When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 228

“A week ago, she left a week before you arrived here. I don’t know where she is now, please, I don’t know any more!”

Asocrates begs over and over, his form hunched over the table, his chalice of wine spilling against the pristine white table cloth, seeping into its fabric like blood from a wound. Under the influence of Azrael’s powers, the faery king is indisputably in bad shape: his wings quivering, his cheeks hollow with fear. Even his dark eyes seem to bulge in their sockets as the weakened faery clutches his head in anguish, Azrael’s powers quickly coming all too much to bear.

“Please your greatness, I don’t know any more!” he pleas, flailing out against the table. But Azrael’s fingers remain tightly clenched as he continues to manipulate the faery under his power, and soon Asocrates face begins to bloom with a purple as blood begins to clot and well inside his brain. An unpleasant taste fills my mouth as I bite down upon my cheek: his mind is quite literally being stopped from the inside out. I didn’t think there could be anything in this palace that could get more revolting.

Clearly I thought wrong.

It is only until Azrael looks over to me and notices I have gone dead still and white as a sheet that he finally relents, unclenching his fists on the table, allowing Asocrates to take a gasping breath of life. Averting my gaze, I try my best to avoid meeting the eyes of the distressed faery across the room who has since taken to clutching his head to hide the watery tears that stream down his face like bullets of rain.

I feel sick.

Perhaps Azrael forgets that these are not vampires, but mortals, whose life will expend when destroyed, and cannot reform their bodies from the ashes like the immortals that flit through the night on the grounds around Sezeria. Like most vampires, he dismisses mortality as weakness, forgets that the lives of the Folk are steeped in death and grieving and that their death is permanent, and cannot be toyed with like some crude game.

Or perhaps he remembers all this, and is merely very cruel.

“Serena,” Azrael calls next to me, slinking me a sideways glance. “Come here,” he offers with a surprising softness, patting his lap encouragingly, but for a moment, I do not move, my mind buzzing with shock and the horror I just so nearly witnessed.

“Serena,” he calls again, lowering his voice to a whispering hum. “Come and sit.”

So slowly, oh so slowly, I slink off the chair, dragging my feet over to the rather impatiently awaiting Azrael who beams a broad smile as I arrive before him. Taking my hands between his, he draws me tentatively to him.

“There’s my good little pet,” he hums, his crimson eyes gleaming with an unspoken malice. The next moment, a little voice tickles inside my head, crawling over my mind like a twisted spider over the wall.

‘Ignore everything I do to Asocrates today,’  it whispers as Azrael continues to draw me to him, his eyes never breaking from my own. With a masked shudder, I let these words wash over me, allowing cold fear to pool in my gut.

I am going to have to be careful.

Scooting out his chair to allowed for space for me to sit, Azrael draws me into his lap, fingers pressing tight against my stomach, holding me in place.

Never in my life did I ever once suspect I would have to be sitting on Azrael’s lap, attempting to fake my undying love and loyalty to him to find the soul of a girl whose existence has been wiped off the map. But I suppose nothing is truly impossible nowadays. I mean, when I came to Sezeria, I had no idea that I would have come out wedded to the Scarlet Prince himself- the very creature I swore to destroy on the honour of my kind. Such a thought would have made me laugh.

Now look at me. I am his god damn Queen.

When Azrael is finally content I have settled well enough on his lap, his begins to run his fingers in tantalising trails up and down my waist. His fingers work meticulously, toying with the side of my body as absently as though I were a lover. Though I guess that is what I am supposed to be now, this path that I have carved unwittingly for myself: a lover to a beast that I strive to destroy.

“So,” he starts again in a much more subdued tone than before, drawing me back to reality. It is as though my presence alone had somewhat quelled the anger that rages away in his hollow heart, distilling it to a much more passive nature. “She- this soul- left merely a week ago, that’s not long, is it? And she can’t have gone far, because the walls around the palace continue to remain in place,” Azrael prompts as he lowers his lips to the junction where my neck meets my shoulders, placing a number of delicate kisses along the skin in the expert way of a man practised with lovers. But the motion only makes my insides squirm, disgust boiling at my gut like a bubbling pit of magma, a sickening warmth spreading over my body as I push down the urge to vomit with the best of my ability.

Outwardly, however, I propose a different story.

Leaning into Azrael’s touch, I sigh with a blissful joy, pressing myself further into him. As a lover would, I begrudgingly allow his hands to become more fervid with their search of my body: brushing just under my rib cage, or travelling right to the top of my collar, right down to the valley of my breasts. Each touch is light, like a feather, wisping over my skin in a manner that is enough to elect shivers shaking down my core. But not shivers of pleasure as Azrael had imagined, or even shivers with remotely good connotations, these are shivers of distraught.

“Do you like that?” Azrael whispers close to my ear, too low for the others across the table to hear. With a whimpering moan, I arch my back against him, thrusting out my bust in an obvious attempt to tempt him.

“Y-yes Master,” I add quickly, thankfully remembering the revolting term on which I am supposed to name him by. Heavens above this is embarrassing.

From across the table, Asocrates watches this display with the same feeling that wrenches at my insides: fearful disgust. Although he tries his best not to display it, the tell tale signs are there: the twinge of his lips, the nervous fidgeting of his hands, the apprehensive motion as he dances on his seat, as though swarmed by fire ants he is desperately trying to avoid. Much to his fortune, Azrael is far too busy to notice any of this, delighting to continue his onslaught of kisses against my skin which have soon turned wild with passion. A needy hum stutters in a low thrawl from Azrael’s throat as his teeth graze the skin of my neck, nibbling, biting.

Fortunately for me, Asocrates soon remembers that a question was posed to him in recent moments, clearing his throat to cough out the answer. When he speaks next, his voice far more timid than it was, a likely by-product of being nearly brutally obliterated by Azrael’s powers into a fine, fleshy mush.

“Yes, only a week. She took some food, a couple of possessions, but nothing of any significant value.”

“I see,” Azrael grunts, raising his head, as though largely disappointed to be distracted from feasting over the vast expanse of my supple skin. Wetting his lips, he leans his head between the crook of my shoulder, chin digging harshly into my chest, voice a whisper in my ear as he says next:

“What did she look like?”

Asocrates has learnt his lesson, that’s for sure, because no further stalling, or lying, takes place in his next answer.

“She was rather tall for her age,” he says, fingers tapping ardently on the table with a series of insistent thrums as he spares the occasional glance side to side at his bewitch courtiers, all of which greet him with a series of empty smiles. He gulps, taking a shaky sip of wine.

“She was very pale, very lanky, always looked like she was malnourished to an extent. She had long black hair, and her eyes… well, they were white. She couldn’t see, well, not exactly. She would sense people, somehow, and know exactly what they’d look like. She said that the spirits would tell her, give her visions. But we never truly knew whether to believe that. After all, who on earth has heard of talking to the spirits!” he chuckles a laugh, but it quickly dies, lost of the silence of the room and the insistent gazes of his fellow courtiers beside him, pinning him down. He takes another sip.

Pursing his lips together, Azrael stares straight down the room towards the faery king.

“Fascinating…”