Blood & Honey #1

*Chapter Nineteen*

If I had a beating heart, it would be thundering in my chest as I book it full throttle to the kitchen where I heard Kinley scream. My mind is racing, picturing Kalista covered head to toe in Kinley's honey blood. I wasn't thinking when I forced Kalista to eat the heart. As a fledgling, she could have acquired to the taste quickly. Kinley's hammering heart, due to her fear of us, would be impossible for the princess to resist with Kinley's potent cinnamon blood also in the mix.

How could I have been so careless?

The tension in my body gets released immediately when I see Kinley standing alone in front of the open fridge. There is an empty glass on the counter and a pitcher of filtered water spilled on the ground by her feet along with a half-eaten heart that is among pieces of a broken plate.

Damn it, Sabrina. She lied. Kalista didn't finish the heart. She probably couldn't stomach the whole thing. Human heart is a delicacy that can take some getting used to.

I guess I don't have to worry about the princess ripping Kinley's heart out any time soon for she doesn't yet have a taste for the life-giving organ.

This discovery might mean more to me if there weren't three other vampires who do have a taste for heart in the house.

I must not have put enough dream shade in Kinley's water. Either that or I didn't get enough down her for the effects to last through the night. Dream shade is known to make humans thirsty when they wake. Regardless, she should not have come out here alone.

Kinley raises her gaze from what remains of the heart near her bare feet to me, noticing my presence. It's at this same time that I hear the front door open. The others are arriving back home from their night out.

Before I can even take a step, Kinley unglues herself from the opened refrigerator door she has been plastered against. "Don't. Don't come near me."

Even in the dimly lit light of the kitchen that is kept aglow by the fridge, I can make out the glistening sheen in Kinley's eyes. The heart on the floor must be reminding her of the night she lost her parents.

Instantly, my throat begins to burn and for a split second, I am kneeling in the field of flowers beside the little girl who tripped over the rock and scraped her leg. The thing is the little girl isn't the little girl anymore—she's Kinley.

The image changes quickly, the flowers turning to hard stone beneath my feet. I am no longer in a field of flowers and am instead inside a lavishly decorated room.

If I had to guess based on the stone flooring and walls, I'd say I'm in one of the rooms inside the castle I was heading toward in the distance.

"Don't come any closer," Kinley says. In lieu of sleep clothes, she's wearing a dress styled in an ancient fashion I've never seen before. It's revealing, elegant, and flowing with soft sheer fabrics and silks.

I drop the three heads I'm holding by my feet, black veins marbling me with their intricate pattern.

Shit. I'm still under the effects of the antherest.

It doesn't matter how hard I try to fight my way back to the real reality I am pretty sure is the one with Kinley by the fridge, all I can see is this alternate reality. The one where I'm my grandfather and Kinley is the little girl all grown up.

Kinley looks to be sixteen. The same age she was when she lost her parents. I only know this because of the pictures I saw of her in the police report in her therapist's office from that night.

"I mean it. Stay away from me." The glee and admiration that shone in the little girl's eyes are no more. Instead, fear permeates the air...her fear of me.