“Sekhmet,” she said, closing her eyes as if reveling in the name. “Sekhmet was so powerful. It’s why they call them sekhors,” she explained. “Children of Sekhmet. But everyone she bit turned into a sekhor. Osiris couldn’t allow it. And Grim did his bidding. So he imprisoned and stashed her away. Qwynn was the only one Grim let past his defenses, which made her the perfect puppet. Or so I thought.”
She sat down, crossing a slim, tanned leg over the other as if we were having a girl’s chat over dinner. I still knelt on the floor. My nails now dug into the palms of my hands, cutting through flesh. Blood slickened the ring I held and slid between my fingers in red rivulets.
“I didn’t count on her changing the plan and raising sekhors on her own while leaving my sister trapped in slumber.” Galina cocked her head to the side. “I suppose I should have. She’s every bit the treacherous bitch the others claim her to be. She nearly killed Grim with her need for power over him, though that wasn’t her objective. Qwynn was no better than a child throwing a tantrum to get attention. When I heard the story of how she offered him the flesh of a mummified pharaoh, I put two and two together about Grim’s secret weakness. One’s secretum mortis often possesses a kind of irony to it. Even so, I had no intention of hurting him until it became absolutely necessary. But I’m tired of waiting, Vivien. Waiting for a new order and to be reunited with my other half.”
“You are the treacherous bitch,” I said in a ragged whisper. “You killed Seth.”
She waved a hand and leaned back. “Oh please, like you care. He planned to destroy you and Grim, but not before playing with his food. I never wanted harm to come to Grim. Our interests and goals aligned many times over the years. But between him and my sister, there is no contest. Now with him gone, the spell hiding my sister…” She snapped her fingers. “Vanished.”
I wasn’t impressed. She uncrossed her leg and shifted in her seat. “Believe me, this couldn’t be helped. I can go to my sister and together we will begin a revolution, a new age free of oppression.”
“You killed the kid who worshiped you.” I tucked Grim’s ring into my dress, between my breasts.
Her brows furrowed. “The boy who jumped off the roof? That was unprecedented. I simply told him to keep his distance from you, so you couldn’t scent me out the way you had Seth with his followers. You must believe I never intended for him to leap, but when you cornered him, it was all he could do.”
She blamed me for his death. Disbelief finally cut through the paralyzing grief. Something boiled beneath the depths of my anguish. Anger. No, not anger. It was far more powerful, wild, practically savage. It was rage.
I dove at her, ready to tear her to pieces.
Galina batted me down like a cat. I hit the wall of wine and it exploded behind me. My ribs cracked under her blow, and glass bit into my back.
Despite the tremendous crash, no one would come. The room was soundproofed. Grim had assured me of that when he’d implied his more devilish plans for the evening.
“Please don’t make me do that again,” she requested with stern politeness. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Galina had hit me as if I were no more than a plaything. No longer did I possess the extra strength and stamina of Grim’s blood. Grim’s divinity had all but disappeared from my system. It had evaporated along with his body. Galina’s strength far surpassed my own, and some part of me recognized she’d gone easy on me. Ruby liquid dripped into my eyes. If I fought her, I wouldn’t win.
But this wasn’t about winning. This was about rage and grief.
I blurred to my feet, ready to charge her again.
Before I could take two steps, Galina grabbed me like I was nothing. First, she raised me over her head before she dropped me. My upper back collided with her knee, and my neck snapped violently. The white-hot pain was indescribable. The crack of my spine breaking in two places reverberated through me, leaving a ringing in my ears. Then she tossed me on the ground like a rag doll. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. She’d paralyzed me.
I sat, slumped in a pile of broken glass. Head tilted at an awkward angle, I couldn’t even move my neck. Everything inside me screamed with pain, and there would be no relief. My vision blurred from tears again. “You’ve fucking destroyed my life. Why not just kill me?”
“I’ve freed you,” she said, clasping her hands together and crouching down to my level. “Don’t you see? Grim owned you. You couldn’t be independent of him. I know you were fond of your captor, but it doesn’t change the nature of the dynamic. Even he knew that. I saw the guilt and pain in his eyes when he looked at you last night. But now you can feed from anyone.” She opened her arms as if the world were my oyster.
“I loved him.”
“If you say so.” She stood, brushing off my feelings as if they were nothing more than dead leaves. “But you are young. You’ll find love again.”
She turned to go when my phone buzzed in my purse across the room.
“You think you’re so clever?” I said in a raspy voice, stopping her. “But at heart, you are still just a cat. A cat who played with its food too much before eating it. You think we didn’t know it was you? You let your hand slip one too many times. I could have let it slide that there was a distinct trail of stink from the truck where we’d captured Seth, before he showed up dead. I even could have let that tuna smell wafting off that poor kid you directed to die, the same odor that lingers on your skin like stinky cat chow. But the Maine coon in his apartment? The one meant to drive anyone away? Did you really think I wouldn’t guess it was one of your envoys? And then dragging Qwynn in to be an ally while secretly pumping her and everyone else for information. You gods may be powerful, but your hubris gives you away. And it’s the exact reason I’ll succeed in killing you.”
Galina turned around, her face still a mask of cold pity. “Darling, even if you could come over here and bite me, I’d use the blood bond created to destroy you in an instant.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I grinned, a feral, terrifying smile of someone unhinged with violence and nothing left to lose. “Because while you’ve been here with me, extolling on how fucking great you think you are, I’ve taken something fromyou, Galina.”
“And what have you taken from me?” She smirked, as if humoring a child.
“The Blade of Bane,” I said. I may have been a broken doll on the floor, but I still sent her a vicious grin.
From the placid rise of her eyebrows, I could tell she didn’t believe me.
“You hung it in plain sight in the chandelier bar.” Galina owned the Martini Hotel. At the center of her hotel was a bar that resembled a chandelier, where massive swaths of crystals surrounded the patrons as they sipped overpriced drinks.
Her expression never changed, but it frosted over.
