It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak in three years. Shock cuts through my fury.
My eyes flare as he bares his teeth and pulls off his mask. Brown eyes pin mine. The same madness that floods my veins burns in his eyes. Pockmarks disguised by tattoos go up to his right jaw and temple.
We’re the same. Both ruined, both damned. That’s why I’m closest to him.
“She never took the vow. She deserves more.” Ren jams the butt of his gun into my chest. I want to tell him to pull the trigger. Because I’m a sadist and a masochist all rolled into one.
I’m not even human anymore.
“The cat-and-mouse game you’re playing? You’re toying with her heart,” Ren spits. “Remember rule number three? No innocents. But I hate to break it to you. Lana? She’sinnocent!”
I recoil, his words landing like bullets.
“So yeah,”Ren switches back to signing, grabs his mask from the floor and jams it back on,“I let her come in and see you in your full fucking glory. Who the Shadow King really is. You clean up your shit this time.”
With his face leached of color, he storms out, his boots echoing in the tunnel.
Silence falls. I sink into the chair, staring at the corpse sprawled across the floor, lying in a pool of his own blood.
I’m Elias Kent. Ruthless. Cold-blooded murderer.
I’m Elias fucking Kent, and I only exist for revenge and retribution.
My lighter slides out of my pocket. I click it open. The sound does nothing to soothe the pain carving up my chest, stabbing at the organ trying to resuscitate after twenty long years.
I don’t feel. I don’t love. I need to hate her.
I’m Elias—
Then I still.
My heart, that useless, traitorous beast, jolts to life.
My lungs seize. I pull in a breath.
Because I smell it.
Sweet roses that have no place in the stench of death and decay.
Soft footsteps. Careful. Graceful like fairies. Butterflies.
The air in the room shifts and vibrates into something wild. Something uncontainable.
“Elias,” she whispers.
My head lifts. She stands at the doorway, eyes bloodshot, thick brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, her sweater speckled with blood and tears.
She trembles like a flower, fragile but defiant against a hurricane.
She came back.
I’ve completely lost my mind.
That’s the only explanation for why I’m standing in front of a murderer, my husband, after bolting back to the library upstairs to claim my music box.
I meant to take the first flight back to New York; The Association be damned.
But when I picked up the wooden box and felt its weight in my hand, I couldn’t leave.
