Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100493 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Sweat slicks my neck and chest, pooling in the dip of my collarbone.
My heart slams against my ribs, making the wound at my side scream at me to move or fight. The damp sheets tangle around my legs, trapping me in the heat of the nightmare, and suddenly I can’t breathe.
In. Out.
Asher’s arm lies heavy across my waist, solid and warm, his fingers curled loosely against my skin while he sleeps. I press my palm over his knuckles and hold it there, counting the seconds between each thud until the gap stretches wide enough for air.
That was the first time we all truly knew to fear Emeric, and being able to fly under the radar for so long further gained our respect.
Every time I blink, that outline sears itself into my brain all over again, fresh as the moment I saw it. The angle of his jaw looked almost exactly how I’d always pictured Emeric’s before the burns.
I slip out from beneath the sheets without disturbing Asher, dragging my fingers through my hair. Le Boucher had no patience. He stayed controlled, sure, but waiting? Never. He proved that during our training when he shoved us toward our first US targets the second we arrived.
Why are you thinking of this at—
I snatch my phone off the bedside table.
Three-thirty-three a.m.
Shit.
I need air.
I tiptoe out of the room, pull on a nightgown, and knot the belt tight as that weekend plays through my head again. Why isn’t he attacking? He saw us together. Saw my drunken mess and Asher’s annoyingly impressive aim. Yet he’s still hiding. By now, he should’ve come in guns blazing and taken us all out.
Slipping out the patio door, I shiver as the cold slips beneath my nightgown.
I try to force the pieces together again. The priest’s story. That jaw. Emeric’s face has carried burns for as long as I’ve known him, surely the priest would’ve mentioned them. Anyone would. You don’t describe a man who frightens you that badly and leave out the one detail that would make him.
Le Boucher had patience. A fucking obscene amount of it.
Emeric? I had doubts. He got pissed when we took too long to finish a task, and God forbid I couldn’t recite a chapter from the Codex after reading it once.
Trust Le Boucher, Nonna had said.
Why tell me to trust the man who’d end up killing her? Nobody could fool Nonna that completely. Nobody. Emeric couldn’t have manipulated her that badly. Impossible.
The only other explanation would be that…
“What’s the matter, Venom?” Asher asks behind me, his voice brushing across my back. “Have a nightmare?”
The grass crackles beneath my feet, and I hear him stop a few yards behind me.
I turn to face him, then hesitate as the moonlight sharpens every hard edge of his face.
Thud. Thud.
My heart kicks into a gallop, each beat pounding clear to my toes.
Those eyes. Almost white in the dark. Ice stretched over a frozen ocean…
My mouth dries up. The priest’s voice loops through my head. He had eyes that would chill the Devil. I’d convinced myself he meant empty. Soulless. A man with nothing left inside capable of thawing.
The priest wasn’t talking in metaphor's. Not completely anyway. He’d been talking about the color.
I search Asher’s face as the truth gathers itself. Every question he dodged. Every hushed secret between his family. The calm he wore when anyone else would’ve panicked. His patience with me in all the years I’ve known him.
And those fucking eyes.
He stays still. Even his breathing changes, his chest holding for half a second too long before it rises again. He watches the answer take shape across my face, following each tiny betrayal my body offers him—the widening of my eyes, the twitch in my jaw, my fingers curling against my palm.
Oxygen thickens until each breath is a struggle.
He’s always known this was coming. Maybe every soft look, every smartass comment, every touch, it all had this ending buried underneath.
I wait for him to grin and call me paranoid. I wait for some filthy joke, some clever excuse that’ll let me hate myself for doubting him.
He could remind me he’d already told me everything.
He could swear he hasn’t lied to me again.
His jaw flexes once.
He says nothing.
Silence cracks around us as Nonna’s face flashes behind my eyes. Then the priest’s poster, then Emeric’s hand flat on the table as he claimed the name.
He kills leaders. Their families. Their lovers. Anyone in his path that gets in the way.
Cold spreads under my skin. All this time, I thought we were on the same side as this evil. Turns out, we’ve been hunted by it all along.
My stomach twists, turning everything in it to acid.
I suck in a deep breath. “Asher.”
He takes a single, slow step toward me.
I counter it, stepping back, the wound on my side screaming.