Page 10

Then—a sound splits the air. A scream—raw, familiar.

Cass!

I flinch back from the window and duck low. Every instinct says run, but I can’t—not when that scream’s hers.

I reach the front bay window and risk a glance inside.

Cass is fighting like hell, all spit and fury.

She’s half-bound, one arm pinned, one leg still free. Her boot catches a man hard between the legs. He doubles over, cursing, blood pouring from his nose. Another bruise blooms across her jaw, ugly and blackening.

Her nails rake red furrows down a man’s cheek before he backhands her, hard. The crack echoes through the glass, her head snapping sideways. She hits the arm of the chair, bounces back with a snarl, teeth bared wild and ready.

He curses, pressing his bulk into her, fists closing around her wrists, grinding bone to wood. The brand on his wrist—three barbed lines in a circle—and a smear of ash over it, I don’t need scripture to know who he serves.

My stomach knots. They never come this far out. If they’re here, it means they were pointed in this direction. On purpose.

The dead weren’t what I feared most. It was the living—and right now they were in my damn house because of me. At twenty-three I knew the world doesn’t wait for vows. It tests them.

I slip through the screen door, hinges whining just enough to make my stomach clench. My grip tightens around the hatchet until the wood handle sweats slick against my palm. My heart’s pounding so loud I’m certain he’ll hear it—feel it—even though he hasn’t turned. Even though he doesn’t know I’m here.

I don’t think.

I can’t.

If I think, I’ll freeze.

The blade comes down with a sickening crack—louder, wetter than I ever imagined bone would sound. It splits him open like rotten timber giving way under an axe. His whole body jerks once, a horrible, twitching shudder, then collapses at my feet. The blood is immediate—hot, dark, spreading across the floorboards in a fast, blooming pool that creeps toward my boots.

My breath stutters. My hands shake. I didn’t know it would feel like that. I didn’t know it would be so easy. And so awful.

I stare down at what I’ve done, chest heaving, nausea crowding my throat.

Cassie stirs, dragging air into her lungs in broken gasps. Her eyes blink open, frantic and glassy, then land on me. On the hatchet. On the body.

Shock hits her first—wide, disbelieving. Then something like relief fractures through it. Her gaze snaps back to mine, and for a heartbeat we just…stare.

Holy shit.

We don’t say it, but it hangs there between us, heavy and electric.

“Sel—” The sound is thin, cracked, like it hurts to speak. She jerks against the ropes cutting into her wrists, straining toward me, every line of her body screaming both gratitude and fear. Her eyes shine, wide and wet, begging me to untie her, begging me to hurry.

I move to step closer⁠—

Then it hits.

A crash from deeper in the house—glass shattering, wood splintering—so loud it rattles the walls. The silence fractures, and dread slams into my chest.

Cass’s eyes go wide, panic flooding her face, her voice breaking on a scream.

“Scarlett!”

I saw through the ropes with shaking hands, moving too slow, too fast, not fast enough. The second Cass is free, she bolts for the kitchen.

I follow.

My hand finds the doorframe as the sight stops me in my tracks.