me.
”

“
Actually, you met before you ran away from home. You probably don’t remember as you were quite young but after that, knowing you were to be his, he has been watching you.
”

“
No.
”
She shook her head looking at Nero with a frown. He was frowning too but not arguing.
“
That’s not true, is it?
”

“
I knew that you were to be my subscriber, but I never expected you to turn out to be my mate.
”

“
Yes, that was a convenient turn of events I have to say. One that truly is in our favour. Once you are both fully mated, and you turned Isabelle dear, you will be an unstoppable force.
”

“
You will rule an empire that we have forged before your feet.
”
It was Nero’s turn to glare as he turned to look at his father with contempt.

“
I have ruled an empire for you before and we both know how that turned out.
”

“
You were ill prepared at the time. Essentially a child who I put on a throne before he was ready. But the wars we ravaged and the people...
”
Manning’s eyes glinted in remembrance.

“
I don’t want it. I never have and now, I won’t have it. Like Isabelle said: we want to live away from all of this, we want nothing to do with the council or this so-called empire. We just want to be with each other, right?
”
He turned to look at her again, but she felt sick. He had known all along they were going to be forced together. He hadn’t told her any of this, it was just another set of lies and misleading information he had given her.

“
I don’t know anymore.
”

“
Isabelle... Listen to me. None of this was done of my volition. They plotted behind my back, this is why I lived out of the city walls. I wanted to be free of my father’s tyranny. But Clovis...
”
Nero looked at his manservant with a hatred that burned through her, forged by their connection,
“
betrayed me. Set us both up. He ran off and told our fathers we had begun to mate, he was the one that arranged for my capture and helped them plan all of this. He put himself in that home to wait for you because your father knew you would look there, sooner or later. This is all them, not me, I swear it to you.
”

She could feel the earnestness of his words and how much he worried the words and explanation wouldn’t be enough through the bond. She frowned, hearing her father speak but the blood in her ears was pounding too hard she couldn’t hear him.

“
All my life-
”
she cut him off, turning every pair of eyes to her.
“
All my life you have dictated what I will do and how I will be. I was nothing more than your puppet and trying so hard to be a good daughter, but it still wasn’t enough. I wasn’t perfect enough, strong enough, or smart enough; so you tried to beat it into me. Your cruelty, your cold heart, your will to survive before anyone else. I watched you kill my mother slowly, burn terror into my little sister while you beat me near to death and you expect me to turn around now and forgive you? Go along with this asinine plan to rule the world? Are you that stupid or are you just blind enough to all of your imperfections and shortcomings that you can’t see that to them- to all of them, you are disposable. Whatever empire you think you’ll rule through us, your little puppets and prodigies, you will die before you live to see it. None of them would ever consider turning a snake like you into one of them. They would be fools to give you a weapon that you would just drive into their backs when they weren’t looking. You’re a sad, pathetic man and I will always hate you for what you did to my family. I may share your blood, but that’s the only thing I will share with you. It will be a cold day in hell before I bow down and let you use me and Nero on some ridiculous contrived power trip.
”

She turned suddenly and drove the stake into Clovis’ heart, his body suddenly exploding all over her in a painting of guts and gore.

She heard Nero chuckle, turning slowly to see he had moved in the time she had and now held her father from behind. One hand dug into his throat,
“
look at her, my beauty, my warrior queen. She was never yours because she’ll never belong to anyone.
”
She didn’t even flinch when he tore his throat right out, her father’s eyes widening as he sunk to the ground. She figured she probably should’ve felt something - anything - be it pleasure or heartbreak, but the only thing that washed over her was numbness. She didn’t even have the luxury of feeling avenged because that had to have been Nero’s intention.

“
Find someone else to be your beast father, or do it yourself for a change. We want nothing to do with your plotting, not now - not ever.
”
He dropped her father and the bit of him he still held in his hand. Wiping the flesh off on his pants before sucking his fingers clean and walked over to her, he looped an arm around her waist.

“Come, you’re tired and we need to talk.” He brushed his lips against her temple as he steered her out of the room in a daze.

Exhaustion had swept over her by the time they reached his manor. When she was upstairs she’d seen the cause of the pain she had felt at Rose’s. Someone had torn Nero’s curtains straight from his window and left them in a pile on the ground. Her fingers twitched to check him, to explore his skin and ensure it was still as perfect and unmarred as before but by the time her body fell onto the bed she slept - for a long time.

She woke a full day later to an empty bed, forcing her to drag herself out of it and slip off to find Nero. Unsurprisingly he was sat at the dining room table, still holding those mysterious papers of his and waiting on her. She fell into her normal seat and picked up the glass of water waiting for her, taking two deep gulps before finishing it off completely.

“We need to talk.”

“I know,” he said, slowly putting the papers down to look at her. “I’m sorry I withheld information from you. I should’ve told you the reason I was following you that night. You should have known I have followed you every night you came into the city, that I felt charged to watch you and ensure your safety because in my head I believed I owned you. But I meant what I told your father; you cannot be owned and I know that now. You are willful, stubborn, strong and beautiful and I wouldn’t change any of those things about you. I cannot guarantee I will always be the man you want me to be, but I will always try to make it up to you.” She held up her hand to stop him as she watched one of the servants come into the room, setting down her usual on the gold charger plate. She eyed the sausages with need before forcing herself to look back up at him.

“I don’t know right now if I love you, if I ever loved you or if I can love you. There’s no doubting though that you misled me into this whole mating thing-”

“I am sorry for that as well.”

“But it’s there now and I know how you feel just as you know how I feel. I can’t tell right now if the reason I feel the way I do about you is because that’s how you feel about me or not. But I’m not going to scrutinize it too much. I just want you to be honest with me about everything from now on, be honest and bare like you promised. And I’m going to try and be honest with you about how I’m feeling. I still have a thousand and one questions about what happened with your father, what we’re going to do about it-”

“Nothing.” He shook his head as if to cement the idea in hers. “We’re going to do nothing about it because we’re going to leave. We have my coven to rebuild, starting with you if you still want to. We’re going to go somewhere away from the city where life might be a little bit harder with fewer food sources, but we’ll be a lot freer. Besides, I believe we owe the werewolves now....” He arched an eyebrow at her with a bemused smirk, “so we’ll give them all the information they need for the city and let them handle it. They’ll be more than happy to do so. I just want to live, for the first time in a long, long time, and hopefully you’ll do it next to me. So, I only have one more question for you.”

Her gut twisted because she knew what was coming and she still didn’t know anymore what her answer would be. So she picked up her fork and focused on her breakfast, turning a deep concentration on the sausages as she stabbed them and brought the first one to her mouth.

“
France or Italy?
”
She turned to look at him sharply in surprise. Blinking back the incredulity she felt was carved on her face.

“
Sorry?
”

“
Would you prefer to live in France or Italy?
”

“
No, I didn’t need you to repeat the question I just didn’t expect that to be the question.
”

“
Oh?
”
he asked with a grin and she only felt confused by her disappointment that he hadn’t asked the obvious question.

“
Why haven’t you asked me if you can turn me?
”

“
Because I thought that perhaps that was a decision and a question you might one day ask me when you were ready. Am I wrong?
”

She felt coloured by shades of disbelief and surprise at such a genuinely thoughtful gesture, but neither of those things could outweigh the lingering disappointment.
“
Yes. I mean - No. No, you’re right. I do prefer that… But,” she paused in thought, “it’s a little late now.
”

“
Why is that?
”

“
Because now is the time to ask the question and get the answer you want.
”

“
Is it?
”
Nero rose, a devilish grin on his features as he closed the distance between them. She felt her chair pull back as if on its own as he leaned down over her and stared deeply into her eyes. “Will you be my Isabelle, completely?” His lips were so close to hers, teasing her with little brushes but not enough to fill the ache that suddenly pulsed right to her core.

“
Yes.
”
She whispered back breathlessly, her eyes closing as his lips planted against hers. Her body arched toward his and he pushed the chair back more, pulling her body more toward his and balancing her right on the edge carefully.

His mouth swept over her chin down to her jaw and her heart throbbed with one of the last beats it would ever complete as his hand pulled her jeans clean off her body. Cool fingertips drifted over her warm skin until his palm pressed against her heat, cupping it and grinding the heel right into her clit. She moaned in heady pleasure, her body arching for more just as his fangs penetrated in their last deadly kiss.

She cried out as his fangs sunk deep into her flesh and his finger found her core, sending a burning shiver of pleasure and pain through her at the exact same time. It only took a few careful and precise touches to make her come undone in his hands and the world as she knew it went black.