If Jules thought that would finally make me run to him, he was sorely mistaken.
I stepped back, clutching my heart as if that would keep it from feeling like it was bleeding out onto the floor. A tear fell down my cheek, landing on my trembling lip. I tasted salt and devastation. The main ingredient in a recipe for a broken heart.
“Is that really the only reason you think someone would want me?” I asked, my voice cracking. “For revenge?”
"No, no, Annie, I—" He made to move toward me, but Alek held up his gun as a reminder.
With the hand not holding the weapon, Alek lifted my chin and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. His tongue swept across my skin, licking all the tears away. Then, he turned his head toward Jules, keeping his lips still on mine as he said, “She’s mine, Vallen. You can’t change that.”
“Like hell, she?—”
“Eva is mine,” Alek said slowly, “in every fucking sense of the word.”
My cheeks immediately flushed, and Jules’s eyes flashed with burning rage. “You fucking asshole. You fucked my baby sister. You’reDEAD!”
The next moment, all of my senses seemed to be moving in slow motion.
Sound: The booming echo of a bullet firing from a chamber as Jules roared, “DRAKOV!” with the fury of a century of darkness. A moment later, it was the sound of Alek desperately shouting, “NO!” just as a distant scream left my lips. Then, the clattering of chairs as everyone ran.
Touch: The feeling of Alek’s body tensing, moving, shifting, pulling me with him. But I fought him, running to cover him, to protect him like he was trying to do for me. Then, pain. Endless, fierypain.
Smell:The bitter, iron tang of blood. A stark contrast to the sterile smell of the wood. It permeated my nostrils, burying itself in there long after I left.
Taste:The lingering salt on my tongue before blood filled it from where I bit my tongue as my body collapsed.
And, finally,sight:Crimson staining my pretty dress, running down my arm, dripping onto the floor. A cruel sight. A dangerous one, a sight brought upon by a shot meant to kill. Only it wasn’t Alek’s blood.
It was mine.
January 12th
Mia
Good luck with the dinner, babes!!!
I can’t wait to hear all about it!!!
…
Okay… it’s been a few hours…. Did it go well?????
The second-worst dayof my life was the day I held my sister as she died in my arms. One moment, she was sitting next to me, giggling about something funny she’d seen in one of the shows I refused to watch with her. Then, a car slammed into the side, and I came face-to-face with Death for the first time. I’d clutched her to my chest as blood ran down her temples and screamed, “No! You can’t have her! No!”
That was when I learned the world didn’t care what I wanted. There was no fate to grant me mercy, no God to listen to my prayers. So I changed. I became the thing that God would fear, the one that wouldmakehim listen.
And for seventeen years, my life worked well like that. I was never afraid when I walked into a warzone, never scared that I would meet Death again.
Until tonight. When the worst day of my life began.
I felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. Not realizing that I recognized Evangeline, not because she was the woman of my dreams, but because she was the younger sister of my greatest enemy. She’d left school a year early to join the ballet, so while I thought that Anne-something Vallen was at school, therealVallen daughter, Evangeline Vale, was dancing in the Company, blissfully unaware of the danger her family had brought her into.
They’d tried to distance themselves after Liza’s death, probably worrying that the accident would bring on retaliation against their youngest. It was a fucked up form of protection, though a part of me understood that. Because I was all kinds of fucked up things for my Eva.
Maybe this all would have been easier if I hadn’t understood the Vallens a little bit. If I blamed her for Liza’s death. But how could I? She was a fucking child, four years old. So maybe there was no one to bring to justice for Liza. Maybe some things truly were a matter of fate’s cruel timing.
Things like finding out my girlfriend shared the blood of the family I’d sworn to destroy.
Despite all the obstacles, for a moment, I thought that we would work it out. Julian hadn’t shot me on the spot, and Eva was finally finding the backbone I’d been pushing her to form. I naively thought that our relationship would survive the dinner, that I wouldn’t lose her.
