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With Orin’s body pressed to mine, I could tell he was hard for me. I knew he wanted more than passionate kisses in an old library. The way he clenched his fist at his side, the way he held his breath. He was holding back.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’ll never understand it.” His strained whisper intertwined with his breath hot on my collarbone as he kissed my neck. “I’ve spent a lifetime reining myself in, controlling everything around me. Every move I’ve made. But this is a new kind of torture.”
Drawing back, I took in the pain on his face. “Why?”
“Both of the villains in this world want you. And it’s made me believe that maybe there are three.”
“Icharius and Drexel… who is the third?”
“Me. Because should any harm come to you, Deyanira, I will become the thing of nightmares. I will bring this world to wreckage. It’s the only thing I can give you. My only promise.”
I reached for his face, stroking the smooth, hard edges, staring into the depth of his amber eyes. “I can protect myself. I don’t need anything more than this, Orin. Only you. All of you.”
He grabbed the back of my neck and jerked me forward, controlling everything as he kissed me once more, full of possession and steeped in desire. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
I locked my hands behind his neck. “I know exactly what I’m asking for. What are you so afraid of?”
He smirked, a glint in his eyes as he leaned his head against mine. “Whatever this is, it’s not fear. It’s fucking obsession. It’s the chase. The capture. The godsdamned overturn of everything I thought I knew about what a man and woman should be. I want to savor every moment for eternity. I won’t rush, because the craving, the anticipation, is intoxicating. I will drag these moments out for as long as I can because once we cross that bridge, Wife, we burn it to the ground and never look back. Nothing else will matter to me.”
A smile played on my lips. “That sure of yourself?”
He growled, biting my earlobe until a shiver crept down my spine. “I’m not just sure; I’m absolutely, irrevocably, and undeniably certain that when I take you, we will be lost to each other for the rest of time.”
And though I wanted nothing more than to believe every promise he delivered so perfectly, he’d all but admitted he was holding himself back. This marriage was born of beautiful lies, yet even flowers couldn’t escape the taint of poison in a seed. There was more to Orin’s story than what he’d allowed himself to share.
Chapter 48
Lying on the rooftop at home, I listened to Thea, Paesha, and Quill work on the bathhouse in the distance, letting the slices of sunlight through the clouds warm my skin. After all these weeks, there was still a great sense of loss in small moments. Quill had torn her dress, and though Elowen tried, she’d not been able to hide the patch the way Hollis would have. It took two days to coax the kid out of her room after that, and the only reason she’d agreed was because Althea claimed she wouldn’t be able to finish the nearly completed bathhouse without her. That and Boo had begun to pace at the door. Her sorrow had begun to seep down the walls, filling the air with sadness when she was at her lowest, and that was a very dangerous ledge for us to let her walk.
Each day held us on edge. We knew the Maestro was not done. We knew he wouldn’t just let Quill and Paesha slip through his fingers, maybe even me. But there’d been no sign of him, and every hour that passed convinced us that whenever he did make a move, it was going to be a permanent devastation.
The front door shut several stories down. I rolled to my stomach, watching Orin cross the yard more quickly than normal. When he looked over his shoulder toward the roof, I ducked, convinced he was trying to make sure I didn’t see him. For all the distance we’d come, he still had secrets. And maybe I should have let him have that space, but there were promises of a future between us, and I held nothing back.
Curiosity got the best of me, and I was chasing after him before I realized what I was doing. We’d never discussed his ability to kill after that first conversation, but there were still unanswered questions, and the last time he’d snuck out like this, there’d been a singular purpose.
That was night, and this was day, though, so maybe I’d had it all wrong. Still, I followed him through Silbath, taking the long way around Misery’s End, crossing the stone bridge into Perth, past the clock tower, turning south through the graveyard, and heading directly into the Scarlet District.
Paranoia crept over me as I kept an eye on my back now more than ever. I’d seen the extra patrols of guards, had caught the way Orin avoided certain streets bogged down by Drexel’s henchmen wearing long coats and twisted mustaches, as if they wanted to be the Maestro. He’d avoided going anywhere near the temples, his hatred for the gods shining through, even in the paths he chose to take.
Orin moved with a direct purpose into a narrow alleyway between two towering apartment buildings. I kept my distance, watching him from above, but as if he could feel me watching, he turned, studying the broken cobblestone streets around him. I ducked, holding my breath as I counted to ten, giving just enough time for him to pour over his surroundings. When I peeked my head up, he’d turned away, leaning against a building once more.
Drawing Hollis’s pocket watch, he studied the time, danger rolling off him as a door swung open and a man emerged, holding tightly to the elbow of another man. Neither of which I recognized.
Still, Orin was quick. A strike to the throat and the man being detained was free to run. And that’s exactly what he did. Though limping, he never once looked back to his savior as he bolted away. The other man, though? He’d fallen to his knees, hands held before him as if in prayer, begging my husband to show him mercy. I didn’t need to hear the words spill from his trembling lips to know the darkness in Orin’s eyes at this moment.
The ground seemed to rumble for a flash of a second, and the man collapsed to the ground, no longer moving. Orin’s shoulders sank. He didn’t bother checking for a pulse. As if time were not on his side, he raced down another alley, his coat billowing behind him.
I crouched, frozen in shock. I’d seen it happen before, but I’d somehow convinced myself it wasn’t real. That it couldn’t be. Even with the confession. I waited moments more, anticipating Death this time, confident he’d come, take the fallen’s soul, and return to his home. But again, it wasn’t Death. Only a creeping shadow, there and gone before anyone would know what happened.
I wasn’t sure if I could catch Orin. I thought maybe I’d be better off heading home. But sheer curiosity forced me to hop across an adjacent alley, letting the sun set as I chased a man that always knew exactly the right words to say to hold my heart in his hands. Even when I knew I should have been more careful with it.
With each footstep, I remembered his words in my mind. His promises to choose me when I thought he hated me. The way he kissed me. The way his eyes burned for me. Whatever his secret, whatever he thought he was protecting me from, I could still feel myself falling deeply, maddeningly in love with him. Poor bastard.
On the backside of an opium den, closer to my father’s castle than I was comfortable, he stopped again, this time for less than two minutes before a stunning woman emerged from the back door, her breathtaking beauty betraying her identity as she hugged my husband and pulled him down the street, to which he diligently followed.
When Ro and Orin slipped into an old building, I followed right behind them, jealousy expanding like a wildfire in my heart. I wanted so desperately to trust both of them, but this felt wrong. This felt like a secret betrayal before I’d even gotten an answer. I’d learned over these past months that I truly knew nothing of people. Of friendship or family or love or loss. So how could I claim to know anything about jealousy?
