Filed To Story: Spit or Swallow: Kiss Of The Basilisk
She couldn’t be eliminated.
The crowd was moving, forming a semicircle around one end of the ballroom, where something was being assembled. Tem squinted to see what looked like podiums of various sizes, arranged in ascending order of height. She counted eleven of them. Tem frowned. If two girls were to be eliminated, there should be twelve podiums. Then she remembered the girl who had run off right before they entered the caves.
Tem glanced around for Vera. She was fluffing her hair and shooting meaningful glances at Leo, who was leaning against a column, looking bored by the proceedings.
“If the ladies could please form a line, we can begin.”
The command came from a handsome middle-aged man in a uniform. His blond hair was flecked with gray. Tem recognized him as Lord Chamberlain, the most senior officer of the royal household and the king’s brother. Tem had seen him around the village, attending to business on behalf of the king.
Gabriel gave her arm a squeeze. “Better get up there.”
She shot him a terrified glance. “Kill me. Right now.”
In response, he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. Then he gave her a little push, and she had no choice but to join the line of girls walking through the crowd. By the time they reached the podiums, Tem’s heart was beating out of control. Everyone was looking at them. And maybe it was simply her imagination, but it felt like everyone was looking at her. Hundreds of pairs of eyes raked over her dress, hundreds of stares pointed directly at her body. She’d never felt more like an animal in a cage than she did right now.
“That’s it, right along here.” Lord Chamberlain ushered them into an orderly line, turning them so they were standing in front of the podiums, facing the crowd. When they were all in position, he said, “Your Highness? It’s time.”
Leo emerged from the crowd, whiskey still in hand. His eyes trailed lazily over each girl, looking them up and down one after the other. Vera gave an odd shimmy when he passed by her, which was met with a bemused twitch of his lips. When his eyes landed on Tem, her heart caught in her throat. Leo stepped forward until he was right in front of her.
He leaned in.
But instead of sealing her fate, he tilted his head to the side, bringing his lips to the cheek of the girl standing right next to Tem. Tem was close enough to hear the words he whispered into the other girl’s ear: “Sorry, darling.”
The girl let out a strangled sob. Leo straightened, taking a casual sip of his whiskey as if none of this was of any concern to him. Then he turned to the girl to Tem’s right, leaning in and saying the same two words to her.
Both girls were immediately ushered away, leaving a gaping space around Tem. It was only then that she realized her hands were shaking. It wasn’t just the fact that the girls had been eliminated. It was the way Leo had done it-choosing the girls directly on either side of her, whispering in their ears specifically so she would hear, as if to show Tem that he could’ve eliminated her but didn’t. Was this all a game to him? Didn’t he care that he was in the process of choosing a wife? Leo was acting like none of this mattered to him at all. Tem couldn’t understand his apathy.
Lord Chamberlain was speaking again.
“Congratulations, ladies. It is an honor to stand where you stand. As the final event tonight, His Highness will place you on the podiums. The lucky lady in first place will receive a private date with the prince.”
Too late, Tem realized what was happening. It wasn’t just a surprise elimination. The remaining girls were to be ranked, in front of everyone, based on how attractive Leo found them. The podiums were meant to display them in descending order of beauty.
It was insulting. There was no other word for it.
Tem wanted to run, just like that girl who ran from the caves. But she couldn’t run. She was frozen in place as Leo pointed at girl after girl, assigning them to their podiums with a careless flick of his fingers until Tem and a girl with strawberry-blond hair were the only ones left standing. Only two podiums remained: the tallest and the shortest, best and worst, first and last.
Prettiest and ugliest.
Tem already knew what Leo was going to do. Still, it felt like a dagger twisting in her chest as he pointed at the blond and jerked his head at the tallest podium. Tem could practically feel Vera’s sneer searing into the back of her skull from where she stood on the third podium. Leo didn’t even bother to point at Tem. He simply knocked back the rest of his whiskey, holding her eye contact the entire time.
Tem didn’t step onto the last podium. She couldn’t. She could only stand in pure defiance, determined to wield the only power she had left. She looked Leo straight in the eye, refusing to look away even as the silence drew on. Everyone knew she was being trained by the Serpent King; everyone knew that meant she was supposed to be the best. To be ranked last was a complete and utter humiliation. Worse than that, it was a message. Leo wanted to punish her for rejecting him earlier. He wanted her to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was in control. Message received.
Lord Chamberlain broke the silence. “A round of applause for our winner!”
The crowd erupted into applause, and the blond girl waved as if she were already queen.
Tem could feel a stubborn swell of tears threatening to break free. But she refused to cry. Instead, she turned them into pure, simmering anger, which she channeled straight at Leo, whose shoulders were already slipping away through the crowd. Without thinking, Tem ran after him, shoving people aside and bursting into the hallway.
He was several yards away, about to ascend the stairs.
“Leo,” she yelled. “Stop.”
He turned to face her, his expression moving quickly from surprise to smug satisfaction. “Something the matter, Temperance?”
She walked right up to him, stopping only when they were a foot apart. “You ranked me last.”
His mouth twisted into a cruel smile. “So I did.”
“Care to tell me why?”
“I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“You might as well have called me ugly. Of course I noticed.”
Leo leaned in. “You made it clear you don’t want me to call you beautiful. Why shouldn’t I call you ugly?”
“Because it’s a lie.”
Disbelief flashed across Leo’s face. Tem seized the moment, stepping closer.
“And I’d prefer you didn’t lie to me, Leo. Plenty of people do that already.”
His own words hung between them. In the silence, Leo studied her face. He seemed to be working something out in his mind, and Tem decided to let him. She had nowhere to be-nothing was as important as this. She let him look as long as he liked, and when he finally opened his mouth to speak, his words had a bitter edge:
“I saw the way you looked at the skull, not to mention the way you look at me. You don’t respect my family. You don’t even want to be here.”
His words echoed Caspen’s: You do not seem desperate to be here. But Tem recognized them for what they really were. Leo was asking her whether she wanted to be here-whether she wanted him. It was a question that surprised her, given that the entire elimination process was based on his choice, not hers. It was assumed that the girls all wanted to be here. Her wants should be irrelevant to him.
But rather than give in-rather than answer him and reveal her hand-Tem decided to take her power back. So she leaned in, using her body in the same way Vera did with Jonathan, making sure Leo’s full attention was on her before she turned his question back on him.
“Do you want me to be here?”
Their faces were inches apart. Suddenly, the castle disappeared, and they were the only two people in existence. Tem saw Leo’s answer in his eyes-in the way his gaze traced hungrily down her neck to the golden claw that rested between her breasts. She saw his answer in the way his body angled itself to mirror hers, in the way his grip tightened on his whiskey glass, in the way his tongue brushed briefly over his lips as if it longed to taste hers. She saw his answer, but he said it anyway:
“Yes.”
Tem leaned back, once again putting distance between them. “Then act like it.”
Tem had never been so tired in her entire life.
The night at the castle hadn’t turned out at all the way she’d expected. Between her interactions with Leo and the surprise elimination, Tem didn’t know what to think of the entire process. Had she blown her chance with the prince? And if she had, did she even care? She didn’t know the answers to those questions. All she knew was that tonight she would be back in the caves with Caspen.
She was desperate to see him. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t angry with her over what happened with the skull. She wanted to ask him about the dress-whether it was meant as a symbol of his affection or whether it was meant to catch the eye of the prince. She wanted to see him naked, and she wanted him to see her. But she didn’t know where they stood.
So when she walked into the cave to find him waiting there, she had absolutely no idea what to expect.
“Tem,” he said quietly.
“Caspen,” she said back.
He only said her name-nothing more. He didn’t tell her to undress, like he had the last two times they had met. He didn’t bring up the dress he had given her or the little gold necklace. He didn’t ask how it had gone with the prince or congratulate her for making it through the first elimination. He just stood there, staring at her for a long moment before gesturing to the mat next to the fireplace. Tem crossed to it slowly, watching him as she did so. They sat at the same time, their bodies six inches apart.
Caspen still didn’t speak. Instead, he raised his hand to her face, cupping her cheek in his palm and brushing his thumb over the curve of her bottom lip.
Tem knew, without a doubt, that she was about to have her first kiss.
For some reason, kissing seemed far more daunting than what they had already done. There was something simple about touching him and him touching her back. But a kiss required connection. It required them to move in tandem, to establish a rhythm with each other and an intimacy that she’d never experienced with another person before. To kiss someone was to taste them and to let them taste you. Tem couldn’t imagine a greater responsibility.
Caspen’s fingers laced into her hair, wrapping around the nape of her neck and pulling her closer. Without thinking, Tem pressed her palms against his chest, holding him back.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.