Page 271 of Venom Sweeter than Honey
His jaw works, but he remains silent.
“I do not know what game you’re playing, or what you have planned, but there is, quite literally, nothing you could do to make me bend to your will. I would sooner die.”
My father shakes his head. “I have no intention of making you do anything. All of this is yours. By birth. By right. It always was. Your mother was the one who left. I spent years trying to convince her to come back..."
He takes a few steps away to open one of the double doors behind us.
“You were born here. You belong here.”
I can’t stop myself from peering inside. It’s very clearly a girl’s nursery room—one that hasn’t been tidied, but remains frozen and dusty with time. A small pile of scattered plush toys; a crib, sheets dishevelled; a rocking chair with a blanket askew over one arm and a pile of children’s books beside it.
My mind takes in every detail, trying to detect any hint of recognition, but there is none.
“All I have ever wanted is for you to be here.”
Tension and distrust radiates from my males standing beside me as tears continue to spill down my cheeks from beneath my mask.
“Then why?”
“Your mother wanted a different life for you.”
I rear back.
“You left us to live in squalor. To come and go as you please. You didn’t even come to her ascension ceremony. You left me in the hands of House Mothers at an orphanage. To then orchestrate?—”
My throat closes around Thessaly’s name, forcing all that grief into my already streaming eyes. The words come out a whispered hiss.
“You killed Thessaly.”
He shakes his head. “He was trying to keep you from me. What else would you have me do to a male who plots to steal my own daughter from me?”
My body trembles from barely restrained fury. “You could have come to me! Instead you thrust me into the arms of a male too broken to love me, who would willingly pawn me off to his clients, and beat me within an inch of my life!”
The energy radiating from behind and beside me from Azrael, Levi, and Lazarus burns.
My father’s pained expression, somehow, calms at those words.
My father’s head tilts as if I’ve uttered some intriguing revelation. The glint in his steely eyes turns lethal. “Did he?”
I might have wished harm to Lucen, but death... even after his violence and learning his betrayal is not something I desire. The male is as broken as the cane he beat me with—presumably thanks to my father.
My throat works as if it might try to reclaim words too hastily liberated.
As if my father can read my mind, he shakes his head. “Your heart is too soft,minishti.”
Little pearl,in Sinsóli.
The audacity he has to speak to me in such a familiar tone makes me want to rake my claws down his face.
“He cannot go unpunished for such violence against you.”
“I already punished him. You have hissoulbound.You havehim.Forced them both into your sexual servitude.”
My father smirks. “Ah, yes, but they are together. I am not without my mercy. And I didn’tforceLucen into anything. He chose to come here. To be with her. Even now, he is likely coupling with her. I scarcely touch her anymore because she always reeks of his seed. Her skin, marred by his marks. She’s hardly of any interest to me anymore.”
“Why not let them be free?”
The grin on my father’s face tells me he thought I’d never ask. “Take the throne as Queen of Sinsól, and you’ll have the power to do so.”
