Alora covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
With a low, guttural breath, Rune gripped the handle, biting back a curse as he slid it free.
Blood poured down his pale chest like spilled wine over snow. The thick needle hummed with dark magic, glistening red.Mere wood and crystal, yet the damned thing had pierced his skin.
No.Shehad.
Rune stilled at the thought, caught between awe and disbelief. It wasn’t merely the attempt, but the truth it revealed.
His bride had tried to kill him.
He stared at the spindle in his hand then burst with laughter, making her flinch back. The sound twisted with his madness, delight, and something far darker.
This confirmed it.
“Oh, my deadly little flower,” Rune rasped, his glowing gaze lifting to hers. “You truly are made for me.”
Alora stood frozen, eyes wide. Afraid, maybe. Orshockedthat he wasn’t a heap of ash at her feet. She stared at the wound as the flesh knitted itself slowly. Painfully. She had done something to him, introduced some magic into his veins.
A beautiful poison.
Her soft honey eyes were wide and glistening with unfallen tears. “You’re… still alive?”
The spindle had been driven through his heart with conviction. She hadwantedto destroy him. And Seven Hells damn him, it made himhard.
A sound slipped from his throat, half-laugh, half-groan. The shadows carried the spindle away as he pressed a hand over the tender spot in his chest. “Are those tears of regret… or fear of what I will do?”
Alora’s slender neck bobbed as she looked back at him, a single tear spilling down her cheek. Her hands shook as did those sweet lips. “It’s regret…that I could not avenge my mother.”
Rune’s brow furrowed as he caught one of her tears on his finger. “Whatever you have been told, Alora, your mother did not die by my hand.”
She shook her head. “The fae cannot lie.”
“Neither can I. Not to you.” He held her gaze, seeing her waver. “It was a gods promise if you recall.”
“But you have still kept things from me, Rune!”
Yes, that much was true.
Alora’s lip trembled and she shut her eyes, exhaling a shaky breath. He heard her thoughts as she processed his words, believing him, but also acknowledging she had attempted to kill a god and that could not go unpunished.
“What will you do to me now?”
Indeed.
“Perhaps you were right to flee,” Rune murmured, something almost animalistic in his voice. “Go on, songbird.” His claw slowly stroked her bottom lip. “Run.”
She quivered beneath his glowing gaze and whispered, “Why?”
“Because I enjoy chasing my food.”
Alora backed away, her pulse fluttering wildly at her throat. But instead of running out the door, she dashed for the dagger’s hilt wedged into the wall.
Rune laughed.
His brave, foolish wife.
Shadows swept out and caught her waist, lifting her into the air. Then they bound her wrist to the beam on the ceiling, where she dangled, toes barely touching the floor.
