He slumps against the wall, his eyes falling closed.
Then I hit him.
Once, in the face, my fist colliding with his jaw, snapping his head to the side, blood spraying from his lips, his nose, maybe. I don’t know.
I don’t care.
I think I will kill him too.
Yet as I start to hit him again, there is the creak of a floorboard at my back and I think it isher,leaving the bed I told her not to in a guest room where I was never assaulted here. But before I can turn, a hand comes over my mouth.
Then a voice hisses,“Where is she, you sick fuck?”
Chapter 23
Karia
There is a man standing in my doorway as I slowly sit up in an unfamiliar bed.
Tendrils of moonlight glint off something silver in the man’s hand.
My own flies to my throat and I feel the smooth sponginess of a bandage.
Recognition comes on the heels of memories: Watching Sullen lose himself in stabbing a man to death. His body covering my own. The way he carried me into this room and tended to my wounds. The sleepiness that drifted over my mind as he stroked my hair back from my face but would tell me nothing and I couldn’t find it in myself to keep asking for answers I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Cosmo.
It isCosmopeeling an apple with a knife as he stands in the doorway, his green gaze locked onto mine.
Distantly, around me, I see marble flooring, closed curtains, white sheets, a door leading into what I think might be a bathroom. Vast space, no paintings on the walls, no dresser, a narrow, golden door that must be a closet.
But Cosmo… Even in the strangeness of this room, he is the thing that does not belong. I left him behind, at Serpent’s Emporium.
“What are you doing here?” I find my voice works even if my mouth is dry and my throat hurts. I clench my fingers in the silken sheets, just to prove I can. Just to root myself down.
“Eating an apple.” Cosmo uses his fingers and the knife to deposit a slice into his mouth.
The crunch of the fruit is loud.
Everything else in this place is so silent and cold.
I am shivering and when I look down, I see the black T-shirt I fell asleep in, after Sullen and I…
Sullen.
I look up at Cosmo once more.
“Where is?—”
“Do not say his fucking name to me.” Cosmo’s voice is edged with promised violence. He lowers his hand, the one holding both knife and apple, and I take in his white pants, black jacket, collar flipped up toward his face.
“Sullen.”I say it carefully. Spitefully. Nothing makes sense and everything feels like a fever dream, but if I could findhim,he would wake me up.
Cosmo enters the room.
He is tall and broad and his chin is dipped and his eyes gleam in what I suppose should be a warning—what, with the knife in his hand and his presence here at all—but I am fucking tired of warnings.
I flip back the covers on the bed, swinging my legs over the edge, my toes just grazing the icy flooring.
