Page 40 of Twisting Beauty

Something cold dropped through my sternum, sharp and clean and entirely separate from the formaldehyde chill of the room. Every word was medically accurate, entirely appropriate for the setting, the kind of thing any professor in this department might say.

But his words were layered threats. He wasn’t just dangerous and ruthless, he was intelligent with the skills of a surgeon. He knew a hundred ways to take my body apart. He wanted me to understand that none of it would cost him anything. He could do every one of those things to me without blinking.

My fingers had gone rigid around the scalpel. The blade held its line only because his hand was holding mine.

“Vagus nerve.” He pressed the scalpel along the side of the cadaver’s neck, then with a flick, made a small incision. “Do that and the body simply stops.”

His mouth dropped lower, his breath moving against my ear. “You’d last three seconds.”

My grip had gone slick against the scalpel. Air kept catching high in my chest, never filling my lungs properly, while fear and the unbearable heat of him this close had knotted together so completely that I could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.

He let out a low rumble in my ear. “You’re trembling like a virgin.” Then he chuckled. “Are you a virgin, mo chlunaireín?”

My little imposter.

My face went hot. My pulse kicked up hard I swear he could feel it through his large hand still closed over mine, which was its own particular humiliation.

All the while his heartbeat against my back stayed slow and steady. Psychopathically calm.

The bell rang and the room filled with chairs scraping and bags zipping and voices coming back up to normal volume.

He finally let go of me and stepped back, stripping his gloves off. Nothing in his face suggested the last hour had cost him a thing.

The first breath in an hour without him in it made my legs go briefly unsteady.

I took one step away from the table. Then another. Like I was gauging how far I’d get if I broke into a run.

His fingers closed around my wrist, pressing the charms of Rua’s bracelet into my skin.

He turned me to face him and the proximity hit all over again, his chest too close, the scent of woodsmoke and whiskey cutting through the formaldehyde, the low orchestra of violins rising through the xylophone and guitar strings and swallowing everything else.

His eyes moved over my face.

Then his mouth curved, just slightly, and he dropped his voice low enough that the last few students filing out couldn’t have caught a syllable of it.

“You’ve got to get better at faking it.”

13

LORCAN

Her room was locked.

Rua had never locked her door. Not once in all the years she’d lived in this house. She’d left it open like an invitation, like she was always half hoping someone would walk in. It had been one of her more irritating qualities.

This girl had locked hers.

Thirty seconds with picks and the tumbler turned.

I closed her door behind me and stood still.

The room itself was the same. Black furniture, Rua’s dark sheets, the iron chandelier overhead, the red damask climbing the walls. But everything else had shifted.

The curtains were open. All of them, flung wide, her windows cracked a fist width to let in the fall air. Rua had kept hers sealed year-round, curtains drawn like she was afraid of the light.

There were no clothes on the floor. No wet brushes left in jars of cloudy water, no tubes of paint with the caps missing. The art supplies on the desk had been organized, brushes in a cup, tubes in a row, a stack of sketchbooks aligned with the edge of the table.

Rua worked in beautiful controlled chaos. Her room had always looked like she’d detonated herself across every surface.