“And if he dies, then Fabian becomes King and he… he can’t be King, Brighton.” Tink’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “If you can’t help him, then I will.”
“You helping him means you’re going to kidnap someone.” I turned, dragging my hand over my head. Crap! I hated my life. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Will you?” Tink asked. “Because like the entire Court and the world rests on you taking care of this.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you not at all worried he’s going to suck me dry?”
“No.” He was so quick to answer that I frowned so hard it was no wonder it didn’t break my face. “He would never hurt you, Brighton. Never.”
My face smoothed out as surprise rippled through me. It took me a second to even formulate a decent response. “Why would you even say that? You don’t know that.”
“I do know, because it’s true.” Tink took a big enough breath that I could hear it through the phone. “The Prince wouldn’t hurt you. Not when he already saved your life once before.”
“What?” I laughed. “What are you even talking about, Tink?”
“You said I saved your life the night you were attacked, but I didn’t save your life, Brighton. I just found you,” he said. “But it was the Prince who saved your life in the hospital.”
The memory of seeing the Prince suddenly resurfaced as I clutched the phone. I saw him there, but I thought… I thought it had just been some weird trauma or drug induced hallucination.
“You were going to die, Brighton. Too much damage had been done, but he did something. Do you understand?” Tink asked. “He saved your life and now you must save his.”
Chapter 18
How does one come to grips with the unexpected knowledge that someone they barely knew, someone who wasn’t even human and just happened to be the Prince, had not only saved their life but did God knows what to do it?
Part of me couldn’t even believe it because as far as I knew, the fae couldn’t heal humans. Unless it was something only Ancients could do. But if so, that was yet another thing I was unaware of, and I was supposed to be the leading authority on all things fae.
Apparently I didn’t know jack.
After promising Tink we were so going to have a conversation about all of this when I got home—if I got home—I found myself back at the Prince’s front door.
I couldn’t even let myself think about what I was doing as I reached out and turned the knob. It was still unlocked.
Saying a quick prayer that, all things considered, would probably go unanswered, I walked back into the quiet condo, closing the door behind me while hoping I was going to walk back out of there.
He saved your life and now you must save his.
This was insane.
What Tink had said was just unbelievable, but I kept walking.
The kitchen was empty and I stopped by the counter, spying a reddish-blue blotch of blood. That was probably going to stain the marble.
I don’t know what I was thinking when I walked around to the kitchen sink, picked up a towel and wiped up the blood. Probably because I wasn’t thinking at all.
There was no sight or sound of the Prince.
What if he was already dead?
He saved your life….
“Uh… hello?” I called out, tossing the towel into the sink. I eyed the door I figured led to a bedroom. “Uh, Prince? It’s me, Brighton?”
Silence.
Concern wiggled around in the pit of my stomach like a nest of vipers. I started toward the bedroom, seeing that the door was ajar. Lifting a trembling hand, I pushed it open. I’d been correct. It was a bedroom and it was as personable as the living room. In other words, it didn’t look remotely lived in. Just a super large bed in the middle of the room with deep blue sheets and comforter. There was a nightstand and a dresser. That was all.
Now you must save his….
Light spilled out from a room off from the bedroom and tiny tremors rattled my legs as I stepped farther inside. “Are you in here? Like alive?”
Several beats of silence passed and then, “I told you to leave.”
The guttural voice caused my breath to catch in my throat, and I froze.
“And you left.” There was another pause. “You should not have come back.”
The entire world with the exception of Tink would agree with that statement.
But I was here.
“I know… I know you’re not okay.” I forced my legs to move, and it was like walking in quicksand. I neared the swath of light. “I know that you’re going to be really not okay because you haven’t fed.”
There was no response.
Wanting to turn and run in the other direction, I did the opposite and stepped into the light.
And I saw him.
“Holy….”
The Prince was… he was shirtless, and while I’d seen a decent number of shirtless men in my life, I’d never seen one like him.
And that had nothing to do with the trails of blood running down his back and stomach, as terrible as that was to admit. My priorities were so, so wrong, because I wasn’t checking out the ragged holes in his shoulder or chest. He was….
He was beautiful, even covered in blood.
All that golden, hard skin. Defined pecs. Abs tightly coiled and a dusting of golden hair that traveled below his navel to the band—
Oh, sweet Jesus, his pants were undone and hanging low enough that I could tell the man went commando underneath.
I should look away.
I couldn’t look away.
Not when my gaze got hung on those interesting indentions on either side of his hips. How in the world did someone get muscles there? I’d never seen that on someone in real life. Only in photographs or on TV. I was beginning to think those kind of muscles were fake news, but he had them and then some. Actually, his body was absolutely freaking glorious, and it was clear that I needed to obtain sexual gratification from anything other than my trusty vibrator, because I was staring at him like I’d never seen a man before and—
“Do you like what you see?” he asked.
Jerking my gaze to his, I felt heat blast my face as I blurted out the stupidest thing possible. “You’re bleeding.”
The Prince tilted his head to the side as he held a bloodied towel in his hand. “I was completely… unaware of this.”
A thousand smartass responses traveled to the tip of my tongue and died there, because he turned to the gray and black tiled shower stall. Muscles flexed and contracted as he tossed the towel into the stall.
“You have to know why I told you… to leave,” he was saying, twisting at the waist and gripping the basin of the sink so tightly his knuckles bleached white. “I will be fine.”
He saved my life? How?
He had to have, because why would Tink lie? And I knew I should’ve died that night. The pain and all that blood and the scars… the scars no one but those doctors have seen.
The Prince saved my life.
And not only that, he understood why I had to do what I had to do. He didn’t like it. He made it more than clear he didn’t want me to do it and now a lot of what he’d said made sense, but he still understood.
No one understood.