Twisted Kingdom (Royal Elite 3)

Deadly, but also alive.

So, so alive.

“You owe me from the past, Elsa.”

A different type of flutter snakes into my heart. This one is painful and destructive. I stare at my lap. “T-that was my mother, not me.”

“She’s dead. You’re alive.” He tilts his head. “I’ll take what I can get.”

“That’s a low blow, dickhead,” I mutter under my breath.

He knows how guilty I feel about what Ma did, but like a first-class sociopath, he’s using it against me.

Aiden lifts a shoulder. “I’ll use whatever I can to get you. I have no boundaries when it comes to you, Elsa.”

“Aiden…”

“The scar on my ankle is because she had me cuffed with metal to heavy chains. The scars on my back are because she hit me with a horsewhip over and over again until I passed out. I don’t think she stopped even when I lay lifeless on the floor.”

“Aiden. Stop.”

He doesn’t. He digs the shard harder and deeper into my skin with every word out of his mouth.

“She gave me nothing to eat and barely anything to drink. I had to piss and shit where I slept. She treated me worse than a dog, and the funny part was, she never really saw me. She saw someone else when she looked at me. When I finally came back home, the only person who could’ve made it better was also gone.”

Tears stream down my cheeks by the time he’s done. My lips tremble and my jaw aches with the need to hold in the sobs.

Aiden speaks so nonchalantly, it’s more terrifying than if he spoke with emotions. Now, I see why he doesn’t hold feelings in high regard. They were purged out of him a long time ago.

They were whipped, starved, and burned into the fire.

“Do you know how it feels to be hit with a horsewhip until the skin breaks? Until blood drips to the ground?” His jaw tightens, the tiniest bit, before it goes back to normal. “It hurt like a bitch especially for an eight-year-old who didn’t know real pain.”

The word stop lingers on my tongue, but I swallow it.

Aiden lived those horrors, the least I could do is listen. Even if he’s using my guilt factor against me.

It’s even more tragic he’s using his pain to keep me by his side. I would’ve felt special if my chest wasn’t slowly dissolving into a bloodied mess.

“Does it pain you to hear this?” He wipes the tear under my eye with the pad of his thumb. “I can stop if you like.”

“You don’t have to,” the words come out strangled, dying, weird.

“I will if you kiss me and make it better.”

A tremor shoots through me. Did he do all that just so I would kiss him?

No. Aiden can be an unemotional monster, but I know that Alicia’s death affected him more than anything else.

It was the last straw that changed him for good.

“No?” He lifts a shoulder. “Worth a try.”

I grab his cheeks and slam my lips to his. Aiden is stunned for a moment, but I don’t stop. I nibble and bite on his lower lip like a madwoman.

I want to kiss it and make it better.

No. I want to kiss it and make it go the fuck away.