“If Hanna wanted to be with you, I would have no problem with you taking her,” I say. “But she does not—she fears you greatly and I don’t blame her. Not many human women wish to be married to a male with a skull for a face.”
“This is not my true face, and you know it,” Don Malthus says. “Once I show her who I am, she will come to me willingly.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I say, frowning. “But whatever you think, I cannot allow you to take her.”
“You cannot stop me, either,” Don Malthus says. “I have only to wait and in a matter of days, she will be mine.”
The skull mask seems to frown.
“Truly, though—the process of soul-siphoning is difficult and tiring. It would be easier if you would simply bring her to me—I can be waiting at the Bone Gates within an hour.”
The audacity of his request makes me angry all over again. How dare he suggest such a thing? How dare he impugn my honor?
“Never,” I growl. “I will never give you a guest I have sworn to protect!”
Don Malthus shrugs again, bones whispering together like dry leaves.
“Very well, then I will collect her the hard way… bit by bit.”
The water in the basin churns violently, then boils away, the skull mask dissolving into shadow and smoke.
Silence slams down around me. So, I have my answer. Malthus will not remove the Soul-mark on Hanna and there doesn’t seem to be anything besides all-out war that I can do about it. And war will bring the Magistrate down on all of us.
I stand there, hands braced on the rim of the basin, chest heaving, fangs aching with the need to punch something—anything.
Malthus thinks he can wait me out. He thinks I will choose the easy path and simply hand Hanna over to him.
He is wrong.
I straighten slowly, fire hardening into iron resolve. Hanna will go home. Julia’s friend will not be consumed by the Hollow Necropolis.
And if stopping Don Malthus costs me blood, power, or alliances—even if it costs me what is most dear to me, then so be it.
58
Jules
I sit on the edge of Hanna’s bed, hands folded in my lap, listening to the soft, uneven rhythm of her breathing.
She’s finally asleep—but it isn’t the peaceful kind of sleep she’s getting.
Her brow is faintly furrowed, lashes trembling as though she’s dreaming something unpleasant, and every so often she gives a little shiver, like a leaf caught in a draft. I lean forward and brush a curl back from her cheek, my touch feather-light—I’m afraid to wake her.
Mr. Mittens has decided that she requires supervision. He’s curled up beside her hip, a solid, warm weight, his tail tucked neatly around his body, golden eyes half-lidded but alert. Every now and then, his ears flick—responding to sounds I can’t hear, or maybe things I can’t sense at all.
For the first time since this nightmare began, the chaos pauses. Not ends. Just… pauses. And in the quiet, everything I’ve been pushing aside comes rushing back in.
My body feels wrong.
Not sick, exactly—but off, like some invisible hand has spun my internal compass and I can’t quite find true north again. There’s a persistent, aching throb between my legs—slow and insistent—and my nipples feel tight and over-sensitive beneath the soft fabric of my dress. Every move I make seems to over stimulate me and I feel desire pooling low in my belly—which makes me angry at myself.
This is ridiculous, I think and squeeze my thighs together, as if that might help. How can I possibly be feeling like this right now? One of my best friends was just attacked by something straight out of a nightmare. Her soul—her soul—might literally be in danger. And here I am, sitting on the edge of her bed, distracted by heat and need like some kind of horny teenager. What is wrong with me?
Get it together, Jules, I lecture myself. You can’t be feeling this way right now! It’s beyond inappropriate. It’s?—
But just as I’m scolding myself, there’s a soft knock at the door.
Lucian doesn’t wait for an answer—he cracks it open just enough to peer inside.
