Evil bastards were going to slit my throat and kill Callias. “They deserved it.”
“Those men, yes, but their entire bloodline?”
“I wanted Callias to be looked after until his time was up.” They owed him that much after what they tried to do.
“Ah, but you did not bind them to Callias; you bound them to the king.”
“Right. Callias,” I said.
“Yes, but I returned. I am, therefore, still the king in their eyes.”
Oh my God. The Spiros are bound to King. I rubbed my face. I simply couldn’t believe it. Everything I did seemed to recreate the future I so desperately wanted to change.
What if this is the way everything is supposed to happen? My heart began to beat faster, and the ache inside pushed at the walls of my heart. What if?
For example, King didn’t know about the Artifact yet. If I told him, would it be the beginning of an obsession that would trigger so many horrific events: Justin’s involvement with Vaughn, his death, my parents’ suffering, my involvement with King?
My heart sank. I didn’t know what to do.
You need to think this through, Mia. With a clear head. It was true; I was in no shape to make any rational choices.
“What would you like me to call you now?” I asked, changing subjects to an earlier point in our conversation.
“Master will do.”
I laughed.
“You would call me King, but not Master? You are an odd woman.” I felt his chest shake a bit.
“You’re messing with me, aren’t you?” I turned my head and tried to see his face, but it was too dark.
“Perhaps,” he replied.
King told a joke. Shocking.
“Yes. It is, isn’t it?” he said proudly.
“Why do you seem so different right now?” He wasn’t that same evil, scary man who’d dragged me from that dark room in his basement and then fucked me like he’d die if he didn’t.
“I would say it is because my tattoo is nearly complete, but I am unsure.”
“Tattoo? You mean the collar?”
“Yes. Meketre has been working on it for quite some time. A few minutes each day for several years.”
“Who’s Meketre?” I asked.
“He is an acquisition from Egypt.”
“You acquired him?”
“One might say that I am a collector of sorts—of objects and of people with rare gifts that might prove useful.”
I knew this story all too well. King’s obsession became collecting “power.” So this is how it all started. I had to wonder if this was the beginning of the 10 Club, too.
He added. “Meketre has helped many to dispel or control their demons.”
“So the collar tattoo…” I twisted around a bit. “You’re trying to tell me that the collar will help you control the curse?”
“Not the curse, but the violent urges it produces—the curse feeds off of them.” He paused. “However, nothing is certain. Meketre has never performed such magic on someone such as myself. I will not know until it is complete, but I do feel at peace. For the moment, anyway.”
Holy crap. So when Vaughn took King prisoner and removed his tattoos, he removed King’s ability to control his violent side. This was the reason King flipped out and took me to that island. It had to be.
“Can you make me a promise?” I said.
“This depends.”
“Do you remember our conversation before you died?”
“How could I forget?”
He said he’d rather die than continue on as a ghost who might one day come back to do something so heinous to me.
“Once the tattoo is done, don’t let anyone remove it. Not ever.”
“Why would you ask that?” he questioned.
“I think losing it is the reason you attack me.”
He was quiet for a very long time, which is when I noticed the eerie silence all around us, the clopping of the horse’s feet the only noise to be heard. No cars, no planes, no people. Just us.
“Have you ever considered, Mia, that had I not hurt you, you would have not traveled from the future?”
My mind did a lap, following his logic. He was right. Had he not brought me to that island, I would never have met him as a man. Hell, I wouldn’t even be here right now.
“No. You would not,” he responded to my thoughts. “Which poses an interesting question.”
“What?”
“If you could undo the past, would you?” he said without emotion.
I had to think about that. When I’d first arrived to Minoa, I would have given anything to alter the events. But now I knew it would mean never getting the chance to meet King. Now I loved him. So would I do it all over again—go through the pain of Justin’s disappearance, which led me to King, and go through that horrible night on the island so that I’d be thrown back in time?
The answer wasn’t clear. I could say “yes” to sacrificing myself and reliving my own pain. But if that meant sacrificing the happiness of my family? No. I would only choose to do it all over again if I knew I could bring back Justin, I supposed. In any case, it felt like events were going to play out a certain way, regardless of how I felt.
“Do you think it’s possible,” I wondered aloud, “that you and I are living a story that’s already been written?”
He took a moment to respond. “Yes.”
How does it all end?
“I do not know; however, we have little choice but to continue moving forward on the path chosen for us.”
Maybe he was right. I didn’t know.
“And, as you do not know,” he said, “then your only course of action is to make the most of the present.”
He certainly was right about that.
“Rest, Mia. We have a long ride back.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?” With you, I added in my mind.
“For the moment.”
I felt too frazzled and hungry to question it. Most of all, I needed sleep.
I allowed my body to relax against him. King was like an indestructible war machine from ancient times that no one could touch. Not now. Not in the future. Still, there was that part of him who remained…
Him. The king.
“I still love you,” I murmured before drifting off.
King didn’t speak but squeezed his thighs tightly around me.
When I woke, we were back in that cold, dark palace. No, I did not recognize the giant bed I was on, or the soft white furs blanketing my body, but the harrowing vibe was unmistakable.
“Mistress Mia, you are awake,” said a timid feminine voice.
I glanced over at a young woman dressed in a long flowing black dress, wearing a black headscarf. She stood next to a small table filled with bread and cheese. My mouth instantly watered.
“I am Ypirétria.” She dipped her head. “I am here to see that you eat and to help you bathe.”
Some things never changed. “That’s really kind, but I’m okay. So you are free to go.”
Her eyes filled with horror.
“What?” I asked.
“The master will be very displeased if I do not carry out his wishes.”
I rolled my eyes. “The ‘master’ can be displeased with me, then. And—”
“No. You don’t understand. Please, do not send me away.” She sounded as if she genuinely feared for her life.
Oh Lord. I really needed to talk to King about all this. After you eat. After. I couldn’t remember the last time I tasted food.
A thousand years ago?
Yes, I really did need something in my stomach. I took a whiff of myself. And a bath.
“Okay,” I said, “but I am going to speak to him.” I would include the topic of, “What the hell are you doing to your people?”
After attacking the food and having a luxurious bath in a stone tub filled with drops of a flowery-smelling oil and warm water that piped in through the wall—dang, the Greeks really had everything—I felt like
a new woman. Well, almost. I was dying for a Lady Bic. But Ypirétria did give me a little stick to chew on to clean my teeth, so that was nice.
“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.”