Dance of the Damned

Seventy-Five

I couldn't suppress my anger towards him, even though I tried. He had disappeared for weeks, abandoning us in the midst of a war, and now he stood before me, casually smiling with his hands in his pockets. I had the urge to slap him and it took all my self-control not to.

"Hello, love?" I raised my voice, unable to contain my frustration. "Is that the best you can come up with? Where the hell have you been, Zeddicus? Did you forget that you are a king and we are in the middle of a war?"

"I haven't missed a single meeting with the council, generals, or Light Kingdoms," he declared, his tone serious. "I just didn't want to stay in the camp right now."

"Why not?" I demanded, placing my hands on my hips. I knew the answer, or at least I hoped I did. But I wanted to hear it from him.

"You know why. Don't play stupid," he replied, his voice filled with a hint of annoyance.

"You are the one playing stupid! You haven't even looked at me since we returned from Benevol, but you completely lost your composure when you saw Andre kiss me! It makes no sense!" I shouted, my frustration boiling over. "Why, Zed? Why have you been treating me like this?"

"Because I can't fucking stand being around you!" he yelled back at me.

I stared at him in shock for a moment. "You can't stand me?" My voice cracked, betraying the hurt I felt. I didn't want to sound vulnerable, but I believed that he felt something for me. Turns out, he couldn't stand being around me.

He took a step closer to me. "No, Venya. I can't stand you. I can't stand what you do to me! And the worst part is, you don't even realize it! From the moment I heard your voice at Benevol Castle, I knew there was something different about you. Then I saw you, those fierce violet eyes staring back at me, and for the first time in almost four hundred years, I felt something. It scared the shit out of me! You scared the shit out of me!"

"I scared you?" I scoffed, trying to suppress the laughter bubbling within me. How could I scare the King of Death?

"Yes, you did." He took yet another step closer to me. "I knew I had to rescue you from that place. I was already formulating a plan when Kalyani brought you and your friend from the dungeon and told me to choose. I sensed your Grim abilities, and that alone made it impossible for me to let you die. But there was something else, something I couldn't explain, that drew me to you. I still don't know what it is, but it drives me insane."

"Then why? Why did you avoid me when we returned?" I asked, my heart pounding as I hung onto every word.

"Because you said it was just business. That it didn't mean anything, right? I killed your friend. I took you as a prisoner. I forced you into becoming my secret weapon in this war. You should hate me. I don't blame you for it. But after that night in the brothel, I wanted you so badly. I knew you didn't feel the same, so I distanced myself before things could escalate any further," he confessed, and I couldn't believe my ears. I had denied my own feelings for him, thinking it would be absurd for him to feel anything for me. After all, he was the King of Death, and notorious for his promiscuity.

"You are so fucking absurd," I told him, and he stared at me in disbelief. "I couldn't even hold myself together that night in the brothel. You made me experience something I had never felt before, for anyone. How could you not see that?"

"I thought I did, but I didn't want to admit that you had feelings for me. You seemed so determined to believe that it meant nothing and that you wanted to forget about it. I wanted to respect that," he explained, taking another step towards me and closing the distance between us. "So stop pretending that this isn't happening between us. Love cannot be found where it does not exist, nor can it be denied where it does."