He’s silent.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame. “We recovered you from a soil displacement event when you were approximately three years old. Then I just so happened to run into a couple goddesses. You were something valuable to them.”
Something valuable.
Not someone.
Something.
“Right.” I loosen my grip on his throat a fraction more. Just enough for him to hope. “I keep forgetting that part.”
I break his left hand.
The sound is wet. Crunching. His scream echoes through the trees, and somewhere behind me I hear the battle pause as everyone turns to watch.
Let them watch.
“That’s for Lucy.” My voice comes out flat. Calm. “She died thinking I abandoned her. But I was on a mission.Yourmission. Hunting vampires in the Carpathians while my best friend took her last breath.”
“I didn’t?—”
I break his right hand.
Another scream. Weaker this time. He’s going into shock. I can see it in the pallor of his skin, the rapid flutter of his pulse.
I have time.
“That’s for my parents.” I lean in close enough to smell his fear. “Cian and Niamh Moonshadow. They died to save me.”
“You don’t understand?—”
“Oh, I understand perfectly.”
I start humming.
I don’t mean to. The tune just rises up from somewhere dark, somewhere Graves put it, and I can’t stop it.
It takes him a moment to recognize it. When he does, his face goes white.
Good. He should. He taught it to me. Said it helped with the dissociation. Count the kills like counting letters in a name.
“Strawberry Shortcake, cream on top, tell me the name of your sweetheart...”
“Ash.” His voice has changed. The cold calculation is gone, replaced by something I’ve never heard from him before. “Ash, listen to me?—”
“A stands for Anton.” I grip his index finger. “Budapest. Remember him?”
Snap.
He screams. I wait for it to stop.
“B stands for Barnes.”
Snap.
“C stands for—” My voice catches. Castellanos begged in three languages. I was the one who finally shut him up. “C stands for you don’t get to know his name.”
