Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,147
me and Elijah had anything to say about it. The poet vampire didn’t exactly strike me as a warrior, but he had beat the snot out of Deimos for attacking Katja, so perhaps the dragonfire that bound us all together sparked in his dead heart too. Time would tell. He slowed on the other side of a table, tapping his fingers on the metal surface with a shrug. “I mean, we only need his arm with that tattoo… Maybe it’ll unlock something besides the ward.”
“Ward’s down,” I said absently, totally transfixed on Elijah as he grabbed Cooper’s limp arm, shoved the sleeve down, and then stomped on his elbow hard enough to snap the bone like a twig. He then tore the tattooed forearm off at the joint, spraying blood like a tidal wave. Satisfaction rippled between the three of us when Elijah hucked the arm to his friend, who then tipped his head back and opened his mouth, holding the severed arm up and guzzling the free-flowing red like a starving man devoured his first meal.
Fair enough. The poor fuck had been in this cesspit for the better part of a year now; perhaps this truly was his first real meal in all that time. The pittance served in the dining hall could hardly sustain a vampire long-term.
“Wait…” Elijah wiped his bloody hands on his jumpsuit with a frown, dragon eyes locked on me. “Did you say the ward is down?”
“I think it’s a fair assumption.” How else could the Master of Midnight pull off that display? “And I think we have a foxy little witch to thank for that… There’s more to our girl than we thought.”
Feisty vixen, Katja Fox. She had enjoyed brandishing a weapon during today’s revolt a little too much to ever go back to the life of a boring café owner. The look exchanged between Rafe and Elijah suggested that her fire was nothing new, that they had known she was a warrior all along. I rolled my eyes. Sure. She was a saucy creature in her own right, but no need to diminish her glory in battle now.
“And that infernal racket?”
“The Host of Horns,” I remarked, my grin sharpening when Rafe winced against the second wave of trumpets. “My brother’s here… Most likely with the court’s army backing him. I told you pricks I was a prince.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Elijah muttered, his eye roll near identical to Rafe’s, but at least they had the decency to smirk while they did it. Perhaps they had believed me all along. Perhaps they just liked riling me up.
No one had ever purposefully riled me up before except my sisters.
All the other sniveling courtiers, my various entourages through the centuries, focused on placating me.
More proof that I had found my tribe—my true friends.
“Well, just wait until you meet him,” I carried on. “Honestly, he’s so stiff and boring and proper… Rafe, you’re going to love him.”
The vampire straightened, blood smeared over that strong chin and rugged jaw, down his neck, severed forearm in one hand—and he then hoisted his middle finger with the other, eyes narrowed. I snorted just as the other inmates slowly made their way out of their cells. While the bird shifters lingered in the doorways, meek as ever, assessing the scene before them in silence, Deimos strode right into the common area like he owned it, demonic swagger intact, and his maenad sycophant pranced along after him.
“Gentlemen,” he purred, eyeing each one of us intensely, no doubt calculating the risks of what was about to come out of that foul mouth. “We appear to be allies in the end, no matter how temporarily, no matter our history…”
This fuck.
He had the sheer audacity to…
Every jovial bone in my body steeled at the memory of Katja’s battered face, her shriek of pain as I caught her around the torso when Rafe returned from his… operation. The aftermath of it all, the poking and prodding from Deimos and his cronies. Katja shuffling around the greenhouse, broken, her injuries only tightening Guthrie’s noose around her. Rafe’s sudden lisp without his fangs—Constance parroting it whenever she had the chance as Deimos cackled at her side.
Ordinarily I let drama and turmoil slide…
But this fucking fuck.
No matter our history.
For the first time, history mattered to me. It mattered so deeply that it had already scarred into my marrow, something to haunt me for the rest of my days.
I had never cared enough about anyone before to consider exacting revenge, but