He stalks me like the fall of night determined to gobble up the day.
I push to my feet, and he stops one long pace away. I can see his chest is heaving. Can garner it in the way he’s feeding his scent straight from his lungs into the tight space separating us in deep, drugging puffs.
“You need to understand,” he growls, fist tightening around the handle of my bloody chisel. “Just standing by and watching yousuffergoes against my basic instinct. But I’m trying, Milaje. I’m fucking trying.”
I laugh, cold and low, wiping my face with the back of my arm. “Once upon a time those words would have sustained me, you know.Before.”
I swear the world stills. Like even the stars stop their lazy spin.
“Before what?”
There’s an imbalance in his voice, tipped off its scale, scratchy and charged.
Murderous.
“Before you decided to care.”
“I’ve always cared.”
His words burrow between my ribs with piercing force, but I shake my head, fists clenched. Look him straight in the eye while I deliver my cut with every drop of conviction I can muster. “Well, I don’t.”
He bares his teeth in a silent snarl and looks away, back again. “Funny. I’d almost believe you’re telling the truth.”
“I am,” I say on a hollow laugh, stepping forward until we’re pressed close and I’m looking up into onyx eyes—cold, ancient, and winking with the hint of silver sparks. “You’d think losing my entire family was the worst thing to happen to me, but it’s not. It’syou,” I whisper, my words laced with poison.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch or breathe or blink. Just watches me with that crushing stare.
“You’re a monster, Rhordyn.”
I see a flash of hurt in his otherwise stoic gaze, gone the next second. It takes me a moment to realize I’m talking about myself, but I don’t stop—too caught up in the rush of my outburst to stem the flow.
Too desperate to see him crumble beneath the weight of my words.
“Well …” he rumbles, his voice gravel against my skin, “nice of you to catch up.”
“Oh, I’ve been here a while,” I say, and he pushes forward; a hard wall at my front, so close that I can feel the thunderous beat of his heart. “If I could take it all back, I would. I’d prefer being torn to shreds over the nineteen years I spent living in your shadow.”
He seems to swell, upper lip peeling back as a violent rumble attacks me from somewhere deep inside his chest.
He cracks his neck from side to side, and then his hand journeys around my waist, as though he’s trying to return to the moment we had when I was small and broken in his arms. But I’m not broken anymore.
I’m dead.
I lunge, ripping away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. Don’t evenbreathein my direction. I hate you, do you hear me? With every fiber of my being. I. Hate. You.”
His hand bunches into a fist, the static between usbuzzing.
“I hear you, Milaje.” Still holding my stare, he offers me the chisel slathered in my blood—enough to satisfy more than a year’s worth of offerings. “Loud and clear.”
I let him drop the handle into my hand, and it feels much heavier than it did. Then he’s before me, crushing the space between us, pouring himself all over me as he plants a kiss upon my forehead.
He pulls away and spins, charging down the moonlit path, his cloak a fierce flutter trailing every brutish step.
I stumble back, lungs deflating, as though my spine just snapped.
Caught by the tree trunk, I drop, grating my spine down the bark, gulping at air that feels utterly empty now that he’s gone.
My fingers ache with the crush of my hands, strangling nothing, swinging at my side with each stoning step. I whip one back, then punch my fist through a tree trunk, shredding the skin on my knuckles.
