Chapter Fourteen

***KERIAN ***

We’ve only had this Offering for less than twenty-four hours and we’re already fucked.

The Offering–Remi, little fuckable Remi, is crying on the bed as if she didn’t cause this. She knew exactly what she was doing when she seduced Kallias, then Rhodes. But her innocent act is a problem for another time.

Kallias is piss drunk, and swinging at me with the wrong end of his sword. Rhodes curses in a way that makes the Offering sob, then grabs his brother with one hand and hauls him off.

“What the fuck happened?” The flash of a half-steel mask signals Xaden’s silent arrival. The Demon Slayer joins my quick pace behind the twins. He was to help with our emissaries tonight, try to convince our asshole cousins from the west to aid us in fighting our next war.

The energy in the air suggests he’s just as pissed off as I am.

I take a deep sigh that does little to calm my rage. It’s an effort not to break every door down the hall. To blow them out their fucking hinges.

“Remi fucking happened.”

“Who’s Remi?”

I stalk around the twins before we reach the staircase, Xaden following me silently. The second we reach my study he pours me a thick drink.

Kallias breaks into my study like a brute, waving one finger at me. “You touched her, didn’t you?”

I have to give it to the little doe, we’ve never had an Offering get to any of us so quickly.

“Don’t be an idiot, Kal.”

Kallias ignores his brother's warnings. “You said we can’t touch her, yet you break the rules?”

Even Xaden seems pissed at this accused breach of contract.

“We whipped her with leathers,” I argued in my defense, collapsing into my chair. “There were a good ten feet between us.”

“You whipped her,” Kallias lunges for me once more, only to be met by his brother Shadows. “You’re going to break her the same way, you whipped her just like you did–”

“Don’t you dare say her fucking name?”

Just like Kallias, my words earned me a cage. Xaden is in front of me, one hand on my chest.

I slump back into my chair. I’m too exhausted to murder a twin tonight.

Yes, I’ve made mistakes in the past with the other Offerings, but a King cannot show weakness. A King can only learn from his mistakes.

“From what I heard, Kallias,” Xaden inserted himself coldly, “you took a bath with the Offering.”

My face drops. The glass in my hand shattered, splattering blood and glass everywhere.

My voice is low. “You did what?”
There’s enough threat in my voice to send Kallias running, but even drunk, he stays before me.

We all know how this hierarchy fucking words.

“Get him out of here,” I nod to Rhodes, to fucking pissed at the both of them to function. They nod and head for the door, me shouting after them, “And stay the fuck away from the Offering!”

“Her name is Remi,” Kallias shouts back and I growl.

Xaden just pours me another drink.

I go out to the balcony and light another cigarette. It’s not enough to satisfy my hunger. Nothing for centuries has been enough.

Yet the smoke distracts me at least from the mess in the House behind me, and relieves some of the tension between my neck and shoulder blades. I place my hands on the railing, overlooking my Kingdom. Not the twinkling lights and the city, but my lands, rows, and rows of snow-covered mountains drifting off in every direction.

Sometimes I wish the mountains were all I had to protect.

Laughter rings from below, and the last of our revelers from the party we were forced to throw die out. I hate them all, the people from the court. I hate them and politics and the parties.

I sigh out a cloud of smoke into the night. But such things, like the Offering in my East Wing, are necessary for war. For life.

Xaden still hasn’t left my side. Probably because he’s nervous I’m going to murder the remainder of our guests.

I only did that once.

“You handle it?” I ask him. He knows what I mean. The Emissaries, negotiations, and War Commanders.

“Yes,” he replies, but something in his voice tells me he’s just as pissed off as I am.

I still don’t know exactly what his battle is, or why he’s here. But I suppose it took me several centuries to find something worth fighting for, something worth dying for.

“The Witches will be here in nine days,” he says as if we both need reminding. “Do you think we’ll make it to that?”
A careful question, a non-confrontative one.

“I’m sure the twins will be back to their usual roles tomorrow.”

“With Kallias playing the nice one? Are you sure that’s a good idea after tonight?”

My hands curl so tight around the banister the marble crushes. Kallias broke every fucking rule, and had seen the little doe naked and completely vulnerable. I’d kill to see her fully naked, and her name…she told him.

Not me.

“He showed restraint,” Xaden offers.

“Stay the fuck out of my head.”

Above the half-steel mask, Xaden’s red eyes sing of amusement. He’s the only one as powerful as me, perhaps more, on the whole continent. The twins can beat us at hand-to-hand combat, yes, and perhaps a game of wits, but Xaden is the only one who could truly take me down with magic.

“You touched her,” he accuses, “I can smell her hair.”

I sigh, There's no point in lying to him.

“Only to drag her to be spanked across her desk.”

Xaden’s eyes darken. “If this Offering is causing tension in the group the first day here, we’re all fucked.”

“Kallias is just a fucking idiot–”

“He called her his.”

I turn my head away from Xaden and blow out the last of my cigarette. The smoke hits the shields around the castle, but some, just enough to terrify me, escape from the wards and burn the dizzying snow.

“Find a way to stay away from her the next two days,” he commands, and I’d snarl at him, rip out his throat if I didn’t agree with him.

“She’s going to wither up when the Priestesses visit,” I admit, remembering how the Offering cowered before Rhodes and me just a few minutes ago. “However she acts, it’s not going to be willing.”
Xaden has nothing to say to that.

“Head to bed,” he says softly, nodding towards the rising sun.

My stomach churns as he exits. I just have to figure out a way for the Offering to remain untouched, a virgin, for nine more days.

Maybe I’ll lock her up on a ship and just sail her out for eight days, retrieve her when the sun sets.

The sun threatens to hit the horizon, and I jump back into my castle.

As much as I should send her away, far, far away. The darkest parts of me want to steal her away from my chosen brothers in the night. The darkest parts of me want to fuck a little Remi. 
The Midnight King
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