teaser snippet from Phoenix Rising
(opening AND chapter one!)
***
I’d never really thought about how people take things for granted. The mundane occurrences that happen daily in our lives, like toast for breakfast or knowing that MTV won’t be playing music.
We get dressed, slap on a little war paint, and make our way into the world every day and not think twice about it. We approach the coffee house drive thru to buy our overpriced cup of Joe and maybe a bear claw, and then continue on about our merry way.
Never knowing what is actually around us.
Not trying to listen to that little buzz in the back of our minds. You know the one I mean- that little self panic alert we all have but brush away.
Come on, really? Like something is out to get us, right…
Right?
***
Chapter One
The 6:30 alarm blaring out to begin my day startles me less now. Back in early September when school first began for the year I’d bounce out of bed at the sound. Now, I’m a little less bounce and a whole lot of crawl.
Don’t get me wrong, I love school. What sixteen-year-old isn’t thrilled to rise before the sun to begin a day of pursuits in higher education? Of course there are some who frown upon the waking- the guys, the girls, kids who are breathing…
I make my way out of my bedroom, greeted by the blinding light of the hallway and the aroma of Mom’s scrambled eggs. I know she hears my feet padding toward the bathroom, but she’s learned not to acknowledge me until I’ve showered and made an attempt to tame my unruly mane of red curls.
Shutting the door, I crank the hot water as high as I can stand it. The closet with a toilet we call the “bath” fills with steam as I step out of my pajamas and pull a towel from the cabinet. The idea of a shower to help clear the cobwebs from of my mind is one my body relishes. I don’t smell bad or anything, but the aches and pains my body feels are more reminiscent of my Granny Abigail’s ills than those of a fun loving teen.
After my lather, rinse, repeat and dressing, I make my way downstairs to the kitchen to find my over excited mother. “Morning Pumpkin!” she calls to me, her luminescent smile inhumanly wide.
“Yup,” I respond begrudgingly, taking the plate of eggs she offered and sitting at the kitchen island. Mom pours herself what must be her tenth cup of coffee. There really is no way any human could have the energy she possesses this early without a steady influx of caffeine.
“It isn’t that early,” Mom says.
“How is it you hear every thought I ever have?”
Mom replies, smiling, “I was a teenager once, you know.”
“Yeah, in like the 1800’s Mom and coffee was a hot commodity back then,” I offered, taking her mug and sniffing the rich Colombian aroma.
“You’re such a funny girl Magpie. You should consider going into show business.”
I bat my eyes and answer, “Why work when I have a loving mother who supports me?”
“And on that note…I have a 9:00 meeting with the folks looking at the Hempstead place. I should be home by 4:00. I was thinking we could take a drive out to Sunnybrook?” Mom grabs her purse, heading toward the door.
“Do I have a choice?” I mutter under my breath, picking at my breakfast. Mom gives me a quick kiss on the forehead.
“He knows when we’re there, Maggie. Could you at least pretend to be happy to see him?” Mom doesn’t waste time waiting for my response. She knows it will be the same reply she’s heard for the last ten years when informing me we’re going to Sunnybrook.
“Love you Magpie,” she smiles and shuts the door. Knowing she was out of earshot, I drop my fork on the table and shove away the eggs she’d plated for me.
Sunnybrook. What a misleading name for a psychiatric hospital. I hear “Sunnybrook” and try to envision a babbling stream and a picnic lunch; little white flowers in the grass around me.
Well, there’s babbling at least.
Maybe I’m too rough. Maybe I’m selfish, I admonish myself.
Sunnybrook Psychiatric Hospital has been my father’s home since I was six years old.
John Henning had been a pillar of the community- head of the local Elks club, PTA President, a founding member of the law firm Henning and Rolsten with his best friend John Rolsten. That had all changed one cool, October evening.
I don’t remember it happening. I only know what I’ve heard.
The names I’ve been called...
Passing the burned foundation of the First Church of Our Lady everyday on my way to school…
The story, so I’ve been told, was that my father went totally bonkers and rushed into the church screaming like a lunatic. It was inside that he threw Molotov cocktails against the walls and burned the sanctuary to the ground, killing eight people.
John Henning, my father. “The Murderer”. There’s a label you want to carry with you through school.
I remember being little and swinging at the park with my father. We’d spend hours there giggling and running until my mother would show up with her hands on her hips to scold us for not being home in time for dinner. Dad would pick her up, swing her around and offer a peck on the cheek as his way of apologizing.
I’ve tried to talk to my mother about what happened several times, each with the same result- a complete shutdown. She’d put her hands up in the air, shake her head back and forth and tell me my father had “issues” and I should just try to accept it.
Easy for her to say, I suppose. She didn’t have to go to school here. She didn’t have to walk the halls and listen to the murmurs of the passersby. She didn’t have to open her locker and find construction paper cut outs of tombstones.
I begged her all through middle school to let us move, but she’d dismissed my pleas. She justified her refusal, explaining it was closer to my father for visiting purposes. I exploded at the age of 13, refusing to visit him at all and threatening to call child protective services.
“For what?” my mother had asked, “Because I’m making you visit your father?”
It wasn’t fair.
It still isn’t fair...
My cell phone rang, shaking me from my thoughts.
“Hey there, Maggie!”
It was Stephanie Rolston, my father’s former law partner’s daughter and my only friend. “Steph, tell me something good?”
“Well,” she pondered for a few seconds, “I’m still hot!”
“Fabulous.” I murmur, not replicating her enthusiastic tone.
“Visiting day?” Stephanie had learned by my moods when it was time to make the trip and visit dear old Dad.
“When Mom gets home tonight. I tried to get out of it, but it isn’t happening. I don’t understand why I have to go watch him drool. He doesn’t even know we’re there for Christ’s sake!”
Stephanie knew me well enough to realize I was on edge. “I know how to help. Are you dressed? Good. Be there in fifteen minutes.” She hung up, not waiting for my reply and a joy in her voice that I couldn’t echo. It could mean only one thing-
Retail therapy.
I glance to the clock and estimate how long it would take me to slap on a little gloss and liner, deciding if I hurry I could be semi-presentable by the time Steph got here.
Standing up and placing my plate in the sink, I open Mom’s cookie jar where she keeps the spare cash. Pulling out a wad of bills, I count out twenty bucks. Remembering how pissed I was about my impending visit, I grab another twenty and blow a raspberry at the jar.
I chose to forgo the trip back upstairs to the bathroom, instead using the foyer mirror to ready myself. I rummage through my purse for the right shade of gloss but in my rush, knock the piles of unopened bills and magazines to the floor. I mutter a curse as I bend to pick up the mess, stacking the items back on the table when I notice a letter in the pile that was addressed to me. I set the other mail aside and exam the envelope curiously.
The return address was Sunnybrook Psychiatric Hospital, but instead of the normal self stick address label, my home address was written in a precise script. I set the letter down but couldn’t take my eyes off it. Why had Mom hidden it under a pile of mail?
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I didn’t even want to visit, what do I care about a letter from the asylum? I try to ignore it while I smooth the pink gloss over my lips.
My eyes keep falling to the off white envelope as I paw through my bag, drawn like a moth to light. Knowing it was from the hospital didn’t seem to be working as any sort of deterrent. Unable to stand it any longer, I pick up the envelope, ripping at the glued edges and pull a paper out of it.
The document inside was folded three times with clean edges. I pause hesitantly then muster the courage to open it. The note is written on official hospital letterhead and scrawled with the same defined penmanship as my address on the outside of the mailing. Two handwritten lines, centered, were all that I find on the paper.
“It’s all true. Guard the blood.”
“What the hell?” I question aloud, staring at the words. I’d seen this penmanship before, but couldn’t place from who or where. It was a memory that tickled at me from long ago and I close my eyes, trying to visualize where I’d recognize it from.
A honking noise out front rouses me away from contemplation. Stephanie had arrived. I stuff the weird letter back in its envelope, dropping it on the table once more and decide to forget about the ramblings of some mad man in a jumpsuit. Grabbing my bag, I rush out the front door and slam it shut behind me.
The envelope fell, drifting to the floor, and set itself on fire.
|
teaser snippets from Phoenix Burning
|
The first page, prologue, and chapter one of
PHOENIX SHADOW (Maggie Henning & The Realm: book three)
A WORD OF WARNING: IF YOU HAVE YET TO FINISH READING BOOKS ONE OR TWO, I'D SAY NOT TO READ BELOW...**SPOILERS**
******
Since the dawn of time, people have often sacrificed things. Sometimes its possessions of value; given to the Church as an offering by the very devout in belief.
It was commonplace in many ancient civilizations to sacrifice the untouched or even children to gain favor from the Gods.
Need rain for your crops? Well, we just so happen to have a spare virgin… to the volcano!
Perhaps Nigel Short stated it best: “A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound, but leaves your opponent dazed and confused.”
Sacrifice comes in all forms. Whether you give away coin or virtue, life or love, it matters little if you get the outcome you’re after…
Prologue
There are always those occasions where we feel deep contemplation is required; situations that call for our undivided attention in order to rationalize our choices.
King Edwyn’s demand, however, was not one of those…
I’d like to think I had the capacity to say no to his request; that there was a viable option for me in which I could exercise an escape clause, but there wasn’t. Even as I’d rubbed at the healing bruise on my face- so unlovingly given to me by the returned vampire prince- I’d been trapped.
And King Edwyn knew it.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, that the idea of walking down the aisle with the ebony haired vampire awaiting me at the end of the carpet would have stirred inside me a feeling of unparalleled bliss. I would have been left breathless and starry eyed. In fact, I’m sure that at some point in my dreams I’d married the Prince already.
All of that was before his return. That dream happened another lifetime ago, when Michel had held me close and waltzed with me to the songs of a whispering orchestra and the mutterings of a crowd that watched, awestruck by the embrace.
It was before Ossa had shoved a dagger, a fine sheen of my blood still coating its blade, deep into Prince Michel’s chest; robbing the vampire I’d thought I’d loved of his life.
It’d been the motivation, my love for this Prince, when I’d set out with his brother Luc to trek through the Angel’s Realm of Empyrean in hopes of bartering for Michel’s return from Shadow.
Prior to learning some of the ugly truths this Realm had to offer me.
Michel, for all of his fantastic looks and beautiful words, was not the man I’d thought him to be. He never was. This dark prince, now with mahogany eyes and a cool sense about him, would never again hold in me what I’d once thought he did.
No… my heart and soul belongs to another…
A plan is under way; a series of events that, if executed properly, could free my father John Henning from his prison; kept by revenants in an agreement to protect me, but that time has now ended.
I know what I am now… I know why they want me.
I’m the Red Queen on the chessboard; the coveted prize both sides wish to capture. I’ll seize their knights, deftly take their rooks and I’ll be pushed in every direction to protect their king. Even now, I feel the cold grip of the participant’s fingers around my throat.
We would need the forces and backing of King Edwyn and of The Realm if we are to succeed in freeing my father. It wasn’t like we could mosey on in to Sunnybrook and steal him away. I longed for my father; I needed him now more than ever. It should be an easy thing- to speak the words the king wants to hear, to make a vow and seal my fate. I’d been so willing before…
Before… when my eyes had been blinded by the bright light of foolishness; by the deceitful workings of a game that no one had bothered to share the rules of.
I’d play their game. I’ll pass go and collect my $200. I would buy Park Place and Broadway.
I would rewrite these rules, and by the Angels, I will win…
“Yes,” I answer this faux regal man who stands before me, taunting me with his offer of aid and a sinister grin worn plainly over his lips even as his fangs shine under the stars.
“Yes… I will marry Michel.”
ONE
My grandfather arrived before breakfast, saying his sensed something from his visit with me. I waved him off as I stood, with a promise to explain it all to him when we got home. Together, we transported back to The Trust without a good bye or up yours to anyone in Celine.
I hadn’t slept during the dark hours in the castle, plagued instead by the events of the previous day. Luc’s with The Angels, not claimed, but used as a tribute by his father for the return of Michel.
“Liam,” I ask my grandfather as I follow him to the desk where he’s begun to skim through yet another handwritten tome.
“Yes dear,” he doesn’t bother to look up at me, “I will leave you with this.”
I open my mouth to speak even as my grandfather walks to the library door, closing it behind him. I glance at the book with its pages wide open. With a skill I was still slightly surprised by, I run my hand over the parchment pages, watching the shapes meld into letters I can read.
Tributes, the title read. I glance over to the closed door and smile. For all of his eccentricities, Liam knows me well. I look back to the book as I take a seat at the desk, the swivel chair twisting as I pull in closer to read.
“’Tributes are oft times paid to those deserving, having completed a great service. These tributes, by practical standards, should be at least equal to the service rendered. It is an offense to refuse a tribute, as it is equally offensive to not willing offer a tribute,’” I read aloud.
So, one bad prince deserves another…
“’The Angels often accept tributes from the creatures of The Realm even if the value of tribute is lesser than the task they’d performed. Angels will do what they please with the tribute,” fantastic… “And once tribute is paid, it cannot be called back. It is wise to only offer that which you are positive you can do without.’”
Pretty much summed up exactly what I’d assumed. King Edwyn’s a douche bag.
I close the tome, having read nothing that would actually help me or tell me something other than what I’d thought. There was some reason why the King would willingly pay the Angels with Luc’s freedom to get Michel back. It went above his love of the prince Michel had been and I wonder to myself if he’d have paid it if he knew how Michel acted in my bedroom- pushing me… slapping me… knocking me to the floor…
Of course he would have, who was I trying to kid here? King Edwyn had sent his son’s out to murder the Lycans. One had done so with a morbid satisfaction while the other had stood by, seemingly helpless to stop it. Is it so far out of the realm of possibility that this, his tribute to Gabrielle, was a convenient way to eliminate that which was in the King’s way?
I wrap my arms around my middle and walk to stare out at the gardens. Most of the flowers had withered away, the chilly October temperatures of New York robbing the landscape of its colorful blooms in favor of the oranges and reds and browns that were harbingers of the season to come. A breeze blows and the ancient trees waver, their leaves caught on the currents and drifting from high branches to the green expanse of the lawn surrounding them.
I put my forehead against the panes of glass, the cool outside temperatures of late October evidenced on my skin. I close my eyes and search inside, trying to find the eject button of this nightmare.
“Why would you wish to escape?” A voice asks. I spin and find the newly risen Vampire Prince leaning against the cold hearth. “Have you not had enough time to learn, Maggie Dear that in this world there is no escape?”
Michel’s new brown eyes are like the dark closet where the monsters hide, the exception being that these particular monsters seems to flourish just under his skin. Unable to look at him, I turn back to the window.
“Oh, Sweet Maggie,” he continues and I hear his foot falls as he moves closer, “is it all truly so bad? I have heard that you wept many nights for me while I was in Shadow, that you were unable to even eat on a few of those occasions. It would do you well to remember those dark times so that you may now embrace real joy.”
I spin around, but then step back. Michel was inches from me, his smile teasing as his canines hang over his bottom lip.
“What happened to you?” I ask, forced to stop my retreat by the sill of the large window, left with no place else to go.
“You happened, Maggie,” Michel whispered coldly as he brought his eyes down to mine. I feel like it’s a shadow cast and hovering over me. “You came in to our world, so innocent and unassuming. I found that…intriguing. The purity of you is enticing. It’s like a freshly fallen snow that glistens under a grey sky, the air so fresh and crisp that it almost hurts to breathe.”
“And that’s something you would know nothing about, seeing as you don’t have to breathe,” I answer back.
Michel’s hands fly out, crashing into the sides of the window frame and trapping me with his form. I keep my eyes on his boots as his hair falls forward and I hear the quiet crackling noises of the wood splintering in his grip.
“Perhaps the former Prince Luc was better suited for that understanding. Pity he is no longer available to be asked,”
“That could change,” I stated, garnering the courage to look into Michel’s eyes.
The brown irises are so distinctly different from what I’d seen in him before. The silver flecks still there, even though I hadn’t noticed them in the bedroom in Celine. But these sliver bits are tarnished, tainted copper and they swim in the murkiness of his eyes like a worm slithering in the mud.
“But I don’t think it will, Maggie,” he taunted back. “Are you foolish enough to hold hope that the angels would so willingly grant you favor again?
“You accomplished the unthinkable, Maggie. You traveled to Empyrean and convinced the angels to return one they had rightfully claimed. You will be heralded in the histories forever for completing that task. Your value is great and it will only grow as my Queen.”
I swallow the bile that grew in my throat while watching Michel’s sinister smile widen. With his cold hands, he touches my cheek; sliding his icy touch across my face and down to hold my neck. Roughly, he yanks my head closer and lets his lips dance across mine as he speaks.
“You shall be cherished by The Realm, the mother of Celine’s heir. We shall make a marvelous pairing, you and I, Phoenix.”
Michel pulls away suddenly as my flames sprung to life against his lips. He raises his hand to touch the small burn, but smiled when he lowers it, already healing and repairing the damage my fire had done.
“You’ll need to get past that,” Michel speaks as he turned to leave the room. I watch as he pauses, his hand on the doorknob and facing me with a smile.
“I do believe this will be my most enjoyable conquest yet.”
When the door closes behind him, all the resolve and courage I’d attempted drained away and I fall to my knees with the knowledge of his words. I was trapped in the vow I’d made to his father.
In one week’s time, on November 7, my seventeenth birthday, I would walk down an aisle with the entire Realm looking on, and I’d give myself to the vampire; pledging myself to be his Queen- to love, honor, and cherish this new Michel.
I’d lie.
I’d willingly imprison myself to set my father free from his.
###
******
Since the dawn of time, people have often sacrificed things. Sometimes its possessions of value; given to the Church as an offering by the very devout in belief.
It was commonplace in many ancient civilizations to sacrifice the untouched or even children to gain favor from the Gods.
Need rain for your crops? Well, we just so happen to have a spare virgin… to the volcano!
Perhaps Nigel Short stated it best: “A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound, but leaves your opponent dazed and confused.”
Sacrifice comes in all forms. Whether you give away coin or virtue, life or love, it matters little if you get the outcome you’re after…
Prologue
There are always those occasions where we feel deep contemplation is required; situations that call for our undivided attention in order to rationalize our choices.
King Edwyn’s demand, however, was not one of those…
I’d like to think I had the capacity to say no to his request; that there was a viable option for me in which I could exercise an escape clause, but there wasn’t. Even as I’d rubbed at the healing bruise on my face- so unlovingly given to me by the returned vampire prince- I’d been trapped.
And King Edwyn knew it.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, that the idea of walking down the aisle with the ebony haired vampire awaiting me at the end of the carpet would have stirred inside me a feeling of unparalleled bliss. I would have been left breathless and starry eyed. In fact, I’m sure that at some point in my dreams I’d married the Prince already.
All of that was before his return. That dream happened another lifetime ago, when Michel had held me close and waltzed with me to the songs of a whispering orchestra and the mutterings of a crowd that watched, awestruck by the embrace.
It was before Ossa had shoved a dagger, a fine sheen of my blood still coating its blade, deep into Prince Michel’s chest; robbing the vampire I’d thought I’d loved of his life.
It’d been the motivation, my love for this Prince, when I’d set out with his brother Luc to trek through the Angel’s Realm of Empyrean in hopes of bartering for Michel’s return from Shadow.
Prior to learning some of the ugly truths this Realm had to offer me.
Michel, for all of his fantastic looks and beautiful words, was not the man I’d thought him to be. He never was. This dark prince, now with mahogany eyes and a cool sense about him, would never again hold in me what I’d once thought he did.
No… my heart and soul belongs to another…
A plan is under way; a series of events that, if executed properly, could free my father John Henning from his prison; kept by revenants in an agreement to protect me, but that time has now ended.
I know what I am now… I know why they want me.
I’m the Red Queen on the chessboard; the coveted prize both sides wish to capture. I’ll seize their knights, deftly take their rooks and I’ll be pushed in every direction to protect their king. Even now, I feel the cold grip of the participant’s fingers around my throat.
We would need the forces and backing of King Edwyn and of The Realm if we are to succeed in freeing my father. It wasn’t like we could mosey on in to Sunnybrook and steal him away. I longed for my father; I needed him now more than ever. It should be an easy thing- to speak the words the king wants to hear, to make a vow and seal my fate. I’d been so willing before…
Before… when my eyes had been blinded by the bright light of foolishness; by the deceitful workings of a game that no one had bothered to share the rules of.
I’d play their game. I’ll pass go and collect my $200. I would buy Park Place and Broadway.
I would rewrite these rules, and by the Angels, I will win…
“Yes,” I answer this faux regal man who stands before me, taunting me with his offer of aid and a sinister grin worn plainly over his lips even as his fangs shine under the stars.
“Yes… I will marry Michel.”
ONE
My grandfather arrived before breakfast, saying his sensed something from his visit with me. I waved him off as I stood, with a promise to explain it all to him when we got home. Together, we transported back to The Trust without a good bye or up yours to anyone in Celine.
I hadn’t slept during the dark hours in the castle, plagued instead by the events of the previous day. Luc’s with The Angels, not claimed, but used as a tribute by his father for the return of Michel.
“Liam,” I ask my grandfather as I follow him to the desk where he’s begun to skim through yet another handwritten tome.
“Yes dear,” he doesn’t bother to look up at me, “I will leave you with this.”
I open my mouth to speak even as my grandfather walks to the library door, closing it behind him. I glance at the book with its pages wide open. With a skill I was still slightly surprised by, I run my hand over the parchment pages, watching the shapes meld into letters I can read.
Tributes, the title read. I glance over to the closed door and smile. For all of his eccentricities, Liam knows me well. I look back to the book as I take a seat at the desk, the swivel chair twisting as I pull in closer to read.
“’Tributes are oft times paid to those deserving, having completed a great service. These tributes, by practical standards, should be at least equal to the service rendered. It is an offense to refuse a tribute, as it is equally offensive to not willing offer a tribute,’” I read aloud.
So, one bad prince deserves another…
“’The Angels often accept tributes from the creatures of The Realm even if the value of tribute is lesser than the task they’d performed. Angels will do what they please with the tribute,” fantastic… “And once tribute is paid, it cannot be called back. It is wise to only offer that which you are positive you can do without.’”
Pretty much summed up exactly what I’d assumed. King Edwyn’s a douche bag.
I close the tome, having read nothing that would actually help me or tell me something other than what I’d thought. There was some reason why the King would willingly pay the Angels with Luc’s freedom to get Michel back. It went above his love of the prince Michel had been and I wonder to myself if he’d have paid it if he knew how Michel acted in my bedroom- pushing me… slapping me… knocking me to the floor…
Of course he would have, who was I trying to kid here? King Edwyn had sent his son’s out to murder the Lycans. One had done so with a morbid satisfaction while the other had stood by, seemingly helpless to stop it. Is it so far out of the realm of possibility that this, his tribute to Gabrielle, was a convenient way to eliminate that which was in the King’s way?
I wrap my arms around my middle and walk to stare out at the gardens. Most of the flowers had withered away, the chilly October temperatures of New York robbing the landscape of its colorful blooms in favor of the oranges and reds and browns that were harbingers of the season to come. A breeze blows and the ancient trees waver, their leaves caught on the currents and drifting from high branches to the green expanse of the lawn surrounding them.
I put my forehead against the panes of glass, the cool outside temperatures of late October evidenced on my skin. I close my eyes and search inside, trying to find the eject button of this nightmare.
“Why would you wish to escape?” A voice asks. I spin and find the newly risen Vampire Prince leaning against the cold hearth. “Have you not had enough time to learn, Maggie Dear that in this world there is no escape?”
Michel’s new brown eyes are like the dark closet where the monsters hide, the exception being that these particular monsters seems to flourish just under his skin. Unable to look at him, I turn back to the window.
“Oh, Sweet Maggie,” he continues and I hear his foot falls as he moves closer, “is it all truly so bad? I have heard that you wept many nights for me while I was in Shadow, that you were unable to even eat on a few of those occasions. It would do you well to remember those dark times so that you may now embrace real joy.”
I spin around, but then step back. Michel was inches from me, his smile teasing as his canines hang over his bottom lip.
“What happened to you?” I ask, forced to stop my retreat by the sill of the large window, left with no place else to go.
“You happened, Maggie,” Michel whispered coldly as he brought his eyes down to mine. I feel like it’s a shadow cast and hovering over me. “You came in to our world, so innocent and unassuming. I found that…intriguing. The purity of you is enticing. It’s like a freshly fallen snow that glistens under a grey sky, the air so fresh and crisp that it almost hurts to breathe.”
“And that’s something you would know nothing about, seeing as you don’t have to breathe,” I answer back.
Michel’s hands fly out, crashing into the sides of the window frame and trapping me with his form. I keep my eyes on his boots as his hair falls forward and I hear the quiet crackling noises of the wood splintering in his grip.
“Perhaps the former Prince Luc was better suited for that understanding. Pity he is no longer available to be asked,”
“That could change,” I stated, garnering the courage to look into Michel’s eyes.
The brown irises are so distinctly different from what I’d seen in him before. The silver flecks still there, even though I hadn’t noticed them in the bedroom in Celine. But these sliver bits are tarnished, tainted copper and they swim in the murkiness of his eyes like a worm slithering in the mud.
“But I don’t think it will, Maggie,” he taunted back. “Are you foolish enough to hold hope that the angels would so willingly grant you favor again?
“You accomplished the unthinkable, Maggie. You traveled to Empyrean and convinced the angels to return one they had rightfully claimed. You will be heralded in the histories forever for completing that task. Your value is great and it will only grow as my Queen.”
I swallow the bile that grew in my throat while watching Michel’s sinister smile widen. With his cold hands, he touches my cheek; sliding his icy touch across my face and down to hold my neck. Roughly, he yanks my head closer and lets his lips dance across mine as he speaks.
“You shall be cherished by The Realm, the mother of Celine’s heir. We shall make a marvelous pairing, you and I, Phoenix.”
Michel pulls away suddenly as my flames sprung to life against his lips. He raises his hand to touch the small burn, but smiled when he lowers it, already healing and repairing the damage my fire had done.
“You’ll need to get past that,” Michel speaks as he turned to leave the room. I watch as he pauses, his hand on the doorknob and facing me with a smile.
“I do believe this will be my most enjoyable conquest yet.”
When the door closes behind him, all the resolve and courage I’d attempted drained away and I fall to my knees with the knowledge of his words. I was trapped in the vow I’d made to his father.
In one week’s time, on November 7, my seventeenth birthday, I would walk down an aisle with the entire Realm looking on, and I’d give myself to the vampire; pledging myself to be his Queen- to love, honor, and cherish this new Michel.
I’d lie.
I’d willingly imprison myself to set my father free from his.
###
