He’s not.
A few more steps.
“Fucking human filth.” His voice is still bored. Like I’m a task to complete. A mess to clean up. “Running like the coward you are.”
Don’t fall for it, Ash.
But something about his tone makes my skin crawl worse than rage would. Rage I understand. Rage means I matter enough to hate.
Boredom means I’m nothing. An acceptable loss.
I’ve seen that look before. In Graves’ eyes when he talked about collateral damage.
I’m so close to the door.
“I’m not running.” I breathe heavily, hand finding the wall for balance. My thigh is warm and wet. “I’m strategically relocating.”
“No?” he taunts. “A midnight run?”
I blow out a breath because I hate the fact that the enemy is behind me and I haven’t moved yet. But he isn’t going to strike me in the back. Not right now.
He wants to see my face when he does it.
I turn around, chin held high, and see nothing.
I don’t know why I do it, but I laugh. Because, “How hypocritical. Calling me a coward while you hide in the shadows.”
The blade is at my throat before I can utter another word.
Slowly, a man steps close. I’ve seen him before. At court. Beside Moros.
His right hand. I don’t recall his name, but it’s not important anyway.
He reminds me of Graves.
The recognition hits like a fist to the sternum. The stance. The structure. The inability to bend. The way he’s alreadycalculated exactly how many ways he could end me and is simply choosing not to.
Yet.
Graves was born human and made himself into that. Took decades of careful cruelty to carve away everything soft.
This Fae was born with it. Stands more rigid than Graves ever did.
And that terrifies me more than the blade at my throat.
The bond pulses at my wrist. A heartbeat I can’t answer.
For one stupid moment I imagine Kieran here. Shadows exploding from his feet. That cold voice promising violence. The way he’d take this Fae apart piece by piece for daring to touch me.
I can still feel his hands on my skin. Still hear his voice:We are coming.
But imagination doesn’t stop blades. And coming isn’t the same as here.
“Now, now.”
Amarantha’s voice cuts through the dark like crystal shattering.
I freeze and blink against the dark, struggling to see her.
