Page 195 of Villainous Intent

“Let’s leave our mark, shall we?” The knife bit into my skin, carving a line down my stomach. I clenched my teeth against the pain, refusing to scream. Warm blood trickled down my sides.

“Such control,” he murmured. “Let’s see how long that lasts.”

The blade moved higher and a sharp pain exploded across my breast. I couldn’t stop my scream this time.

“Oops,” Dread said, his voice dripping with false concern. “I slipped.”

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I wouldn’t break.

He finally stood and I gasped, sucking in air as my lungs expanded fully for the first time in minutes.

“Run,” he said, stepping back and gesturing toward the darkness with his bloodied knife.

I clutched my torn sweater closed with one hand and launched myself forward.

Blood trickled down my stomach from the shallow cut, warm and sticky against my skin. Behind me, I heard Dread’s slow footsteps. He was savoring the chase.

I rounded a corner and stumbled forward into a larger space. Faint light filtered in from somewhere above, illuminating the edges of a mock plaza. Concrete benches and a dried-up fountain stood in the center.

I limped toward the far side, hoping to find an exit, a window, anything⁠—

Shadows closed around my ankle, yanking backward. I crashed to the ground and Dread flipped me onto my back, straddling me and pinning me down once more.

“That was pathetic,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “I expected more from Havoc’s pet.”

The knife appeared in his hand again. I wasn’t going to survive this. No one knew where I was. No one was coming.

I was going to die here.

Unless I used the one thing I spent my entire life trying to hide.

My Warden abilities were broken. Unpredictable. I had to make direct physical contact to cut off his powers, and doing so would siphon part of them into me. Shadow manipulation. Fear. Dread’s poison running through my veins alongside Halcyon’s.

I just needed to touch his bare skin for a second. Just one second to buy myself time.

I thrust my hand upward and aimed my palm straight for his face.

I never even got close.

Dread possessed the unnatural reflexes of a Trueborn monster. His hand shot out and intercepted my arm in midair. His fingers clamped down on my forearm and he smiled down at me. He twisted his grip with a sharp wrench.

A loud crack echoed through the abandoned plaza and a blinding spike of pain shot up my arm. I screamed as the bone broke and squeezed my eyes shut against the sudden wave of nausea.

Dread let my broken arm drop against the concrete and I screamed again. I think I blacked out for a few seconds from the pain.

“Naughty,” he whispered. He leaned closer until I could feel the cold emanating from his skin. “You really should learn to behave, Warden. Try to touch me again and I will do something far worse than snap a little bone.”

He grabbed the wrist of my unbroken arm and forced it above my head. The knife hovered over my splayed fingers as he pried them apart, one by one.

“I think I’ll take a souvenir this time,” he said, his voice soft with anticipation. “But which one should I start with? The pinky seems traditional, but I’ve always been partial to index fingers myself.”

The cold metal of the blade pressed against the base of my index finger. I tried to trap my scream behind clenched teeth as I felt the pressure building as he prepared to cut. The surrounding shadows pulsed, growing darker, more substantial. The cold tendrils brushed against my skin like ghostly caresses.

A blur of movement shot through the air, a darker shape against the night and it slammed into Dread. The impact was so violent I felt the shockwave against my skin as both bodies careened sideways, crashing straight through the wall of a mock building.

For one breathtaking moment, Dread’s concentration broke. The unnatural shadows flickered and vanished, leaving only normal darkness behind. Moonlight suddenly seemed bright as day.

I gasped, sucking in air. My mind couldn’t process what had just happened. One second Dread was there, knife poised to carve pieces from me, the next, he was gone, ripped away by some unseen force.