“Peter! Peter, please!” she shrieks, her voice raw.
I let out a slow, dark chuckle. I stand up, and the room goes deathly silent. Mikhail freezes, his hand still outstretched where Wendy’s skin had been a second before.
“Tut-tut,” I say, the sound a soft, mocking click of my tongue against my teeth. “You touched what is mine, Mikhail. And you did it at my dinner table. That’s a catastrophic breach of etiquette.”
“She’s coming with us, Hale,” Mikhail spits, though his voice wavers. “The Council decreed?—”
“The Council isn’t here,” I whisper, stepping around the table. “I am.”
In a blur of movement that even Vane can’t follow, I have Mikhail by the throat. I don’t snap his neck. That would be too quick. Too merciful. I slam him onto the obsidian table—the same table where Wendy just came for me.
“Vane, Torin. Hold the others,” I command. “Julian, get the salt. The heavy bags from the pantry.”
Wendy is screaming, her hands over her ears, backing away until she hits the wall. “Peter, stop! Just let him go! Please!”
“I can’t do that, Darling,” I say, my voice sounding like a lover’s caress as I pull a silver-handled scalpel from my breast pocket. “A lesson unlearned is a mistake repeated.”
I start at Mikhail’s hairline.
Mikhail is pinned beneath me, his breath coming in shallow, pathetic hitches of terror. Behind me, the room is a chaotictableau of drawn steel and held breath, but I only have eyes for the boy who dared to reach for what is mine.
“You have such fine, porcelain skin, Mikhail,” I murmur, the tip of the blade tracing the line of his jaw. “It’s a shame you didn’t value it enough to keep it on your bones.”
“Hale, please—” Mikhail gasps.
“Shh. Don’t spoil the acoustics.”
I press the blade in. The first cut is a clean, sharp line from his temple to his chin. A bead of red follows the steel, perfect and bright.
“Peter, stop! Oh god, Peter, please stop!” Wendy’s voice is a jagged shriek from the corner of the room. She’s on her knees, her hands over her eyes, but she’s peeking through her fingers, unable to look away from the train wreck of my mercy.
“Julian, the salt,” I call out, not breaking my rhythm.
I work with the steady, unhurried hand of a man peeling a grape. I slide the blade beneath the dermis, the sound a wet, rhythmic shick-shick-shick as the skin separates from the fascia. Mikhail’s initial scream is a high, vibrating whistle that ends in a gurgle.
“See this, Wendy?” I hold up a small flap of him, looking back at her with a wide, manic grin. “It’s like wet parchment. Nature is so incredibly delicate when you take the time to look.”
“You’re a monster!” she wails, her body racking with sobs. “You’re a fucking demon!”
“I’m a craftsman, Darling. There’s a difference.”
I grab the heavy bag of sea salt Julian holds out. Idon’t dump it; I sprinkle it, a light dusting over the raw, quivering red of Mikhail’s bared chest.
Mikhail’s back arches off the table, his mouth opening in a silent, agonising O. The salt hits the exposed nerves, and his muscles begin to dance a frantic, involuntary jig.
“Oh, look at that,” I laugh, the sound echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “He’s dancing for you, Wendy! Isn’t that gallant? A North End boy giving you a private performance.”
I go back to work, stripping him down, piece by agonising piece. The room smells of iron and brine. Wendy is hyperventilating now, a thin string of bile trailing from her lip as she watches the man she once thought of as a saviour turn into a biological diagram.
“One more piece for the collection,” I grunt, finally pulling the large, singular sheet of his torso and face free. It’s heavy and warm in my hands.
I walk over to the velvet curtain rod, the blood dripping onto the mink rug in a steady drip-drop. I drape the skin over the gold bar, smoothing out the wrinkles of his face until his empty eye sockets are staring directly at the dining table.
“There,” I say, stepping back and wiping my hands on a silk napkin. “He looks much better as decor, don’t you think? Gives the room a bit of that ‘Old World’ charm.”
I turn to Wendy. She’s slumped against the wainscoting, her eyes glazed, her mind finally snapping under the sheer, gory weight of it. She’s making a low, keening sound—a broken whistle of a voice that has no wordsleft.
“You… you killed him,” she whispers, her gaze fixed on the skin hanging like wet laundry.
