25

                                    

                                          

MARIA 
She staggered, dizzy rom the tracing. Her vision was blurry and she held on to her captor's arm for a few moments longer, before she could finally see well, then she let him go. 
She pointedly ignored his gaze because she knew that if she looked at him, she would probably see eyes full of anger. 
When she looked around, she saw that they were in the middle of a forest. Right I the middle of a forest. Was that his intention or had they somehow landed here by mistake? 
"What is this place?" She asked when she finally turned to him. "What are we doing here?"
He didn't answer her, as she had expected. He merely looked at her then looked away, sweeping his eyes across the thick masses of trees as if he was searching for something. 
The path where they were standing was a thin one, as if it had been cleared specifically for just one person to pass through. And he'd traced here, which meant that he had been here before. For what reason? She didn't know, and she was not sure that she was interested in knowing. She just needed him to get her the hell out of here. 
There were so many creatures in the forest that could kill her. She was not an immortal yet and she definitely was not going to expose herself to such kinds of risk. 
Not that he would care. 
"Answer me, please." She tried again, but as expected, he ignored her. Well, since he was going to pretend like he couldn't hear her, she might as well do her own perusal of the forest. 
As her eyes swept over the green of the leaves—so very much like his eyes—and a myriad of trees she had never once seen in her life, her mind wandered back to the castle. To the scene she had witnessed through her window. 
She'd been sitting on her newly acquires bed, staring at nothing when suddenly, she'd heard an explosion. At first, she didn't move. Too scared and imagining the worst when she'd heard another one. The second one left after-effects, shaking the ground and even causing her bed to move an inch. 
With her heart in her mouth, she'd spied through her window, thinking that an enemy of the vampires had attacked, only for her to see both men and women with magical fires building in their hands and watching with disbelief as they hurled them at the castle walls, destroying and bringing them down.
She hadn't believed it, until she'd seen one of the men that successfully came into the castle and recognised him as one of her father's friends. That was when she'd known that her realm had launched an attack on the vampires. Again. 
She couldn't explain how she'd felt. She'd been equal parts excited and terrified. Excited that she would go back to her mother and all would be right with the world, and terrified that she would go back. To the suffering in silence—literally—, darkness, blackmail and the belittling. 
It might make her a monster, but she couldn't help but admit to herself that she was glad her captor had shown up before her father could make it into the room and take her with him. She was simply picking the lesser of two evils. 
Although now that she stood in this forest, she wasn't sure anymore who the lesser of two evils was. 
Bran had shown up, riddled with blood and not a single injury or cut on his body. He'd been big and forbidding and a lot terrifying. He'd been all those things and holding two swords in his hands, he'd looked the very definition of a warlock. The vampire warlock. 
His expression had screamed danger, and still, she'd found herself getting turned on. Her panties still had a damp spot on them to prove it. 
Her eyes fell on him, saw how tense his shoulders were and how pissed off her look. Of course, he was pissed off. His castle had just been attacked—and was probably still under attack this very moment. An attack on a castle was a direct insult to a king, because it was supposed to be the safest and most guarded place in the whole kingdom.