Stop hiding shit and tell me.
“Maybeyoushould be afraid ofme,” Never says, toying with my curls as though I have no desire to crunch her bones up and watch her last breath, which is at complete odds with every other part of me. She reaches down to pluck a blade of wildgrass and pokes it into my chest.
Put her down and run before you can’t stop yourself,Kelter begs.
I can control myself if I know what I’m dealing with.
I shove Kelter into the most unreachable corners of my mind when he doesn’t answer. Jerk. I don’t need him, but blocking him fully is impossible. He’s wound around every thought, his feelings and urges always present. I still try.
Then I take out my knife. Evening moonlight reflects off the blade. Not taking my eyes from hers, I align the tip below her ear and drag down and down her neck, slowly splitting the surface of her skin. A beautiful red line chases the steel. Her fingers dig into my bicep, and she shivers and rolls her head to the side, inviting more. If only she knew what goes on in my head, the hundreds and thousands of men who came before me all chiming in with feelings of their own.
“You bleed so perfectly for me,” I say. So raw and real. So alive. I could take every drop.
She exhales, melting into me, sealing our skin together with her warm blood. Her cheek moves against my chest with her whisper. “You remind me I’m still alive, even after all the deaths.” The ground beats below us.
“I don’t know where life ends and death begins,” I confess, “but I know my life didn’t start until I met you.”
She pushes back to look at me and smiles, her eyes bright. The moons mirror the light she gives off, illuminating the night with an indigo hue as calming as it is intense. “I may have a thing for fucked-up men. One in particular.”
No, you don’t.It’s my fault for saying things like that, for revealing the truth. I clamp down tight on her heart with my control and snip all threads of affection. Not in hundreds of thousands of lifetimes have I found a heart like hers, one so fierce and stubborn that it would beat on with mine through death.
The darkness returns, the moons dimming as the light drains from her eyes. I scrape the edge of my blade down her neck, smearing the red line and capturing new drops of blood. She’s deathly still as I speak, steel to her throat. “I may be the worst thing to ever happen to you.”
Only her lips move, but the stars rearrange in the sky. “Yet I still want more.”
I lick her blood off the smooth metal and tuck the knife away before I drive it through her heart. I can already see the gush of red, feel the weakened last beat.
This has to stop.
I tell you to run and you put a blade to her neck?Kelter explodes, blasting a hole through the barricade I built.
His anger spikes my blood.Running is not an option, coward.
It only gets worse!
What does?I yell into his mind.
Fine,he seethes.I blocked you out when I told her, but I’ll tell you now, for her sake. Our mother sent me away because I crave connection—
What does that mean?How did I not overhear this?
Let me finish. I crave connection in the form of taking a life,he says slowly.Being in Caldera dampened it through my childhood. I thought coming to Sonnet and linking would fix everything, but it’s only stronger.
You’re passing me your cravings to kill? How could you not warn me about this?My grip tightens on Never, my arm pulling her closer, my fingers stabbing into her side. She hums with pleasure. My own demigod… she has no idea what I could do.
Because I have ways to control it. Kill, fuck or drink fresh blood, Kelter says, as if every fucker and their mother had the same problem.I had it handled.
You spent days in a room with Never hiding that you wanted to kill her?
It wasn’t as strong then. I had blood to hold me over.
So what’s the problem now? Zandrite’s low on blood? Can’t find another Half Link in the Underbroke that can stand the sight of you?Not my problem. I kiss her throat, right up the line I made. Her blood coats my lips. The evening around us is distant. The trees feel as far away as the moons, the cold air non-existent. She’s all I can see or feel, the only life I can breathe… the only death I crave.
Fuck.
She puts a hand to the back of my head, another on my side, pulling herself closer. “Eli.”
The desire in her voice goes straight to my cock. And into the ground, apparently. It rattles. She must feel it now, because she startles and holds me tighter. I lean her back and lick her neck, slipping my tongue back and forth, tasting her. I try to ignore the way I want to cover her mouth, her nose, the way I want her to squirm until she goes limp in my arms—those aren’tmydesires. They’re from Kelter’s sick mind.
