What else?
Was there anything else?
There had to be something more.
The solange-eyed one’s gaze shifted to the half-eaten apple, his hands curling into fists. Finally, he turned and smiled at the wind.
“I sacrificed revenge.”
35
I jerked awake when a hand clamped over my mouth.
The sulfuric glow from the electroliers outside Justice’s window threw bars of light over the bedroom, but the man was imprisoned in shadow.
I’d been deep in a dream where I’d spun in an endless loop, alternating between shoving Justice into the Den’s black tentacles and stabbing Finn in the heart. In the dream, both of them hated me, but Finn was the only one who promised retribution.
Maybe the dream was a premonition.
It was too dark to see anything but his gray outline. The width of his shoulders, the slant of his jaw, the angled and muscular shape of him. For a split second, the electroliers’ glow caught the kaleidoscopic, starry-night blue of his right eye.
Finn.
If I doubted my eyes, my other senses would’ve told me who he was. I could taste him, the sweat and salt of his skin, as I bit the meat of his palm—hard. He grunted in surprise. His soft, deep rumble worked its way through me, as familiar as distant thunder before a summer storm.
I dragged in a breath, and my eyes teared at the familiar scent of him—the electric sky, the summer meadow, the cleansing rain shower. It flowed through me, pushed through my blood by the rapid beat of my pulse.
He tasted like Finn. He smelled like Finn. He sounded and looked like Finn.
But he wasn’t Finn.
At least, he wasn’t the Finn I’d always loved.
He was cruel. He was vicious. He’d promised to hunt me down and kill me.
He pressed his hand more firmly over my mouth, smothering any sound.
“Mari. It’s me.”
Yeah. I knew that. That was why I was fighting.
“Hold still. This part’s tricky.”
There was no way I was holding still.
In Hell Gate, there was no such thing as a peaceful, restful night’s sleep. If you wanted to stay alive, you never left yourself unprotected. Sleep left you vulnerable. A deep sleep left you dead.
Sleep and I had a complicated relationship, but one thing we agreed on was to always keep a knife close at hand. Under the pillow, strapped to the headboard, taped to the side of the nightstand. Justice, being a smart, alive human, lived by the same rule.
Slowly, with every rise and fall of my chest, I inched my hand over the mattress.
Finn’s breathing was loud and quick as he bent over me. He pressed something cold and heavy against my chest.
“It might hurt, but it’ll be quick,” he whispered. Then, almost apologetically, he added, “It would’ve been better if you hadn’t woken up.”
This was it.
He was going to kill me.
