A silhouette in smoke and sin that I couldn’t look away from.
His eyes lifted to meet mine, glowing like embers through the haze. He didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. The weight of his stare was enough to make me feel stripped bare.
Then, through the smoke, his hand rose. Just one finger extended, curling inward in a gesture that was equal parts command and dare. His voice slid through the pounding music like a viper striking, low and mocking. “Don’t be shy now, kitten.”
The words scraped across my skin. My body betrayed me, feet moving before my mind could argue. He drew me in without effort, his gravity inescapable. Each step closer tightened the noose I’d willingly slipped around my own neck.
My chest heaved, breath shallow, heart hammering so violently I thought it might burst free. The rational part of me screamed to turn, to run, to get as far from him as possible. But I knew the truth as well as I knew my own name. If I ran, he’d catch me. And if he caught me, I’d die the same death.
So I walked forward. The smoke thickened, wrapping around me like the embrace of something ancient and merciless. My boots whispered against the floor until the tips of mine brushed the edge of his. Inches. That was all that separated me from the King of Lovelen, from the monster cloaked in a man’s skin.
He didn’t move. He didn’t need to. The threat radiating from him was enough to make my body lock in place, waiting for the strike. And I would take it, because there was no part of me that didn’t deserve it. I had lit the match. I had burned the legacy. I had opened the door to this life. My brother knew it before he died. Kaius knew it now.
Hell, deep down, so did I.
“Alec!” My throat was raw from screaming, the sound splintering like glass in the night air.
Panic clawed up my chest, choking me. I had done what he told me. I had lit the fire. I had watched our family home turn into a glowing pyre against the darkness. He had failed to mention that people were still inside. I had assumed it was abandoned. But as the flames climbed higher, a shadow had moved. Someone had been in there. And they were screaming for help.
I sprinted forward, lungs tearing against the smoke. My feet slid in the loose dirt as I reached the edge of the home. Heat licked at my skin. From the upper bay window, a figure forced itself out, stumbling into the open air before gravity claimed it.
“No, no, no?—”
Their body slammed against the shingles with a hollow crunch, then tumbled down the roof like a rag doll, hitting the ground in a heap that made my stomach heave.
I dropped to my knees beside them, the gravel biting into my skin. The smell hit me first—burnt flesh, sharp and metallic, turning bile into acid at the back of my throat. They whimpered, a sound so faint it broke something inside me. Tears blurred my vision as I hovered uselessly above them, hands trembling, desperate to touch but terrified of doing more damage. Their skin was blackened, charred beyond recognition, features melted into something inhuman. And then I saw it.
Beneath the wreck of burned skin, the glint of silver embedded in flesh. A small charm, glowing faintly in the firelight. A spade. The world collapsed inward.
“Mom?” My voice fractured, a sob torn from my chest as I clutched at air.
Her eyes—the same ones that my brother and I shared with her—fluttered open. Blue. That same impossible shade of bluethat had always been my safe place. They found mine, soft even in agony, the kind of look that once made monsters under the bed disappear.
“Please, no, please—” My words fell apart. My breath came in panicked gasps as hers rattled into silence.
She drew in one last, shuddering breath, and then…she was gone.
I screamed. A sound so animal, so feral, it didn’t feel like it came from me.
But grief didn’t have time to settle its claws, because rough fingers seized my arm and yanked me upward. My head whipped around, fist flying on instinct. My knuckles cracked against a skull, and a grunt of pain echoed back at me. The grip only tightened.
“Hit me again, Emersyn…” Alec’s voice was a razor dragged slowly over my spine. My brother. My blood. And yet nothing about him was familiar anymore. His tone was a weapon, stripped of warmth, sharpened into something cruel. “And I’ll bury you next to Mommy Dearest.”
Fear iced my veins. This wasn’t my Alec—the one who used to sneak me candy, who shielded me from Father’s rage, who once swore he’d protect me from everything. This was something else. A beast. A wolf with its teeth bared, and I was the rabbit caught in its jaws.
“Sorry,” I whispered, broken, hating myself for the weakness but unable to stop.
He spun me so I was facing him fully, fingers digging into my jaw until pain flared white-hot down my face. His blue eyes glowed with fury and something worse—amusement.
“I gave you one job,” he hissed, the words hot against my skin. “And you can’t even follow instructions.”
“I did—” My voice cracked.
His hand clamped tighter, forcing a cry from my throat.
“I told you to burn this place down and run.” He wrenched my face toward the blazing inferno behind us. “Does standing here look like running, little sister?”
“No,” I sobbed, the word catching on a jagged edge in my chest.
