Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

I couldn’t shield her completely or Colewould know something was wrong, but I did shield it enough to where he couldn’t tell if she was aroused, lying, angry, or not. Why should I let him know those things? She wasn’t his to claim, she was mine. Not to mention that she had asked him to stop. Would I have stopped? No. But that’s because it was a game between us. Cole should have respected her; he was doing it simply because he liked to be in control in a different kind of way than I did.

Cole was controlling in a way that set women’s teeth on edge. He needed to be right. He needed to be heard first. He needed to be put above her. I was controlling in a way that gave them the most amount of pleasure. What I needed was to worship her. I needed to hear her cries of pleasure. I needed to be the tower she climbs until she realizes just how powerful she truly was.

With her I would be the best version of myself in the darkest way I knew how. I would give her everything and anything she wanted, everything and anything she desired, craved, hungered for. She would want for nothing in any way, shape, or form. Not forever, at least.

Knowing how curious she was, I still found myself shocked that she had found it. This place of nightmares and death. I wondered if Cole would realize the truth of it or if he would come to me about it later.

Another lie I would have to tell the people closest to me, but they didn’t need to know.

“Sure they do. They should know just how fucked up you are.”

I shoved my magic down, the rumbles of it uncomfortable as it clawed under my skin. Even the death of Tiriel did nothing to ease its true desires.

“He was terrified of being eaten, and then he believed we would be cursed.”

He. Something twisted in my gut at the thought. I had never met another male in her life that she would have been willing to bring out here. Most were too weak to even handle the nightmares I gave them after touching what was mine. Whoever he was, he must have meant something to her.

“Cursed?”

She nodded, looking back. “An old collapsed building in the middle of the woods, surrounded by the smell of demons? Cursed.”

Curses were real, but this place wasn’t cursed, just filled with nightmares.

Cole offered a small smile, his eyes drifting a little too low as she led him around the building. “Clearly.”

I cracked my neck, the rage burning under my skin as his eyes lingered on her beautiful ass. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this to fuck her. He was supposed to be gathering information.

“I don’t think that the person who built this knew it was here,” she went on, walking around the only standing corner of the building that remained.

She was right. What she was showing him hadn’t been there before.

Cole joined her side as she pushed the vines away from the wall, revealing a plaque carved into the stone.

I walked around the edge of the clearing so I could get a better look at it, although I had been here enough to know what it said by heart.

Cole leaned in, and I watched as she caught a whiff of him.Inhaled even, causing my lip to sneer.“Go ahead, Angel, give me a reason to touch you.”

Cole traced his fingers over the three deeply embedded claw marks left in the concrete as he studied the words. “Dragon language.”

Would he come to me and ask me to translate it? I was the only one left in the world who spoke the language. Or maybe he would keep it to himself until he and Nick could figure it out together. Normally I wouldn’t like him keeping the information from me for that long, but I would be glad that he was at least attempting to learn another language. Working in the High Court, every single one of them should have known how to at least speak the languages of the other species’. Cole had neglected that.

All he had been doing since a year after Rose’s death was fucking people. He neglected his tasks, according to Nick and Meeria, neglected everything. I couldn’t blame him completely. Everyone mourned in different ways, but it was time he started focusing on his job again rather than the next lay. Especially if that lay wasmy girl.

“That’s why you think the dragons and Nephilim were behind it?”

She didn’t answer. In fact, she had leaned away from him just an inch. I doubted he noticed, but I saw it.

“Good girl,”I smiled.

“I can’t read it,” Cole finally decided, leaning back. “Learning that language was before my time, but there should be books about it in our libraries. I can write it down and take it back to Nick to translate.”

And perhaps while he was there, I could get to knowmy Angel a little better.

She rolled her eyes as if she too had expected him to be able to read it. “It says ‘When the stars find the night sky and the night sky the stars, Kraljica will be born’,” she said without hesitation.

My brows lifted.

Cole turned to her equally as shocked.