Okay. He was Finn.
I held very still. “And?”
I could feel the thud of his heart against my cheek. The sun was high, and its glare crashed over us, skewering us in its heat. It was unbearable being in Finn’s arms. It hurt. Horribly. But it also felt wrong.
Finn bent his head and pressed his mouth to my temple. A sharp pain tapped my skull. “You betrayed me,” he whispered, pressing another kiss to my hairline. “And it made me cry.”
I looked up at him. There was something odd in the dark growl of his voice. There was something strange and broken in his eyes.
“Let me go,” I said.
We were two people on a sidewalk. To the pedestrians passing by, we probably looked like lovers. They just couldn’t look closely at the blood on my neck or the wild expression on Finn’s face.
“I’m going to kill you. Till death do us part, wife.”
My hot blood turned to ice. “You’re insane. You came back insane.”
“I don’t think so. I feel just fine.” He tilted his head, his eyes shaded from the sun. “But perhaps. You’re the one living in the asylum. You tell me.”
I didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t Finn. Since I’d become a mine, he alternated between the man who was stoic and calm and the one who was cruel and murderous. I didn’t know if it was death or the crown that had caused it, but one thing was clear: the Finn in my dreams wasn’t real.
I looked up, my heart racing, my throat tight. I’d been in more life-or-death situations than most, so I knew the numb feeling racing through me was normal. Everything had focused to the single pinpoint of Finn’s expression. The busy street, the cars, the traffic sounds and the smell of exhaust, the pedestrians and the construction—all of it faded in a wash of black. The only thing that remained was Finn.
My heartbeat slowed until I could count the space between each heavy thud. My body loosened and relaxed against him. My eyelids grew heavy, and I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth.
“Finn,” I whispered, my throat aching.
His gaze caught my mouth, and his eyes narrowed as I let out a long sigh.
“What?”
“You won’t kill me.”
“Why not?”
I stood on my tiptoes, tilting my face so my lips brushed the underside of his jaw. “Because,” I whispered, “I’m going to kill you first.”
Then I shoved my knife into his side. He jerked back, and I kicked free. I sprinted down the street, diving through an open apartment door. I raced up the steps, dove past a woman holding a sack of groceries, and sprinted down her hallway into her bedroom. I scrambled under the bed and dropped into the abyss.
When I landed in the spongy, marrow-white tunnel, I crouched on the ground, wrapped my arms around my knees, and for just a moment, a half-second only, I let myself mourn the loss of the man who used to be Finn.
60
When the wind raced to Brooklyn and told the boy the citrus and pearl dust scented woman had promised to make him pay, he’d grinned wildly and then laughed.
“But she liked the puppy?” he asked, still grinning.
The wind flicked his ear irritably. Hadn’t the boy heard? She wanted him to pay.
“Yes, yes, I heard. But she liked it? You’re sure?”
Of course it was sure. It didn’t say things it wasn’t sure of. The woman’s heart had thudded happily, her scent had softened, and her limbs had relaxed as the puppy had curled in her lap. She’d rubbed its velvet-soft ears and pressed a kiss to its wet nose. Yes. She’d liked it.
But she hadn’t forgiven the boy. In fact, knowing the boy, he’d probably fall into one of her traps. Like when she’d pinned him to the rocks in the first game, or when she’d knocked him unconscious in the catacombs. He didn’t protect himself well enough when it came to the woman. Liking her made him hesitate, and hesitating made him vulnerable.
Worse, the musician was afraid of the boy, and that made him dangerous. Beings who were afraid were dangerous. Why had the boy shown him such horrors? Now he thought the boy was a monster. He’d do anything to shield his sister. Even kill the boy.
“I didn’t show him horrors,” the boy said, his grin fading like mist blown away. “He came up with those on his own. I only opened a door to show him what was already there.”
