Page 42 of Wretched Thorns

That corner of his mouth moved again. She didn’t see it. She knew it was there. She could hear it in his voice.

“Mm, you should probably buy me dinner first.”

Chapter nine

Rule Four

The shadows didn’t go back to the corners after the bond went quiet.

That was the first thing I learned. The wave of warmth, comfort and strength came through the chord and held me, and when it eased, the shadows were still curled at my wrists, around my ankles, banked at the foot of the mattress like critters that had stopped pretending to belong to the corners and had decided where they actually wanted to be.

I let them stay.

I didn’t know how long I’d been holding the Thornwood sigil up in the air over the bed. It had been a while. Long enough that my arm had gone numb, and I’d started using the shadow itself to hold the shape, the way you hand a heavy thing off to somebody else when your wrist is done. The shadow had taken it without complaining. The sigil hung above the mattress now, made of shadow, made of me. The silver thread pulsed in a way that made me believe it was pleased.

Hold, the bond had said back. We’re coming.

I’d believed it.

I was still believing it when I heard the bolt slide on the other side of the door.

***

Three sets of footsteps coming down the hall.

That wasn’t normal. Marcus had always come alone.

I closed my hand on the sigil hanging above the bed and pulled. The shadows came down with it, fast, pouring over me like water, and I lost the sigil, but managed to disperse the shadows beneath the blanket and to the corners. Stay, I told them.

The shadows folded themselves small.

The door opened.

Marcus came in first. He was wearing black silk again. His hair was slicked back from his face, and the unhealthy flush she’d seen earlier was gone. What remained was that thin, bloodless pallor he got when he’d gone too long without feeding.

His eyes looked different tonight. Sharper. Colder.

Serena’s stomach tightened.

The last time he stood at the foot of the bed, he’d still been trying to understand what she’d done with the shadows.

Not anymore.

Whatever conclusion he’d reached, he’d brought it back into the room with him.

The two men who came in behind him weren’t wolves. Not sure how I knew, but I knew.

Their scent had the same strange undertones as Marcus’s cologne, just less old. They smelled like mildew under floorboards and the metal taste you get when you bite the inside of your cheek.

The first one was tall. Salt-and-pepper hair, expensive shoes, a forty-something man who’d spent enough time around money that his face had stopped trying to hide it. He carried a rolled cloth bundle in one hand. The other hung empty at his side, relaxed in a way that made me think it usually held a weapon.

The second one was smaller. Younger. Nervous. He carried a copper basin and a leather satchel and was already sweating at the collar.

I dubbed them Evil One and Evil Two.

Evil One looked at me the way a butcher looks at a piece of meat that’s been hanging a day too long. Assessment. Pricing.

The Evil Two looked at the candle on the wall and tried to look anywhere else.