Page 73 of Godless Saints

My phone buzzed. I yanked it out. The screen lit up in the dark.

SAINT LUCIA REGRET:

Tell me when you’re back.

My thumb hovered. Answer. Delete. End this now.

Aster ahead. Cillian behind. Simple fucking geography. Mikhail slowed at a small landing. The teasing vanished from his voice.

“Don’t hurt him.”

I planted my hands on my hips. “Excuse me?”

“Cillian.”

“He has a Blood Writ on me,” I said.

Mikhail turned fully. No smirk. “He’ll let you hurt him. That doesn’t mean you get to.”

My fingers crushed the rail.

“Your friend chose his games,” I said.

“No. He chose you. That’s the problem.”

“Then correct him.”

“I’ve been trying since he was fifteen,” Mikhail said. “He’s unpleasantly committed to his defects.”

He stepped closer. The passage shrank. “Cill doesn’t do halfway. And he’s already decided that you are his.”

“I am not his.”

“I didn’t say you were. I said he decided.”

My body still remembered every brutal thrust, every filthy word, how I'd come twice untouched. Fucking hell. “That is his failing,” I said.

“Maybe.” Mikhail stayed low. “But people are noticing. You. Cillian. Me smuggling you through Thorn after midnight. That becomes leverage fast.”

I gave him a flat, bored look. “How adorable. Mikhail Lovchy playing protector. Does it get you hard?”

“I’m not worried about danger. I’m worried about idiots turning academy games into mafia business.”

“Whatever.” I waved him off and walked ahead of him.

Mikhail fell in beside me.

Neither of us spoke. There was nothing left to say.

There was no future where Cillian and I rode off into some happily-ever-after. We came from opposite worlds. He didn’t grasp optics. He was the one with the problem. Mine was completely under control.

We stepped out of the passage into the cold night air. Rain-slick gravel. Black trees pressing close on both sides. The old woods path stretched ahead. Aster was so close.

Mikhail stopped dead. His hand locked around my sleeve, iron-hard.

“Run.”

He shoved me hard toward Briar House.