Elys' face was calm, stoic even, not a single crease on her forehead. But under the surface of a cool demeanor, her heartbeat must have told the prince of what she truly felt right now.
When he reached out to take a whiff of her hair, Elys' ribcage threatened to burst open. The endless thrumming of her heart was increasing to a full crescendo.
Each beat rising higher than the last.
Faster and faster, it drummed on and on.
She expected him to bite her with his fangs, but surprisingly, he only made a cut on her hand and let her bleed until he saw enough blood in her cupped hand. Aleksander bent forward, pulling her wounded palm to his mouth.
His eyes were on her all the time, and she wondered what was inside his head. Was he reading her mind right now?
She caught a smirk curl on his immaculately dangerous lips – he definitely knew something. Elys couldn't tell what it was, but for sure it wasn't anything she would like to hear.
The princess willed herself to calm down. She must have a clear mind in facing the cunning prince.
If he had the ability to actually read minds just as he could bend her perception of reality, then he must have already known everything about her – her real identity and what she had planned for the past weeks of her enslavement to his kingdom.
Why wasn't he doing anything else than be a jerk and treat her as if she was trash?
"Did you expect me to bite your neck?" Aleksander grinned, clearly not oblivious to her tough act.
Elys snapped back from her internal musings. She watched as how the prince had his lips just an inch away from her palm now. His nose was sniffing at the pool blood in her hands.
"Weren't you?" she replied blandly, trying to avoid showing emotion in her voice.
"Would you want me to?" he retorted. "No, I only bite after I take a taste and deem the blood palatable. Although I sometimes just let my blood servants bleed into a vial." Elys raised a brow to which he added, "Now, we will see if your slave friend could stay."
The prince suddenly pulled Elysianne's palm crashing to his mouth. He was rough, and the princess couldn't help but suck in air in shock as he sucked at her blood.
There was something unsettling in the pit of her stomach when the prince drank her blood, but she just couldn't quite put her finger into it.
After what seemed like ages of intense silence, his warm tongue glided over her palm, licking it clean with a low hum. A bit of blood smeared over the edge of his mouth, and Aleksander ran his tongue over the blood and cleaned it off too in a seductive manner.
He pursed his lips as if he was going back and forth if he found his wife's blood to his taste.
"Hmm," he hummed as he let go of Elys' hand.
His eyes raised just as he straightened his posture, locking his golden gaze to Elys' blazing rubies. There was a hint of amusement in his eyes, and Elys found herself just a tiny bit optimistic.
She withdrew with a step back, "I presume that look says Cordelia is the new maidservant now."
"Maybe," Aleksander answered, crossing his arms and smirking at Elys.
She couldn't help but curl her fingers. Elys wanted to scrape the smug look off his face with her bare hands. Why couldn't he just give a straightforward answer?
"Henry," Aleksander called out, to which the door of Elys' bedchamber opened as the attendant entered with a bow.
"Yes, Prince Aleksander?" the old man answered.
"Take the slave – err – the new, older slave, and let her start immediately with what work Davika had left behind," the prince instructed Henry.
"Understood," Henry acknowledged his master's instructions. "Will the princess be the one to serve as your…"
The old man trailed off. He was confused for the right term that he should use for Elys. Was she supposed to be called a princess? The young prince never called her such, nor did he actually acknowledge her being his wife.
Aleksander's eyes shone brightly, and he let out an evil laughter, "Don't be confused, Henry. As for this unwanted wife – she will be my new blood servant," the prince told him.
Henry got the answer to his internal question. The slave becoming a princess had been nothing but a joke to the whole kingdom anyway. It would be just fitting to have her serve the prince accordingly.
The bastard prince turned to Elys and then said, "I will need more blood in an hour. Henry will tell you what to do."
With those words said, the prince walked out of the bedchamber.
Cordelia rushed over to Elys' side and quickly took her hand to inspect the wound. She was like a worried mother hovering over her precious child, her brows knitting together in a tight bridge of white fine hair.
The cut started to bleed again. It was slow, but blood was ultimately being lost every second they do nothing.
She tore a piece of her dress that hadn't been soiled and pressed hard on Elys' palm. The former lady-in-waiting turned to Henry and, more forcefully than intended, demanded him to bring over medicine for her wound.
"What are you standing there for?" Cordelia snapped at the old man, forgetting her manners all together. "Her highness is wounded."
Henry flinched, the intense aura that emanated from Cordelia intimidating him. She was several inches taller than him, her physique more toned to his slightly round beer bellied figure.
If they were to be physically compared, one wouldn't even think twice to bet a large sum of gold that Cordelia could actually take down Henry despite most gender biases that turn to men as the stronger type.
"Uhm, right, yes the medicine," Henry babbled and then rushed out to get his medicine box.
"Princess," Cordelia called out to Elys as she looked into her blank face. "What do you need?"
Elys turned towards the woman's worried face, and slowly her eyes returned to stare at her hand.
Her palm had been deeply gashed yet again.