The first thing you notice about Prince Ruin is the thin lightning-strike tattoo that crawls up from his heart, running across his chest and spine, climbing his neck like something alive before stopping right at the edge of his chin, as though afraid to touch his face.
No one knows what it means and there are enough lores surrounding it to make it stick to the memory.
The second thing you notice about him are his eerie set of hooded eyes. They are a crushing blue, stained with hints of red. Imagine drops of blood in a deep blue ocean and you find yourself staring in the eyes of Ruin.
It was a sharp contrast against his pale skin, further off-setting his raven black hair. Altogether, it makes his face both jarring and striking in the same sentence. And you either found him painful to look at for the right reasons or for the wrong ones. I find it beyond disturbing. I always have.
Perhaps it is because he scares me. But Ruin scares everyone. I wouldn't be the first to squirm under his stare.
But that was the thing, wasn't it? The man had never, not in the months of meeting Ceaser's family or the preparations or introductions or numerous dances I'd had with Ceaser's brothers had Prince Ruin ever looked me in the eye.
If he had to, his gaze was always fixed between my eyebrows or above my head. If he had to. Because I could tell I irritated him just as much as he irritated me.
Even now, nothing's changed.
But irritation, I find, is better than sinking into despair waiting to catch me in its clutches when it all finally sinks in. Because it hasn't yet.
The Priestess, a crone with owl-like eyes and lips that curve like a beak, holds out a knife to me. "You will slit his wrist and drink from it."
My fingers tremble around the hilt of the knife and I consider stabbing it into the Prince's left eye. The only thing that keeps me from doing just that are the guards flanking every corner. They wait, high on alert, as though they can read my thoughts.
I clutch Prince Ruin's large hands. There's a tattoo of a smiling red sun in his palm and it looks like it's laughing at me. I bring down the knife with a vicious slash, nearly cutting his fingers off.
He doesn't even flinch. He doesn't look at me, either. He's been staring at the acolyte's ass since she brought us the jewelled knife for the ceremony.
Could he be any more obvious? And was it too much to hope that he wouldn't darken my door tonight and visit hers instead, considering, she won't stop staring at him unabashedly, either?
The wound begins to stitch itself and I let it. Only so I can vent my frustration on him and slice his skin in half again.
The crowd gasps at this but I don't care. The anger circles around my throat, making it difficult to breathe.
On the third stab, the Prince's eyes drop to the wound, pupils constricting, and without warning, he reaches for my braid, yanks my head down so roughly, I feel the strands break from my scalp and he holds his palm over my lips, forcing me to swallow the drops of his blood. "You could try for a little bit of docility, mutt. I do not want this anymore than you do."
I struggle against him, but he holds me in place until I swallow every last drop. Furious tears spring to my eyes and I fight back to keep it from falling. But it does anyway.
He releases me with a shove only to grasp my wrist and make the incision. His lips are hot and vile against my skin and his tongue is smooth and barbaric as he laps at my blood.
It is all but one stroke. But it feels like an eternity and has an intimacy to it that makes me want to vomit. The pheromones attack, filling me with that heady rush of lust and thirst and hunger, but my hatred and disgust is far greater than any of it.
As if feeling my revulsion, his gaze lifts and he kisses the centre of my palm as the wound closes. "I prefer my women with less fire in their eyes when I fuck them."
I rip my hand out of his and take a step back when the Priestess says, "The Marking."
Panic sets my chest ablaze and I place my fingers over my pulse. Ceaser's mark still resides there. It is all I have left of him. I do not even have the letters he wrote me or the gifts he brought me or the clothes that had his scents all over them because father burned them. It was hindering my moving on and swelling my grief, he said.
He had no right, I had shrieked. But you will come to learn that no one listens when I speak.
I look to Prince Ruin, even if I know it'll change nothing. And there is a plea in my gaze.
Anywhere else. Anywhere else but there.
His lips stretch wide over gleaming fangs. And he closes the distance and buries two sharp points in the same spot his brother did, defiling it. It is exact, precise and horrifying.
The pain is excruciating. And the pleasure that comes from the venom of his fangs is paralysing. My lips form around a scream, my nails digging into his arms to push him off. But my scream comes out as a whimper and my hands only pull him closer as he sucks, tongue running over the skin with a soft caress.
He groans, pressing closer, claws tearing into the skin of my neck as he ravages my neck and drinks... and drinks. But for all the pain he gifts me, there is a searing heat burning in my core as fiercely as my hatred.
I'd known the first time Ceaser put his fangs in my neck that humans hadn't been exaggerating when they spoke of the sinful high that eroded every part of you, the only thing that remained was desire. It didn't matter if you consented, it didn't matter if you despised it. You would plead for it, plead to be killed by the kiss of their teeth.
Warmth blooms between my legs and my thoughts become a distant echo as I moan. My nipples tighten. My body erupts in feverish whispers and my eyes shut, my neck listing to the side. My knees buckle and I clutch his chest, his shoulder, his hot skin, anything to keep myself upright.
My nails rake against the tattoo over his heart and the spell breaks abruptly.
He pushes me away so violently, I hit the stone floor with a hard crack. Pain erupts in my wrist as I twist it upon landing.
The haze over my mind clears, and for once I look at the little crowd. They watch my body shake as it fights off the effect. They watch the shame rise to my cheeks, the self-loathing, the disgust I feel for them and myself. That my hatred wasn't enough to break through it.
Tears sting my eyes as I return my gaze to Prince Ruin, my throat closing with so much anger, so much helplessness, it makes me lightheaded. His long pink tongue darts out of his mouth, licking the dribble of blood off the corner of his lips and his mouth curves into a smile. "Not so difficult now, are you?"
He turns and stalks off the dias.
"The kiss," the Priestess chides harshly.
A servant appears out of the corner, giving him a robe. "There'll be plenty enough time for that tonight, I suppose."