Still facing the rows of golden jars, still pretending to listen to the vendor, his eyes sharpen. He’s tracking something to our left in the reflection of a polished copper tray hanging on the stall wall. Every muscle in his back has gone predator-still.
My pulse spikes, breath caught in my throat when I notice a man walking toward us. Middle-aged. Plain. Forgettable. Except for the way he’s staring at me. His hand is already inside his jacket, eyes flat and purposeful. Six feet away. Then five. Moving sideways through the crowd like he belongs there.
Reth moves like death wearing skin. He slips between a woman carrying baskets and a man unloading crates, sliding through a gap so narrow it should have slowed him. The crowd parts around him without knowing why. No panic. No noise. Just the lethal grace of something that was built for exactly this.
They disappear between two stalls — into the narrow, shadowed gap between an old stone building and a shuttered shop. Hidden.
It happens in brutal silence while my stomach drops.
I don’t think. I just move — darting after them, heart hammering, fear forhimclawing up my throat. Ian hisses my name behind me but I’m already slipping between the stalls, sandals kicking up dust.
I round the corner just in time to see it.
Reth has the man pinned against the rough stone wall. One powerful forearm is crushed across the stranger’s throat, completely silencing him. The man’s eyes are bulging, face turning purple, mouth opening in a scream that never comes. His hand is still twitching toward the knife in his jacket, but Reth’s other hand is already there — twisting the wrist with vicious force until bone snaps.
His face is pure violence. Lips peeled back, eyes black with rage, scar pulled tight over his cheekbone. There’s nothing human left in his expression — only the monster who was built to kill, and right now that monster isfurious.
This isn’t the Nazareth who held my hand at dawn. This is the Reth she turned him into.
The karambit appears like it’s always been in his hand, like an extension of himself, and he buries it low between the man’s ribs with a vicious upward thrust, twisting hard as he drives it deeper. The man jerks violently once, body convulsing against the wall, a wet gurgle dying in his crushed throat. Reth’s face never changes — cold, feral, almost serene in its brutality — as he watches the light leave the man’s eyes.
He holds him there a second longer, making sure the kill is clean, before he drags the limp body deeper into the shadows between the two old buildings and lets it slump behind a stack of empty crates. From the market side, it’s completely invisible.
When he turns, our eyes meet, and the air leaves my lungs.
Reth is breathing hard, chest rising and falling, karambit still gripped tight in his blood-slick fingers. His eyes are wild. Possessive. Unhinged. Like the kill wasn’t enough. Like the only thing keeping him from tearing the whole island apart is the sight of me standing right in front of him.
There’s blood on his hand. On his shirt. On the blade.
And still, the look he gives me is so raw, so feral, sodevotedthat my knees nearly buckle. It’s not just protection. It’s obsession carved into something violent and sacred. Like he’d slaughter the entire world and lay every corpse at my feet if it meant keeping me safe. Like I’m the only thing that matters. The only thing that’s ever mattered.
For one endless heartbeat, the narrow alley disappears. The market noise fades. There’s only him — covered in someone else’s blood, staring at me like I’m both his reason for living and his reason for killing.
Ian’s hand closes around my arm from behind, yanking me back. “Walk.”
Reth is already moving in our direction. My legs move even though my mind is still stuck on the flash of the blade. Ian steers me through the crowd, firm but calm, while behind us the market keeps breathing — vendors shouting, children laughing, life continuing like a man didn’t just die twenty meters away.
We reach the car in under four minutes. I don’t remember the walk. Just Ian’s iron grip on my arm, the blur of colorful stalls, the normal sounds of the market still drifting behind us like nothing terrible had happened.
Reth is already in the driver’s seat, engine running. Ian shoves me into the back and slams the door as Reth peels out, tires kicking up gravel.
The silence lasts maybe thirty seconds.
Ian twists in the passenger seat, voice tight. “Reth. Talk to me.”
“He works for her.” Reth’s voice is flat, deadly. His hands are locked on the wheel like he’s imagining snapping someone’s neck. “The man I killed. He’s one of Valeria’s.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I recognized him.” Reth’s jaw flexes. “He was in Prague three years ago. One of her cleaners.”
“Jesus Christ.” Ian drags a hand down his face. “It’s not even been twenty-four hours and she already found us?”
I lean forward between the seats, heart pounding. “What’s going on? Who was that man? Reth?—”
They both ignore me completely.
“We need to get her out of here.”
