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“Crossing the Vale? Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Yes.”
She nibbled her lip, quietly contemplating his frustratingly uninformative responses. “I don’t care. I need to get out of here. Away from Nightshade. If what you said is true, then … perhaps my family, assuming I have a family … well, perhaps they’ll take me back. So I’ll do it. I’ll tell you where to find Van Croix.”
Lifting the sheet up over her breasts, she swallowed back the unease churning in her gut. How long she’d loved Van Croix, only to betray him like that. He’d made his choice, though.
And he’d chosenher. Farryn.
After months of Evie offering him affection and pleasure, she’d been cast aside like a dirty pair of underwear, for a complete stranger who’d come out of nowhere.
“And what of the woman? Farryn?” She couldn’t help the animosity in her tone. The hatred she felt toward the other woman had simmered in her blood since the night Van Croix had forced Evie to leave Blackwater Cathedral. Her only home. The only shelter from the darker parts that made up Nightshade.
“You assume she still lives?”
“He would not have it any other way. The bounds of his obsession with her are nonexistent.”
“She will share his fate.” The finality in his words struck her like a slap. Evie had been under the impression that the angel wanted to collect on a bounty. To turn Jericho over to the heavens without harming him.
The stranger had told her a number of things in their short time together. Peculiar things that she’d always suspected to be true. That Jericho was half angel, half demon. Given the times she’d seen him in the bell tower, the long and unusual feathers she’d collected, with their silvery tips and strange vibrations, she couldn’t doubt that there was something different about her former lover. And unlike Jericho’s withdrawn and enigmatic behaviors, the angel she’d spent the night with had gone so far as to prove his claims, by showing Evie his own wings and the unearthly features of his body. The way he moved and flexed like a perfectly honed machine.
“What exactly is his fate, if I may ask?” she dared to ask.
“None of your concern.”
“You won’t harm him, though?”
“You have my word.”
The knots in her stomach unfurled with relief. As much as Jericho had disappointed her, he certainly wasn’t the source of her ire. “My concerns do not extend to the woman. Just so we’re clear.”
“Crystal.”
“Very well. I mean, I don’t believe in all that religious karma crap, anyway. A girl has to look out for herself, and what she did to me was unforgivable.” She lifted a nail file from the nightstand beside her and, in a nervous gesture, began primping her nails. “You can find Van Croix at Blackwater Cathedral. Of course, I’m sure anyone would’ve been able to tell you that. Which leads me to wonder … why me?”
“Why not you?” From the small wooden table across the room, he collected his many weapons laid out there, sheathing them in holsters strapped to his hip, legs, and chest.
“Forgive my sounding crude and irresponsible, but I didn’t even get your name.”
He turned around, and his lips stretched to the first smile she’d seen since the night before, when he’d charmed his way to her bed. “What is yours?”
“Evie. You are truly an angel who can restore my soul and send me back?”
Finger pressed to the tip of a dagger, its hilt the most ornate she’d ever seen, he crossed the room back toward the bed. Without so much as a flicker of the blade’s metal to warn her, the stranger struck her throat, severing the scream that failed to break past her lips.
Evie stared up at him, wide-eyed, catching her shocked expression in the reflection of his bright eyes.
“I’m afraid I don’t salvage souls such as yours, Evie. I break them.”
3
THE BARON
Centuries ago …
