The princess unintentionally blew an air of her breath just behind Aleksander’s neck, making the hair on his nape stick up with the unfamiliar tingling sensation it brought. Aleksander bit down his impulse to shiver – he couldn’t understand what was happening to him.
The prince couldn’t concentrate for several seconds. Despite his efforts to hold it back, his brain had been flooded with thoughts of the princess. He couldn’t begin to understand where such inappropriate things invaded his mind.
It wasn’t as if he had romantic feelings for her!
Elysianne might be the Northern Crown Princess, but that didn’t make her automatically a romantic option. In fact, Aleksander found the princess merely desirable for the power and status she held.
Sure, she came from a fallen kingdom, but if Aleksander played it right, he might be able to get hold of the Northern Kingdom now that his brother was dead. But that would be something he would need to plan out, as his father and Queen Zephyrine would surely disagree.
On the other hand, much was yet to be said if he could bring himself to see Elys as a woman he could love unconditionally.
Love was a foreign thing for the prince.
But what was it that he was feeling right now? Wasn’t this sudden awareness of the opposite sex what they call...
The prince couldn’t even find the right word to describe what he felt right now.
All he knew was that with the awareness of her capabilities, his dream of finding someone whom he could work against the Western King was slowly becoming within reach.
"Aleksander?" Elys whispered again, "are we supposed to wait for an eternity? It’s so cramped in here, if I know Henry must have already been grumbling silently about his knees again."
The attendant sucked in air. He was actually grumbling in his head as what Elys had pointed out. Quite funny her suspicion was spot on.
Prince Aleksander turned his attention back to the other side of the room and concentrated. There was only one person inside that posed a potential danger to them compared to the rest he was with, but that wasn’t much the case as of the moment.
To the prince’s surprise, that same person was actually someone they knew.
"Put your dagger down," Aleksander said as he reached out for the doorknob.
"Why?" Elys asked, her brows rising in incredulity.
"You won’t be needing that when I open this door," he replied.
Aleksander turned the doorknob, and just as he swung the door open, Elys held the dagger in front of her just in case he was wrong. Aleksander reached out for something to his right, and then made a sound by knocking it over.
It seemed like a furniture of some sorts.
"Who is there? Crown Prince? Are you back? Please tell the King Raxus it wasn’t my fault," a familiar voice spoke.
"Hello, Goldy," Aleksander spat.
Elys emerged from the closet, closely followed by Cordelia and Henry. To her surprise, it was actually the golden-haired vampire knight that occupied the room, as well as other vampires locked up in separate cells that were quite unique to the eye.
Teo was separated from the other vampires by what looked like cells made up of thorny branches shaped like a giant tumbleweed. The branches looked like it served as prison bars, its thorns jutting inwards to keep the prisoner from attempting escape.
When the vampire knight moved towards Aleksander’s voice, the branches shrunk in size to restrict him, pricking Teo’s outstretched hands. The same thing was with the other vampires imprisoned in the isolation room.
True to his words, Aleksander was right to have said she wouldn’t need the dagger.
Teo was clearly still under the prince’s spell.
Aleksander snapped his fingers, and in an instant, the clouded look in Teo’s eyes disappeared. The vampire knight blinked several times before he realized where he was now.
"Your highness," he hissed as he noticed Aleksander staring at him with cold eyes.
"Goldy, what a coincidence we have found you here," Aleksander spoke with gritted teeth.
The vampire knight swerved his head left and right, observing how each cell had separated him and the other knights in quite a distance. He turned his attention back to the prince, and Teo spat.
"You fucker!" Aleksander hissed as Teo’s spat almost hit him.
"Calm down, Prince Aleksander," Elys said as she moved to stand beside the prince. "Teo," she greeted the knight.
"Princess," Teo beamed at her, "I see you chose the wrong side. I hope you are prepared for the consequences once you decide to return to the Western Kingdom."
The bitterness in the knight’s voice was undeniable. It was clear that despite his smile, Teo was raging inside and was probably itching to kill them.
Thankfully, the Eastern guards and the werewolves were able to detain him, including all the other vampires that attacked with him and the Crown Prince.
They stripped the knights down to their bare undergarments, took away their weapons and locked them up until they were judged for their crimes against the Eastern people.
"So, it is true that my father had always intended for me and my wife to die in this staged political trip, am I right?" Aleksander asked the knight.
Teo cocked his head to the side and grinned, "Well, isn’t it quite obvious your highness? You were shunned for many, many years from the castle. Haven’t you realized already that you are as unwanted as pests? You will never be wanted, you are trash."
The bastard prince tried to interrogate Teo without the influence of his illusions. But with the way the knight spoke to him, Aleksander’s patience snapped, and so did his fingers.
In an instant, the prince sent Teo visions that were so vivid the knight drove himself into his prison cell’s thorns.
"Let’s go," Aleksander said as he turned away from the brutal scene in front of him.
Despite the pain that the thorns inflicted on him, Teo couldn’t care less, as he was immersed into the world that Aleksander tailored for him.
A world of nightmares even a vampire wasn’t going to survive in.