King of the Unsightly (Tempting Trickery #1)

Memories

G ren dropped the monster’s corpse on the ground, and a clamorous thud followed.

“That would have been so much more convenient minutes ago,” Kaschel growled as he fell to his feet and rubbed his bruised throat, coughing up blood.

Gren didn’t respond as he turned back around. He spotted me in the dirt struggling to get my body to move.

His deadly silence made my skin crawl. My lungs collapsed with each stride he took. His forbidding aura dimmed the sky.

I wanted to stand up and run, but I also had too many questions.

Gren loomed over me with a detached stare and my breath hitched, but I couldn’t utter a single word.

Gren scooped me up, and I squeaked as he guided us to the front door.

He glanced at me, expressionless. “You’re bound now.”

I opened my mouth, but it just hung there with no clever retort. Gren sighed in frustration and his face clouded with indifference again.

“You’re not old,” I blurted out.

It wasn’t the first thought to run through my mind. I had thousands upon thousands, but the idiotic ones always clawed their way to the surface and pushed the logical ones away.

Gren furrowed his dark brows in confusion as his lip twitched downward; his scar moved with it. “And?”

I mumbled a quick nothing under my breath. I shifted away from his grim expression to Kaschel who looked like he doused himself in a blood bath, which I guess he kind of did.

I clenched my chest as a strange emptiness ate away at me. I couldn’t quite put it into words, but a numbing coldness consumed me, creating a gaping hole in my chest.

Did I lose something back there?

“We need to patch up your wrist. I think you might need stitches,” Gren mumbled.

I glanced vacantly at the front door as Gren carried me inside, not really thinking much about what he said and too focused on what I had done.

“Why are you human? Are you really Gren?” I asked, still not fully believing what happened.

Gren dipped his chin down and his ebony hair draped over his scar with a sullen look. “Familiars are born with half a soul. We wander until we can find a witch who willingly gives up half ... Your mother would be ...” He averted his gaze and rested me on the couch, gently.

My eyes lit up, and I intently watched Gren sit on the coffee table opposite to me. “Can you speak about the past now? About my mother?”

I glossed over what Gren previously said. We would discuss it later; right now he could answer why I was thrown into this hell.

Gren kept his stare on the door, watching Kaschel stroll in behind us. “Now is not the time. We need to get to safety.”

I huffed out like a child who wasn’t getting their way when I knew he had a valid point. “ Soon .” I bit down and looked away from him.

I didn’t care about much in my twenty-three years, but finding out about my mother? It was something I needed to know. As much as I loathed her for abandoning me, it was like an insatiable craving I needed to feed or it would devour my whole existence.

“I will say this ... I was content with being by your side and helping you even if you didn’t remember me.” Gren spoke softly as he leaned forward and brushed a strand of hair out of my face.

Gren was strangely different, and I wondered if it had anything to do with him gaining half my soul.

But that couldn’t be real. Half my soul? If it was, why didn’t he tell me before he suggested it?

I perked an eyebrow up when I realized what Gren had said. I couldn’t remember much of my childhood except for foster care, and when I met Lucien. I remember the crows, and how they spoke to me, but I never remembered a word they said.

I hadn’t found my hazy memory strange until now. It was like a vague nagging in my mind, and it only disappeared if I stopped thinking about it.

“How heartwarming, but now isn’t the time to reminisce,” Kaschel interrupted. “We have a hundred more bounty hunters coming our way.”

Gren shot a glare at Kaschel. “That’s your problem, not ours.”

Kaschel clicked his tongue as he walked over to the coffee table—cool and collected, acting as if he wasn’t almost choked to death.

Kaschel watched me and said, “Addy and I have an agreement, and until she fulfills her end of the bargain ... I’m afraid she’s stuck with me.” Kaschel glanced back at Gren with boredom. “And it shouldn’t be of any concern to her pet.”

Levisus ran out of the hallway, cutting off their useless quarreling.

Levisus fixed his sights on Kaschel. “I got it, but you’re not going to like where it’s located.” He paused and blinked a couple of times before registering Gren’s presence. “Why the fuck is there a naked man sitting on my coffee table?”

“Her pet raven.” Kaschel flicked his wrist in Gren’s direction.

“Crow.”

“Whatever.”

“Stop,” I snapped.

There was too much testosterone in this goddamn room.

I wanted answers. I wanted a hot shower. To wash away the dirt and grime. To find the other key and go back to living a repetitive, normal life, not listen to a bunch of men arguing like children.

I stood up and fully noticed Gren’s naked body.

I turned away, ripped my cloak off, and draped it over him.

Gren tilted his head to the side as if confused by my actions, but I ignored him.

I guess our conversations could wait. We needed to leave.

“Do you perhaps have any spare clothes?”