Page 83 of Arrow

Something dark moved in her, visible as the twitch at the corner of her mouth. She was recalibrating, running the next ten moves forward.

I stepped forward.

She tensed, but didn’t shy away.

I put a hand on the altar rail, next to hers, but not touching. “One breed left alive to write the story.” I let the silence coil.

Her eyes widened, catching every line I tossed. “Is that what this is? A fucking breeding program? What, you want to create some kind of Romanov-Virelli super-baby that carries both our bloodlines?”

“Would that be the worst thing?”

“I’d rather cut out my own uterus with this broken glass.”

“You’d deny yourself children just to spite me?”

“I’d deny myself anything to keep Romanov poison from spreading,” she hissed. “I’m not a broodmare you can impregnate to secure your legacy.”

“That’s not the only reason I want you,” I sighed.

“You want me because you like to break things,” she scoffed, gripping the altar to steady herself.

I leaned closer. “If I wanted to break you, you’d already be in pieces.”

“What’s your grand plan then?” she asked. “Drag me back to your glass prison? Lock me up and throw away the key?”

Reaching out, I brushed a strand of hair from her face. She jerked away, but there was nowhere to go with the altar at her back.

“My plan,” I said slowly, “is to give you a choice.”

She laughed, the sound echoing through the empty club. “A choice? That’s rich coming from you.”

“You can come back with me now, willingly. Or I can have you hunted down and brought back in restraints.” I stayed calm, and I saw how it angered her. “Either way, you will be my wife.”

“Some choice,” she muttered.

“It’s more than your father ever gave you.”

She knew I was right.

“And if I come back willingly?” she asked. “What then? We play house until one of us murders the other in their sleep?”

I stepped closer. “Then I don’t put you in the collar Natalya brought. I don’t chain you to the bed. I don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

“Do you think I believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe.” I let my fingers trace the line of her jaw. “I care what you do.”

She wrenched herself upright. “You’re pathetic. You act like you inherited a destiny, Arrow, but all you ever got was a disease.” Each word is hissed out, not fury, just the loathing of a girl who knew she had no more moves.

I wanted to correct her, to prove there was a method to my madness. But the truth was, Harlowe Virelli had always been more contagion than conquest. It was the flaw that made her irresistible, and the reason I couldn’t break her any more than I could set my bones.

“You done?” I asked.

She swayed and would have toppled if I hadn’t already braced her with my arm. The weight was too familiar, too necessary, and I hated how easy it was to hold her upright.

“Stop pretending you care,” she said, voice nothing but wires and rust. “Just put me out of my misery because if my fate is to carry Romanov spawn, then I’d rather be dead.”

The tremble in her lips mesmerized me—the almost comic purity of her threat. I wanted to call her bluff, snap her neck, and be done, but I wasn’t built for clean endings. I was constructed for slow deaths; for deep bone marrow curses and the kind of damage you only feel after the fact.