King's Sword

Library

ADELAIDE

I can feel my hands shaking when we reach the library that was lit by dim hanging lights. Vance comes in and closes the door behind himself and I'm taken by the urge to scream and cry, to hit him and demand an explanation but also, as fucked up as it may sound, to kiss him.

He leans agains the door for a second, waiting for my command but I just nod for him to follow me deeper into the library, through the darker halls. Like a siren luring men to their deaths.

"What did you do to Christopher?" I ask quietly as I stop in the poetry section, turning to him with narrowed eyes. He smirks down at his shoes. "Don't be cute, what did you do?"

"Adelaide, why do you want to know? Justice is served, isn't that good enough for now?" He asks in frustration and I shake my head.

There's the damaged part of me. I don't care about what Vance did to the bastard, I want to know because I relish in the idea of blood spilled for what had been done to me. That a sick part of me imagines Vance's bloodied hands and is flushed in so many places.

"Have you ever killed a man?" I ask him curiously and something in his glimmering hazel eyes is answer enough. "I want to know what you did to him because I want to enjoy the mental image of you hurting him when I touch myself tonight, how's that for an answer?" His expression is serious and cold as he moves closer to me, close enough that I can feel his radiating body heat on my chest.

"Do I have to skip through any disgusting details?" He whispers wickedly and it almost seems like he's shaking.

"You can't." I say and he nods quickly, eagerly. I bring one foot up to undo my heel strap but Vance is quicker, dropping to his knees to do it for me and I hiss at the cold floor as it bites into my warm and sore feet. He hangs the red heels on his fingers as I move further into the aisle, and to the small couches in the back. "What happened?" I lay down on a long couch and he sits on the floor by my waist.

"When my father passed away his NDA was no longer valid and I was allowed to do whatever I wanted without endangering him." Vance says and I roll on my side to offer him a sympathetic frown, he looks up at me for a moment before looking away. Focusing it seems. "He knew what had happened to you, he beat Christopher up because it was the only thing he could do at the time. But he told my mother and I knew too. I knew how much it hurt him to see the both of you every day and not be able to protect you."

"It wasn't his fault-"

"I know. It was Christopher's and your family's." Vance says bitterly. "Still, when he died, I found your bastard of an uncle and snuck into his house while his family was away. I took a rusty dull knife and cut his dick and balls off, the coward shit himself-" I laugh and it makes him smile up at me. "Then I carved the word 'pig' on his stomach, I shaved him and tied him up before anonymously dropping him off at the hospital. I wanted him to live with that experience, with that hell, the same way you live with yours." I lean back on the couch and stare up at the dim lights.

"Why?" I ask and he turns to me with a frown. "Don't give me that look, strangers are appalled by what happened to me, they get sad or angry or disgusted, but they don't go the lengths that you have gone for me. So why?"

"Because I saw you at a family gathering a year before my father passed away and you were just this twenty-one year old girl hiding in a library with bloodshot eyes after your mother ridiculed you for not greeting your abuser with a kiss on the cheek." Vance says and the memory floods back as if it happened last week. His head leans back to see the lights too and he smiles up at them, a beautiful sincere smile that makes my core throb.

"I went to prison for five years and then your bitch of a grandmother died and your grandfather came to visit me. He didn't know, they didn't tell him, but he cut Christopher off instead of killing him because I asked him to make him suffer. He told me that I've proven myself to this family and that I had to protect you the same way I had before." My tears fall down the side of my face and to my neck and Vance reaches back to catch them.