I don’t pray.
I call to him.
My Bogeyman.
Come find me, baby.
And I send him as much information as I can through this new link.
Be there soon, Lisichka,he returns.
“He’s coming,” I whisper to Sunniva.
“Good. Do you think he’ll bring his hot friend so I can do one of those dramatic faints we see in movies to make him fall in love with me?”
I laugh softly, leaning my head back against the wall and closing my eyes, taking comfort in the knowledge that he’ll be here.
And this time, my monster man won’t leave a soul standing.
thirty-two
Konstantin
Thebondripsthroughmy ribs like a live wire. It’s not a warning this time, it’s a full-on animal scream lodged under my bones. Her fear slides into me the way acid eats metal—hot and immediate before fading into a cold that makes my hands steady and my mind sharp.
There’s only one reason she would be flooding me with this much pain and terror.
MyLisichka, my wife and my heir, the very thing that keeps the dark from finishing me off have both been taken from me.
Stolen.
The word coils around my throat, cutting off my airway.
I taste her terror like iron in my throat, hear the crack of her voice inside my skull, the weaponized rage around her scream. She’s fighting. Of course, she is. She was born with knives for teeth. She spits defiance in Giselda’s face even as she’s chained.
The bond flares and fractures, not from breaking, but from overloading. Her panic spikes and then drops into ice so cold, I almost stagger.
It’s the kind of cold only grief can birth.
That cold is me.
It is the Bogeyman stretching awake under my skin.
Misha doesn’t speak when I shove the holster down over my shoulder, my fingers slick with someone else’s blood. He just lays a hand on me in a brief grip, enough to anchor without asking for more than I have left.
“We will get them.”
“Da.”
One final, flat word in answer. My voice doesn’t shake, but the storm under it begs to be let off the leash.
He knows I’m preparing to burn the world down and the look in eyes tells me he approves.
I shove a blood-smeared scrap of paper across the table. A location wheezed out by a half-dead guard before I broke his neck for betraying me. He deserved to die with my name still echoing in his skull.
“Call them,” I order.
Misha nods once and makes the call. Within minutes, tires scream and steel doors slam and boots hit the pavement like thunder rolling in formation.
