Chapter Thirty-Two

***Kieran***

When I come up from my Tomb, I find the Offering curled in the East Wing’s library. She’s curled up in a teal blue chair, like a peacock’s feather, with an open book in her lap and her bright blue eyes staring right into the storm.

It always storms the night the Witches come. The worst storm of the century, the mortals of my lands call it. They board up their homes, send offerings and prayers to their various gods, and pray for the sun to come. But here is the little doe herself, staring out at the thick and heavy clouds as if they were the gods themselves.

The fearlessness mixed with innocence is a tempting sight. Usually, the Offerings pick one persona, fearless or innocent, right from the start, and try their best to hold it until the end (although they all end up screaming and broken), but this one is different. Somehow she’s made the space to hold both. Courage and kindness.
Defiance and submission.

My cock hardens at the thought of last night, aching for a repeat. I have sex all the time, just to feel something, or to numb the pain of my magic dying, but last night, just from a fucking blow job of all things, this Offering girl made me feel alive.

When she realizes I’m watching her, Remi is startled. Her hair is freshly washed, and slightly damp, and she wears a very modest dress of pearl white. The Ceremony Dress Vienna and I picked for her.

Gods it’s going to be a fucking delight to watch the Priestesses take it off her tonight. And as much as I like this Offering, I hope she puts up a fight.

“S-sorry,” she says to me.

Sorry? It’s such a simple word, casual and terrifying. A mortal word.

No one says sorry to me. Sorry is for friends who wrong one another and I have no friends.

Only enemies and allies.

Both of which I’m running short on tonight.

“Sorry,” I say back, and she smiles.

Pretty little fuckable Offering. I want to tear the dress she wears to threads, shove her face into the couch, fuck her in the ass, and use the lace remains as a makeshift gag.

Fuck the pretty little virgin in another alternative hole.

I am not a male who says sorry. Not a male who cares.

But I can pretend, at least until Midnight.

“What are you reading, little doe?”

Remi shuts the book and looks down at it as if only just realizing she has it. “A tale I enjoyed as a child.”

I smile at the title. I didn’t even know we had books for children here in the castle.

No, we just lure them from their mothers and kill them at eighteen.

“I need to prepare you for tonight,” I tell her and she looks up as if I just told her I love her. I don’t usually warn the Offerings what is to come but this one already knows parts and I want her to not die.

If that’s even possible.

“The flower,” I say. “It was your ancestor who took it.”

The Offering nods. “Do you know which one?”

“It was a very long time ago, thousands of years before.”

Remi looks even more terrified as she realizes my age. But I am older than thousands. I am now and always.

“When the flower was picked,” I tell her. “My magic–the magic that protects my lands, started dying.”

She frowns, trying to process the information. “But why? What was so special about the flower?”

I sigh, leaning back against the bookshelf I claimed and looking up at the painting above. The picture is beautiful, one of Deanna and her nymphs, the old gods, but the paint is faded, a reminder of the power that once flowed through this place. “The flower was not just any flower. It was the source of life and magic for our lands. When it was taken, it disrupted the balance, weakened the protective wards, and left us vulnerable.”

Her eyes widen. “Vulnerable to what?”

I can feel that my expression is grim. “To everything. The creatures of the dark, the curses of old, and the enemies of our kind. We have been fighting to maintain the balance ever since.”

“And tonight?” she asks, her voice trembling. “What happens tonight?”

“Tonight,” I say, “is the anniversary of the theft. It’s a night when the barriers between our world and the dark are weakest. We perform a ritual to strengthen them, using the blood of an Offering to appease the ancient magic and renew the wards–” Fuck, why is this so hard to report–“we will use it until the magic in my land is restored, or at the very least, stabilized.”

Her face pales. “Is that why the Offerings all die? Because the magic never restores?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice gentle but firm.

Remi’s face is a picture of despair. Despair, but somehow strong. Brave. “Is there any way to restore the wards without killing me?”

I lean back into the shelf. “I’ve tried everything,” I admit, “spend every century between the Sacrifice searching for something.”

Remi shakes her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “I don’t want this. I never asked for this.”

“I know,” I reply softly. “But you have a choice. You can face this, or you can run and risk everything we have fought to protect.”

Remi takes a deep breath, and I swear, a bit of rage is under the surface. My brave, sweet little doe. “I don’t know your people. Tell me, honestly, why should I die to protect them?”

Good question. One I would ask as well. But honestly, I don’t have an answer. Nothing except the math, the logic, that there is an exchange of two hundred and fifty thousand for one. The fact that my people are starving, that the trees no longer turn orange in the fall, they just wither and die. That infants lose their mothers too young. That food is becoming less and less reliable. That we’re yielding less crop, our winters are becoming unbearable.

But I don’t have a way to show Remi that. How can you show thousands of years of suffering to someone in just a few days? How can you show someone that deep, deep fucking down, you’d do anything to protect the Kingdom you love. To protect them all.

I claimed this land a very long time ago, them and its people. They are my responsibility to protect.

And I can’t without my magic.

I can’t if I’m dead.

“I don’t want to be bled to death,” the Offering says. Her voice catches and her eyes fill with tears.

She goes head-to-head with the Demon Slayer but is afraid of dying? Perhaps we have more in common than I gave her credit for, this Offering and I.

“Grab your cloak,” I command her, exiting the room and not waiting for her to follow.

“Why?” she asks, from the safety of her peacock blue chair.

“Let me take you on a walk and show you something.”

Still, no sound of footsteps. “Your people want me dead for their survival.”

Another fair point from the little girl.

“You will be safe,” I say. “From me and people. I assure you."

“Alright,” light steps sound, “I could use one look at the world before I am to die.”

She sets aside her book and passes underneath my arm which I’ve perched above the door frame. It’s almost impossible not to reach out and snatch her. This is why we never touch the Offerings. Once you’ve got a taste, it’s hard to forget the flavor.

Remi goes into Vienna’s room and I hear her murmuring about a cloak. I cross across the hallway and go to the bar where I made the Offering get on her knees for stabbing Rhodes’ hand.

Gods I still can’t fucking believe she did that. Of all the Offerings, this one has been the most unpredictable.

I sling back a shot of rum, then another, letting the alcohol burn in my stomach. My blood is stronger than the liquor and will be out of my system in minutes, but still, it does something.

The Ceremony is in four hours and my court is dead silent. I don’t know where everyone is and I don’t fucking care.

When the Offering comes back, she’s wearing a cloak of translucent pink with bows on the front that Vienna and her pirate crew definitely stole.
I can’t breathe at the sight of her. Of her regalness.

I sometimes forget the Offerings are set to be royalty, too.

“Lead the way,” the Princess says.