No, I don’t. How can I? But I don’t care. “He doesn’t deserve to die. He was only walking Jules home. To keep her safe. If you want payment, if you want. . . entertainment? Then take it from me. Please. You would do the same for Alice, wouldn’t you?”
“Violet, no,” Jules whispered.
Natalia’s demeanor changed then. Her spine straightened, and the look of amusement on her face turned to fury as she approached with slow, measured steps. The twins scrambled back and away from her, still prostrated in the filthy water. She stopped just outside of arm’s reach, studying me with her impossibly bottomless eyes.
“You should take care using her name in my presence.” Her voice was cold as stone, but I heard the hidden meaning.Don’t you dare bring Alice into this.She continued. “You would trade yourself for him?”
“Yes.”
“You would suffer for him?”
“Yes.”
“You would die for him?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No calculation. I was astonished at how true it was.
She smiled then, and I understood why the twins feared her. It wasn’t her beauty or power. It was the complete absence of anything recognizably human in that expression. It was like seeing a spider smile.
“How tediously romantic,” she said with a yawn. She glanced back at Rowan, who had gone still except for the barest rise and fall of his chest. “Though I confess, I’m curious what kind of man inspires such devotion.”
She moved towards him again, and this time she did touch him, fingers pressed to his throat where the twins had fed. Rowan didn’t react. He was beyond such things now, balanced on the knife’s edge between life and whatever came after.
“Still warm,” she mused. “Still technically alive, though barely. The twins have always been such greedy feeders.”
“Please,” I whispered. The word was all I had left.
Natalia’s hand remained on Rowan’s throat for a long moment. Then she stood, brushing imaginary dust from her skirt.
“No,” she said simply.
The word slammed into me. I sagged in Jules’s arms, all fight leaving me at once. Rowan was going to die. I was going to watch him die. And there was nothing,nothingI could do about it.
“However,” Natalia continued, and hope sparked painfully in my chest, “I might be able to be persuaded. . .” She gestured to the ground at her feet. “Crawl to me, little fighter. Crawl over here and lick my boots clean. Show me how much his life means to you.”
Heat flooded my face despite the cold rain. Crawl and lick. Crawl through the garbage and blood and filthy water, then lick away the same from her feet. Debase myself for her amusement while Rowan died inches away.
I knew this game. I knew the pleasure some took in humiliation, in making you complicit in your own degradation. Edward had been amasterof it. He’d make me thank him for things that broke me. He’d made me beg for things no sane person would ever actually want. He’d made me perform countless sexual acts with a zeal and eagerness I didn’t feel.
This bitch may be some ancient vampyre badass, but Edward was a world-class grandmaster sadist. She’s got nothing on him.
I pulled away from Jules to drop to my knees, but her grip tightened. She anchored me to stand with her. “No,” she said quietly, “I refuse to allow you to bend to her whims. ThePax Tacerebe damned. You let me handle this.” Then, with a formality I’d never heard from the bubbly, ditzy Jules, she practically shouted, “I greet you, Natalia, Little Mistress of the Wallachia family.”
The words rang in the alley with a weight I didn’t understand. The barest recognition of the name flickered in my mind, then I recalled Rowan explaining the world of the supernaturals.“There are four reigning families, Violet. We must take care to never run into one of them.”
Wallachia. . . one of those four reigning families had been named Wallachia.
Well, shit.
Jules released me and stepped forward, dropping into a perfect curtsy; the formal etiquette of it looked ridiculous in an alley filled with soaking wet garbage. In the same formal tone she used before, Jules said, “Your men broke etiquette after he declared peace in the old tongue. This was a flagrant violation of thePax Tacere.”
The change in Natalia was instant and terrifying. The lazy amusement vanished, replaced by something ancient and angry. Her eyes flashed gold—literally flashed—like sunlight behind stained glass. “Is this true?” She asked the question so quietly that I barely heard her over the rain.
One-Eye raised his head slightly, trembling. He cupped his hands up towards Natalia, lips trembling, as if he were begging for salvation. “He. . . he spoke the words. But he is a nobody! He is—”
“Apatronof Oubliette,” Jules interrupted, still holding that perfect curtsy. “As well as a guest of the Second Circle. In fact,” she emphasized her next words, “these two were meant to meetHimtomorrow.”
Natalia’s demeanor flashed from quiet anger briefly to panicked terror, before whipping into an incendiary rage.
