She stumbled back several steps as he swept to his feet, her eyes flicking over him in a fearful once-over. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a warning.” He looked down at her unsmilingly. “For you—and your sister.”
“What?” A line formed between her eyebrows. “Nadine? What’s she got to do with this? Have you been talking to Nadine?”
“Yes,” he said, seeing no benefit to the lie. “And I know you have, as well.”
She flushed angrily. “Don’t. Ben told me what you used to do with girls in those woods. About how you made them cry.” Her eyes flashed with a hint of the fire that must have drawn Ben to her from the beginning. When she was still free. “I won’t have you breaking her heart. Nadine falls in love way too easily. She tends to think people are better than they are,” she said meaningfully.
Cal scrubbed at his face while he fought to maintain composure. “My family has weighty expectations and in my younger days, I thought I could fuck myself free of them. And I’m not the only one. If my brother has painted me as a black-hearted fiend for my past dalliances, he isn’t entirely false. I tend to guard my affections as jealously as any dragon.”
“He also said you don’t want to settle down.”
A cold smile spread over his face like prickling rime. “Well, then you should know your sister’s heart is safe enough. I hunt with arrows to blunt to pierce.”
“Fine. Keep your secrets. I’ll find out the truth,” she threatened.
“For your own sake, my dearest sister, I hope you don’t. Please my brother. Keep your counsel. That’s all you need concern yourself with as Benjamin Cullraven’s wife.”
“That’s frighteningly draconian, even for a lawyer.”
“It’s my nature,” Cal said. “Didn’t you ever read that story?”
“No.” Noelle stared at him. “What story?”
“Goodnight, Noelle.”
He could feel her eyes on his back as he picked up his book and walked out of the room, leaving her to the encroaching darkness with only her candle poised as vanguard against the night.
She looked like a sparrow, he thought, trembling beneath the shadow of a raven.
C H A P T E R
T W O
a taste for blood
When the original Caledon Cullraven had first approached Evangeline, he had extended from her a promise along with the knife: safety, in exchange for devotion—hers. Exacted at a price.
Unless their bond was severed, that loyalty was binding. It was an ordainment of god, or something like it.
Killing a sparrow . . . was unthinkable.
Cal leaned against the closed front door as he stared unseeingly out his window. The sun was setting, the dying light pooling like gold melted from a crucible behind the webbing of the trees. Bright as fire, it made the phantom taste of smoke in the back of his throat even more salient.
He had been exposed to this kind of smoke only once before and both times, it had made him retch. As a youth, he had been shielded from the true horror of his family’s punishment for courtship outside the lines. They hadn’t expected him to participate in the disposal.
But this time—Christ. He could still hear Noelle Cullraven’s screams.
(They’re killing all the sparrows)
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
It wasn’t supposed to fuckingbethis way.
Ben had demanded his help, red-faced and struggling with his wife. Their entangled shadows looked like two birds on the sidewalk, and Cal had turned away, leaving Rael to assist. TheCrockers were good for that. Whether it was elections or the dead, they all came to accounts.
As close as Cal was to Rael, he hated him a little for that, too: for the blind faith, for the unquestioning loyalty. For the ease in which he stepped in to wrest control of Noelle.
