King of Me (22 page)

“Now you are to go to the master’s chamber,” she said with an accomplished sigh.

“His…chamber?” I questioned.

“It is down the end of this passage, to the right. He said he will be waiting for you.”

An uncomfortable glob formed in my throat. There was no point in denying that I wanted him, but the way he’d taken me when I arrived had been pretty rough. What if he wanted it that way again? What if he wanted it rougher?

An image of that whip popped into my head.

I started to sweat, and my pulse accelerated in a bad way.
Okay. Don’t think about the island. He’s in control of himself, and has been since you got here.
And frankly, I needed to talk to him about the Artifact, but only after I laid out the conundrum we faced regarding his earlier question: if I could choose to let the events repeat, would I?

So what if I told him everything I knew? He could prevent certain events from occurring. Yes, it seemed some tragedies in our story were unavoidable, but I had managed to save Callias. That meant I might be able to save my brother, too.

This was definitely an angle worth discussing.

Wearing a very soft, flowing white dress, belted at the waist, I slipped a pair of skimpy leather sandals on my feet and headed down the hallway. The palace was extremely drafty and cool with no real windows and large open rooms—a sitting room with musical instruments and a fire pit, a library or study, and another room containing elaborately painted clay pots stacked up along the wall.
The wine cellar?

Beautiful murals of Greek women coated nearly every wall and reminded me of King’s modern-day palace. So did his chamber, actually—soft warm bed with white linens, a giant sunken tub with steaming water, and a balcony overlooking the city. A warm fire glowed in the fire pit and wine had been left out on the table, too. It looked like he planned for us to have a romantic evening.

“King?”

No answer.

I called out once again and waited for a few minutes, but he was nowhere to be found. I decided to go back to my room and ask the servant, but she had left.

I made my way downstairs to the main hall—also empty. “King?” I stood there for a moment listening for anyone, but a sound emanating from a set of stairs caught my attention. They were the same ones King had dragged me up after discovering me in that dark room.

Halfway down the obscure stairwell, I called out for King once again, and in that moment, colors burst from the walls. Reds and yellows—anger and pain. I had to remind myself that the colors couldn’t hurt me, but perhaps whatever was down there might, which is why I turned around and decided to wait for King back up in his chamber. Before I made it two steps, a low rumble followed by a faint moan caught my attention.

“King?” I yelled.

Oh hell.
Maybe something was wrong. After all, it wasn’t like King to leave me waiting. That man was all about punctuality.

I made my way to the landing at the bottom and pushed on the wooden door. It creaked open and inside was a long hallway. At the end, orange light poured through a cracked door. The place was almost exactly like King’s modern-day dungeon, and memories of Vaughn bombarded me.

My skin crawled and my hands began to shake as I walked to the second door, where another deep moan blared out. I pushed the door open and held back a horrified scream. An unconscious man with deep gashes on his chest was chained to the wall, his body covered in blood. On the table in the corner, the body of another man lay. It was headless.

Holy fucking shit. That’s Blondie.
The head of the man who’d sold me as a slave in that market sat topside up in a large clay bowl filled with blood beside the body. The man’s eyes looked at me, and his mouth opened as if trying to scream.

My legs nearly went limp beneath my weight, but I willed myself to stay standing. King had done this to these people. King. My King.

I turned and ran up the stairs, unsure of where the hell I would go. I slammed right into King.

“What were you doing down there?” he asked with a smirk.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

He crossed his thick, muscled arms. “Answer me.”

I stared, unsure of what to say. This was bad.
Really, really bad.

He read my thoughts.

“So now you know my dirty little secret.” He laughed wickedly.

“There’s—there’s a head. A live one.” The moment I said those words, I remembered the two heads in jars—live heads—back in his San Francisco warehouse. The faces had been distorted and the water sort of foggy, but I had no doubt that those warehouse heads belonged to Blondie and the redhead.

More lies.
Mack had fed me some bullshit about them being related to one of King’s jobs. I’d believed him.

“Why?” I asked.

“They betrayed me. They sold you into slavery when I asked them to take you to safety.”

I was about to say that the punishment was just too horrific—two thousand years too horrific—but King didn’t give me a chance.

“Do not think to lecture me, woman, about the severity of the punishment. Not after you cursed an entire family for hundreds of generations.”

Although it had been by accident, he was right. However, I didn’t decapitate them and leave their heads still alive.
Seriously. Who does that?

“Fine,” I said. “I will remove the curse on the Spiros as soon as I figure out how. Please, please undo whatever you did to that man? Just let him die.”

“You would beg for this man’s suffering to end,” he screamed. “You would let him die and release him from the pain, but me…?” he roared louder. “Not I! No! You sentence me to this purgatory, force me to become all that I hated as a man. But this piece of shit,” he pointed downstairs, “he deserves your mercy?”

It was King’s pain, the curse in control now, triggering this rant. I knew because the calm, rational man inside understood it wasn’t the same situation. Hell, he’d been the one to give me the idea to curse him in the first place.

“I will not undo his punishment,” King said. “And as soon as I catch the other man, he will share the same fate.” King leaned in close, and I could feel the heat of his breath. “They will be part of my collection, their only purpose to serve as a reminder of why I should show you no mercy, why I should loathe you—you selfish bitch.” He grabbed the sides of my head and kissed me so hard that my teeth pressed into my lips. I tasted blood in my mouth.

He jerked back and grinned. “Do you love me now, Mia? Do you?”

I wanted to answer, but my mouth didn’t want to move. Fear had the upper hand.

He gripped my arms and squeezed so hard that I thought he’d break my bones. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Yes!” I barked. “I still love you.” Because it was the curse talking, and I knew that somewhere inside was the real man.

“I am real!” he yelled. “And I will teach you to love the true me!” King dragged me down the stairs.

The room. He was taking me to the fucking room!

I fought, twisting my body and kicking my legs, but it was no use against a man like him. Effortlessly, he pinned me with his body and shackled my arms and legs so that my body formed an “X.” The man next to me groaned, his body growing pale as he bled out, and the head on the table stared with his wide blue eyes filled with pain and hate. Red and more red. I was certain this was it for me.

“Just kill me. Get it over with,” I said, finally understanding why Vaughn had preferred to die rather than be King’s torture toy.

“Why would I do that? I’d be missing the fun part. The part where you scream. I’m hard merely thinking about it.” He reached for my dress and tore it from my body.

“No!” I screamed, tugging as hard as I could on the restraints, but it was no use.

“Oh yes!” he said, laughing his words.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

Of course it can. You ran from him because of this.
But I knew it was the curse driving him.

“I know the man I met in Crete is in there somewhere,” I said. “And I know he loves me.”

“He is not here right now, Mia. I am.” He smiled, and his malicious eyes swept over my body as if I were some prized kill. “You should have run when you had the chance.”

King walked over to the wall next to the doorway, where knives, large metal hooks, ropes, and chains hung.

Oh God. No.
He reached for something, but his large body blocked the view. When he dropped the fabric draped over his shoulder, exposing his bare back, I caught a glimpse of red, crisscross striations on his skin.

Fucking shit.

He began flagellating himself.

My fear for my own safety quickly transitioned to revulsion while I witnessed this man beat himself. How it was possible—he was not truly alive, after all—or why, I could only guess. But I’d seen the marks on his back before. Only, after reading Hagne’s journal depicting the original version of this story, I had assumed she’d hurt him with her sharp nails when King had been with her.

Unable to watch, I turned my head.

“Is this what you want?” he yelled at no one, his back still to me. “I can go all night!”

Ohmygod. He’s losing it.
King was completely consumed by whatever horrible things went on inside him.

“Stop! Just…stop,” I said.

“I cannot,” he replied and struck himself again. “I cannot let that fucking weak bastard of a king win. He thinks a tattoo will stop me, but it will not.”

Holy shit.
King wanted to beat the goodness out of himself.

That man is a true king. He is strong and determined. He cared about his people. He would never give in to you or the curse. He would never hurt me. You are a demon. A tyrant.
“You are not my king. You are nothing to me.”

His head whipped around, and for a fraction of a second, King’s eyes turned to a vivid blue.

Yes. He was still in there somewhere—that beautiful man I couldn’t help but love.

“I’m sorry for cursing you,” I said. “I’m sorry for turning you into this monster.”

Anger returned, and so did King’s dark eyes. He dropped his whip and reached for a dagger on the table. He studied it briefly and then rushed toward me, plunging for my chest.

I flinched and clamped my eyes shut, but there was no pain. Not even a tickle.

What the hell?

A sharp electrical jolt surged through my body, and I went from being chained to a cold stone wall, to lying naked, face down, on a soft bed, my wrists and ankles bound.

King’s heavy form lie on top of me.

My mind took a moment to process. Had I escaped the nightmare I’d been in only to return to another? The one I’d run from to begin with?

I screamed.

“Mia! It’s okay!” I heard a familiar voice yell—not King’s.

Someone pulled King’s body off, and he landed with a thump on the floor.

I twisted my head to see Mack flipping the free half of the sheet over my naked body.

“Mack?”

“You’re okay,” he said, jumping to unstrap my ankles and then my wrists.

I took a moment to breathe and gather myself. My heart was about to explode.

“It’s okay, Mia. You’re safe now.” I felt Mack’s warm hand brush over the back of my head.

But how could I believe that? Nothing made sense, and I didn’t know what was real anymore.

“Mia? Speak to me. Tell me you’re all right.”

Slowly, I turned over, holding the sheet to my bare body. Though there was plenty of light from the torches, it was still pitch black outside. The sound of insects clicking and chirping surrounded us. Yes, I was back on King’s private island.

“Are you real?” I asked.

Mack’s big blue eyes drilled into me for one intense moment, and then he grinned—that warm, disarming, almost goofy smile. “In the flesh.”

Yes, I saw his light. Green—life—and blue—sorrow.

I slowly sat up and studied the limp figure on the floor. King lay there shirtless, wearing a pair of black jeans, his back to me and a dagger sticking from his neck. It was the same jeweled “sleeping” dagger I’d almost used to end my own life.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

Mack ran his hands through his messy blond hair. “We’re even, that’s what happened.”

“Even?” I asked.

“You saved my life. Now I’ve saved yours.”

I’d never saved Mack’s life. “But—but—I don’t follow.”

His eyes flashed toward King’s body. “Let’s just say that my brother isn’t going to be happy with me once this all shakes out.”

“Your brother…” My words faded away as my mind slid the pieces into place.

“Callias?”

He flashed a sly little grin.

“But how?” I asked.

“I’d love to tell you the full story, but the helicopter is waiting, and I really don’t want to spend another second on this island. It’s fucking creepy.”

He held out his hand, but I couldn’t move.

He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. “Mia, all you need to know is that the Artifact wasn’t the first relic King encountered to raise the dead.”

I lifted one brow.

“Cleopatra had a necklace.”

“You’re joking.”

He shook his head. “He had to kill her for it. How do you think King got her blood?”

I remember King bartering with members of the 10 Club once, using Cleopatra’s blood as his leverage. It was supposedly some sort of crazy youth serum.

I stood from the bed, holding the sheet to my body. “I don’t believe it.” I slowly reached for his cheek and touched it, expecting him to dissolve.

“Believe it.”

“But you don’t look like you.” Except for his eyes. They were the same vibrant blue.

I covered my mouth in shock and studied him. It all made so much sense now, his lack of judgment and blind loyalty toward King. It was the sort of love only a brother would have for his own.

Mack shrugged. “I was reincarnated—that’s what the necklace does—or did. It could only bring back one person. I’m pretty sure Cleopatra had intended to use it for herself.”

“So King brought you back and not himself?” Because I had seen Mack’s light. He was alive. Very alive.