“Or perhaps,” Mal says quietly, “it’s time for you to leave.”
For a moment, something dangerous flickers across Azrael’s perfect features. His eyes flash brighter, colder, and the temperature in the room plummets until I can see my breath crystallizing in the air.
Then he smiles.
“As you wish.” He steps back, inclining his head with mock courtesy. “Miss Solis, it was a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to watching your face when the truth finally emerges.”
He turns and walks toward the door with that same impossible grace, leaving trails of frost on the hardwood. At the threshold, he pauses.
“One last thing.” His voice carries easily across the studio. “Ask him about Thessaly. About what happened to the seventhinvitation two hundred years ago.” A soft laugh. “Then see how complete your understanding truly is.”
The door closes behind him. The frost begins to melt. And I’m left standing in my studio, hand still gripping Mal’s, with a name echoing in my mind like a curse.
Thessaly.
“Who was she?” My voice sounds strange. Distant. “The woman in Thessaly. What happened?”
Mal doesn’t answer immediately. He’s staring at the door, his face pale beneath the glamor, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscles jumping.
“Mal.” I release his hand and step back, putting a distance between us that feels like miles. “Who was in Thessaly?”
When he finally speaks, his voice is barely a whisper.
“She was my fiancee.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Your fiancee.”
The words come out flat and hollow, like all the air has been sucked out of them somewhere between my brain and my mouth. Mal flinches as if I’ve struck him.
“Izzie—”
“You had a fiancee.” I’m backing away now, my feet moving of their own accord, putting distance between us that I desperately need. The mirrors reflect my shock back at me from every angle—pale face, wide eyes, hands that won’t stop trembling. “Two hundred years ago, you had a fiancee, and you never thought to mention that?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated?” A laugh escapes me, sharp and bitter. “That’s what you’re going with? Complicated?”
He reaches for me. I step back.
“Please.” His voice cracks on the word. “Just let me explain.”
“Then explain!” My own voice bounces off the studio walls, too loud, too raw. “Explain why Azrael knows about her and I don’t. Explain why you’ve told me about the contract, the bracelet, the Dance of Accord—but never once mentioned that you were going to be married. Explain why this is the first I’m hearing about your seventh invitation two hundred years ago and what happened to it.”
Mal closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they’re not brown anymore—they’re crimson, the glamor slipping as his control wavers. His horns are visible now, small and dark against his black hair, and his tail has materialized, coiling anxiously behind him.
He looks like what he is. A demon. A creature I’ve invited into my life, my studio, my bed. A stranger wearing a familiar face.
“Her name was Elena,” he says quietly. “And she died because of me.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer.
Died because of me.
I want to run. Every self-preservation instinct I possess is screaming at me to get out, to put as much distance as possible between myself and this creature who apparently has dead wives in his past. This isn’t the sweet monster romance I’d somehow convinced myself I was living. This is something darker, more dangerous, more real.
But my feet won’t move.
