I end the call before I say anything else that a wise man would keep to himself.
Misha is waiting at the door. “You good?”
“For now.”
“The Reaper?”
I glance down to my hand, where a sliver of black twine from the dead man’s mouth clings to it. “She thinks she is making a throne. What she fails to understand is that I am making a pyre.”
“Then let’s gather wood,” Misha replies, grinning sharply.
Somewhere out there is a ghost who calls herself a god, but something Giselda hasn’t learned is that even gods fall.
fifteen
Cressida
Thewarehousesmellslikerust, oil, and something that’s been burned one too many times. Desperation seeps from the pores of the bricks it’s built on. It speaks tales of Lucetta’s long nights searching for enemies in the shadows. It’s the kind of place where ghosts cling to the rafters and wait for you to look away before they whisper in your ear.
It suits her, honestly.
It’s a place she’s kept hidden, one I never knew about. A place where her desires to be something other than my bodyguard can come to life.
Lucetta is a secret badass.
Not that I didn’t know that already, but it’s still a surprise to see it all laid out in front of me.
Flickering fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting shadows that dance like wisps on the cracked concrete walls.
As soon as Lucetta caught wind that Giselda was alive, this became ground zero. The walls are a patchwork of crooked maps and Polaroids curled at the edges, red circles bleeding over facesI used to know. Notes scrawled in black ink are jammed into the cracks in the brick, the paper curling like dried petals.
It’s the kind of chaos that only a woman used to fighting demons—inside and out—could command.
I pace in front of the table she’s claimed, my boots echoing on the cracked, concrete floor. Sunniva is perched cross-legged on an overturned crate, chewing on a lollipop like she’s not two seconds away from biting someone’s face off. Lucetta leans against the wall, arms folded over her chest, one hand resting close to the hilt of a blade that appears to have tasted more blood than wine.
My chest buzzes with that damn tether.
Konstantin’s emotions thread through me. Rage that feels like fire, cold that tastes like steel, and a hunger that makes my pulse skip. For the last few months, I’ve lived with this constant thrum under my skin, feeling it every time he goes out to hunt or every time he’s contemplating devouring me.
And every time I think about Giselda—myGiselda, the girl who once swore we’d leave this life together—that hollow pit in my stomach yawns wider.
I stop pacing and slam a copy of the photograph she sent down on the table, her fucking smile mocking me from fifteen years ago.
Sunni leans over my shoulder to study the picture again—as if we’ve not done it a million times already—and makes a gagging sound. “Still can’t believe she went with the Sharpie serial killer font. Wonder what’s next? Maybe magazine clippings on the fridge?”
I should laugh, but I can’t find the energy right now. “She knew everything, Sunni. Every fear I ever whispered when I was stupid and young and thought she was safe.”
“She’s not safe anymore, babe. She’s the enemy, and that’s all she gets to be,” Lucetta says in a low tone.
“She was our friend,” Sunniva mutters. Her lollipop clicks against her teeth before she spits it into a paper cup angrily. “Fuck her for making us miss her even while we hate her.”
“You don’t miss her. You miss who she was before her soul was corrupted,” Luce points out.
I sink into a chair, pressing my palm against where the bond burns in my chest. “Kon will feel this. He feels so much already. Every time I try to push it down, it’s like . . .” I pause, shaking my head. “It’s like the fucking Fates themselves grab me by the throat, punishing me for even thinking I could keep a part of myself hidden from something they’ve created.”
Lucetta crouches in front of me, her dark eyes pinning me in place. “So, maybe don’t fight the bond. Learn to redirect it. Sort of like a blade. You don’t stop the strike, you just change where it lands.”
Her advice should help, but it just makes the pressure in my chest worse. What she’s really saying is that I should stop trying to shield him, stop trying to keep secrets.
