Page 36 of Grim Tidings

“We were just talking,” she says. “He was nice.”

She sounds wistful. Like nice people and easy conversations are not things she typically indulges in. I feel a tug of regret, and then a rush of frustration. I shouldn’t feel anything where Darcy is concerned.

I drop her wrist with a scoff and step back, putting space between us. “Well,” I say, more than a little mocking. “As long as he was nice.” She pays me no mind. Her eyes are locked on the bright square of light at the end of the hallway, her arms dangling at her side. “Nice people never want to talk to me,” she murmurs to herself.

“I believe that’s called self-preservation.”

She snorts. We’re standing so close together, I can watch the lights from the bar paint patterns over her skin. It shadows her expression.

“What happened to you?” she asks quietly.

“What?”

She turns to face me, leaning back against the wall. “What made you like this? That first night, you were—you were kind to me. Until you realized what I am. Why?”

“I told you why. I don’t trust Reapers.”

“So you’ve said,” she agrees with a nod. “And that’s fine. Most people don’t. But there’s something else. You’re determined to make me your enemy.”

“You are my enemy.”

“I’m not,” she says. “We’re—”

“I don’t care that we work for the same department,” I cut her off. “As far as I’m concerned, my role is to put a stop to people like you.”

“People like me,” she repeats quietly. She studies me in the almost dark. “Did you lose someone?”

I scoff, the scars across my chest beginning to burn. I dig the heel of my hand against them, trying to push the pain away, but it never truly ebbs. It comes and it goes, ancient wounds carved with an ancient tool. The only weapon that’s ever been able to leave a mark, intended to serve as an eternal reminder.

“It has to do with those, doesn’t it?” Darcy lightly touches the edge of a scar, right at the hollow of my throat. “These marks. They’re the reason you don’t trust me.”

I push her hand away. “Or maybe it’s because you thought batting your eyes and pouting your lip would get you somewhere.”

If I hate her for her seduction, then I don’t have to hate that I fell for it. Because I folded for her like a wet paper bag, and all of it was a lie.

I’m angry with her, yes. But I’m angry with myself, too.

Her eyes cut to mine. “I’ve told you. That wasn’t a trick.”

“Felt like one.”

I press my palm to the wall at her side and lean closer. Her head tips back, holding my eyes, imperious. A queen on her fucking throne.

“I know what it feels like when intentions are true, and when someone is shaping themselves to be exactly what they think I want.”

Her eyes flare, and I swallow hard, trying not to dwell on the fact that I’ve just admitted she is exactly what I want.

“You say you’re here for redemption, but I think you’re full of shit,” I continue. “I think you’re selfish and cruel, and there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to claim the life you’ve been assigned.”

My words land like stones and I watch as she sucks in a sharp breath. “Wow,” she whispers. “Tell me how you really feel.”

I expect a comeback. A sharp barb flung in my direction. But she stays still and quiet, staring at some fixed point down the hallway. Her nose wrinkles with a soft sound.

“Maybe you’re right,” she says. She turns back to me and a tear slips from the corner of her eye. “Maybe I am cruel. Maybe that’s what I was made for.”

I hold myself perfectly still. Waiting. Watching.

“But I had no choice in this,” she whispers. “Just as you had no choice in what you became.”