We had a rule—unspoken but clear as day. I had just broken it.
Don’t talk about what happens when the contract ends.
Most people who ask something of the Horsemen were looking for revenge, wealth—boring shit like that. So what did I ask for?
Death.
That was why his twisted punishment had been forcing me to live. I turned to face the mirror—and froze. Blood. Everywhere. Smeared on my face, in my hair from the body, on my lips and cheek from him. Just…everywhere…
I turned on the sink.
The silence dragged on as I rinsed the blood out of my hair. I wrung my wet hair until the red water was mostly clear.
Grim slid his hand around my neck, forcing me to standstraight on my tiptoes. My wet hair dripped to the floor, making pale-pink watercolor streaks in the blood. The heat of Grim burned into my back.
“You really wanna die,Gemma?” He said my name with a bite that felt loaded.
I didn’t know much about Grim’s real name, just that I was never supposed to use it. I’d taken enough Spanish to know it meant saint, which was almost too ironic.
Did I want to die?
“I dunno,” I said, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror, grip tightening. “But I’m really looking forward to the day you have to kill me.”
I elbowed him off.
“Gonna be pretty hard to marry some rich asshole when you’re dead,” he said to my back.
That knowing look passed through his eyes, like he was reading parts of my soul I hadn’t yet translated.
I hated that look. Especially after he’d just ripped me open like a barely formed chrysalis.
In the mirror, Grim’s stare locked on mine, a slight lift to one side of his lips.
“Have you given any thought to how you’re going to kill me?” I asked lightly. “Because I have some ideas. You could use a knife…”
I ghosted my touch along his discarded knife.
In one quick movement he shoved the knife away so hard it flew off the counter, smacking into the wall.
“Okay, no knife,” I said. “You could use a gun, but, I don’t know, it’s so impersonal. I want to feel the life leave my body.”
He eyed me in a bored, disaffected way. The only indication what I was saying might be affecting him was the muscles beneath his shirtflexing with my words.
“Know it’s you doing it.” I licked my lips. “So…so, I thought you could choke me?—”
He was on top of me before I could finish.
A grin slid across my lips. “Was it something I said?”
His thumbs slid slowly into place on either side of my neck. The air was soft and heavy with our breaths.
He pressed his thumbs into my jugular. “Is this what you want?”
Grim wasn’t a reckless person. He wasn’t like me, emotional and impulsive. He was almost infuriatingly calm. But things happened when he got that rasp in his voice, when sandpaper scratched the back of his throat.
It was like he was feeding off me.
The air around us drunk.
