“What?” I ask, his words stopping me cold.
“You feel a lie before it’s spoken. You walk into shadows I’d burn to ash without an ounce of fear in you. And still, you fight me.”
His lips brand my knuckles, reverent to the point of ruin. The warmth scorches, sweetness curdled by something darker. The menace isn’t only in his words. It’s in the press of his mouth, the way he drinks in the tremor of my pulse as if it belongs to him already. It’s in the way he lingers, daring me to pull away. The kiss is a threat, a promise to consume anything I offer him, piece by piece.
“You should be hidden away. Instead, you make me want you more every time you bare your teeth. You were fire before. Now, you’re fire with fangs.”
A soft laugh escapes me, and I place a hand on his chest. “You like it?”
His fingers are reverent as they trace down my cheek. “I fucking adore it.”
The bond shivers between us, a low electric thrum that snaps along my senses.
He leans close, his breath hot against my face. “In a month, on Samhain, we finish this. The bond fully locks into place, and you’ll be mine. You’ll be untouchable. Un-fucking-breakable. Even the ghosts that roam the streets will burn before they reach you. We’ll be sealed in blood and whatever twisted fairytale the fates have written for us.”
“Then you’d better be ready, monster man,” I whisper.
“Oh,Lisichka, I’ve been ready since the moment you looked at me full of fucking defiance.”
Twisted fairytale, indeed.
But I find that I’d rather have the villain who burns the world for me than the hero who’d bury me beneath the ashes.
seventeen
Konstantin
Rot,piss,andcoppercrawls down my throat and coats my tongue before I even see him. It’s the kind of smell that seeps into your lungs and clings.
Cressida’s unease brushes against me like static through the bond, but I force it down and lock the steel door inside myself. She doesn’t need to feel the way the darkness inside of me salivates at the scent of death.
But I can’t keep everything from her anymore no matter how much I want to. Not when she’s out there chasing leads with Lucetta and Sunniva. The second her name lit my phone screen, I knew she’d already stuck her pretty nose into shadows that eat lesser creatures whole.
Misha kicks the rusted door off its hinges so that we can move in. The house is a carcass of itself, collapsed from years of severe neglect. Moonlight pours through the cracks in the ceiling, striping the floor in silver bars as our boots crunch through broken glass.
I tilt my head, listening, but nothing reaches me. Not even the heartbeat of the person we’re looking for.
“Too quiet,” I murmur.
“Da,” Misha agrees, his weapon scanning the area.
The heat of old violence still clings to the walls, and my vision sharpens, locking onto the crimson smear leading to another room.
There’s too much blood for anyone to have died easily.
We find him strung up against a steel beam like a grotesque ornament. Oleg, or what’s left of him, anyway. His chest is carved open, ribs broken wide, and his organs gone. His glassy eyes point to the ceiling, sewn open with black thread and filled wide with horror as if he was wide awake through the entire harvest. Across his chest, burned into flesh, is another jagged scythe.
Giselda was here and she knew we were coming.
Misha swears under his breath in Russian as he crouches near the body, his lips pulling back into a grimace. “She’s toying with us. Mocking you.”
“No,” I say, crouching beside him and running my eyes over Oleg’s body. “She’s proving a point. Playing a game.”
There’s something black peeking out from his sewn mouth. After snapping the thick pieces of twine free, I pull the strip of black cloth from inside.
The words are melting from being in his mouth, but the red words are still eligible enough for me to read.
You’ll always be too late. Careful your bride doesn’t burn.
