He kneels and brushes his fingers through the dirt. I crouch beside him, my eyes locking onto a small, cruel object buried in the grime. It’s a blackened, twisted charm shaped like a scythe blade. When I pick it up, the chill from it seeps into my bones.
It’s another Reaper calling card.
This one reads more like a goddamn dare than anything.
“She’s laughing at us,” Misha mutters, his voice as tight as his fists. “The bitch wants us to know she is here and that she is not afraid.”
Fury coils tight inside of me as I grind my teeth. “Let her laugh now. She will soon be screaming.”
A flicker of a grin crosses Misha’s face as he straightens and wipes the blood from his skin. “You always like to see how loud they’ll get when you’re burning their world down.”
I snap my teeth at him with a laugh. “It wouldn’t be any fun if they didn’t make noise.”
This fight isn’t over. This is only the beginning. Each day that passes with my bond to Cressida pulsing inside me, I grow more dangerous, more lethal than before.
This is no longer just a war.
Giselda caused my woman pain, so now it’s personal.
I stand, the charm clenched tightly in my fist. “We finish this. For the family. For our people. For my bonded.”
thirteen
Cressida
Thebondwon’tshutthe hell up.
It hums in my chest like a hive of angry wasps, each vibration laced with Konstantin’s rage. It’s not subtle either. It’s violent. Bloody. It’s the kind of fury that eats through the flesh and bone until only the monster underneath is left grinning.
I circle the room like a caged thing, my skin hot where my nails sink in, but the ache still isn’t enough to drown him out. His chaos lashes through me, a pulse I can’t separate from my own. Heat licks low, twisting my breath into shallow gasps. My body wants to arch into a phantom weight that isn’t there. I can almost taste him, salt and sin, as if the distance between us is nothing, as if he’s already claimed me in every way that matters.
What kind of masochistic bitch does that make me?
“Pacing won’t help,” Sunni mutters from my couch, sprawled along its length like she owns the place.
She’s nursing a glass of wine and scrolling through her mobile as if my impending mental breakdown is just background noise.
“Don’t you have someone else’s life to meddle in tonight?”
She smirks. “Nope. You’re my entertainment, doll face. Besides, with the way you’re vibrating, I’m probably going to have to stage an exorcism.”
My head’s too loud for banter, so I flip her off and continue pacing.
Every jagged beat of the bond shoves Konstantin’s fury deeper into me. He’s out there hunting the Reaper. Fighting and bleeding, and goddess help me, I can feel his satisfaction in it. The rush of adrenaline. The vicious delight of snapping bones.
It’s the Bogeyman in all his glory.
There’s not a fucking chance I’m sleeping through that.
A knock rattles the door before Sunniva can get off another smartass remark. Lucetta enters with a grim face and an envelope dangling between her fingers, her nose wrinkling as if it reeks of rot.
“What the hell is that, and where did it come from?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she admits, setting it on the table like it might explode. “It slipped through security. No one saw who delivered it.”
“That’s not ominous at all,” Sunniva mutters.
My stomach lurches, but I snatch the envelope before either of them can interfere. Their wide-eyed stares scrape over me like they don’t already know whose ghost sealed this paper. The stock is thick, old-fashioned, and brittle under my grip.
