Vicious Prince (Royal Elite 5)

“Does it turn you on to know you hurt me?”

“What? No.” Her voice is the lowest I’ve ever heard.

My little crazy beauty.

“Then is it the prospect of being hurt in return?” My finger traces up and down the skin of her nape, and that’s when I feel the shiver that overtakes her.

When she says nothing, I lean in to whisper, “You don’t have to hide your crazy from me, ma belle. Show it, and I promise to feast on it.”

She shoves me away, her cheeks turning red. I chuckle as she opens the door and bolts outside.

“You have a week to break off the engagement,” I call after her in my charming tone.

She doesn’t turn back and runs to the nearest exit.

This is the second time she’s run away from me, but there won’t be a third.

10

Teal

“Hey, Agnus.” I smile for the first time today.

Knox likes to tease me by saying I smile only once a day, and I’m hoping he doesn’t catch on like Elsa has and realise who I smile at.

I snap the seatbelt in place as the car swerves in the streets.

Agnus has raised Knox and me as if we were his children. When we were eight, Knox and I were kidnapped by his brother, Reginald, though I wouldn’t actually call it kidnapping. Knox and I were running away from the brothel in which Mum worked. We were starved and cold, so cold; I can still feel the chill on winter nights even when I’m under covers.

Reginald was this posh driver who offered us food if we met his mistress. Knox didn’t like it and said we shouldn’t go, but I took Reginald’s hand and we went into his car.

We had our food. We ate so much until I thought we were going to burst, but being hungry dirty kids, we continued to eat because we never knew when we’d eat next.

Then, Reginald’s mistress showed up — Dad’s dead wife, Abigail — and she was a spitting image of how Elsa looks now.

She was kind and showered us then gave us new clothes. I didn’t speak, not even once, but Knox kept thanking her and being his charming self.

What we didn’t know was that she was mentally ill and only fed children who looked like her dead son. The moment she found out I was a girl who had my hair cut short, she kind of flipped.

Knox and I were trapped in an underground basement for days or weeks, I still don’t remember. We barely ate, and she once cut our knees so we’d have the same injury as her son.

Back then, Knox cried, even as he hugged me and told me everything would be okay.

I didn’t.

I was too numb, and it wasn’t because of that incident. I didn’t speak either. All I kept doing was licking my lips to taste the last of the chocolate we’d had.

Then Dad showed up.

People think knights are your love interests, but mine is Dad, Ethan.

He saved us from his wife and was about to take us back to Mum, but Knox begged him not to.

I just shrunk back, my whole body shaking at the thought of having to return to that life in the brothel and go through everything that came with it.

Even though it’s been more than ten years, I still remember the first time Agnus spoke to me. Dad was busy talking to Knox, and then this man crouched in front of me and asked in a soothing tone, “You don’t want to go back?”

I shook my head so hard he smiled and made me stop.