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With this confirmation, he dismisses me without a glance and moves to Willow, where he will assuredly find the mark on her breast. I want him to fail in this mundane task, to save her somehow, but I know I can’t. So, instead, I squeeze her hand and stare straight ahead, my eyes settling on the other evil lurking in this room.
Emmanuel is staring back at me with an icy expression that wasn’t there a moment ago. His jaw is clenched, spine rigid, and something terrifying lurks in his eyes. Something that looks as if he wants to possess me. And it takes me a moment to put it together. To understand what’s happening. But even as I think it, I don’t want to believe it.
There’s no way he could actually be… jealous. But as his eyes flick to his brother’s back, and then to my nipples poking through the fabric of my chemise as my chest heaves, I realize that’s exactly what he is. And as determination settles into his features, I come to a horrifying realization.
Perhaps one Wildblood daughter isn’t enough. Because right now, it looks as though Emmanuel Delacroix wants to own me too.
Chapter 2
Emmanuel
“It is tradition! You cannot forego tradition! There will be consequences!” Grandmother’s voice still rings in my ears, and I know from the way my brother is walking, every muscle on his back tensed, he still feels the fury in her words.
It’s the masks. Tradition states that we wear the masks of The Society during The Tithing.
“There are always fucking consequences! To hell with them!” Azrael had barked back. “And with you.” He hurled the black mask across the room and marched out of the house and into the waiting car.
My brother is plagued by demons. And, although Grandmother would rather die than hear it, he has a shred of decency even when it comes to the Wildbloods. Not that they’d believe it, not after tonight’s ceremony. But he is torn between his duty to his family and the reality of what it means to sacrifice the Wildblood girl.
The cost of walking away, though, is too high. Our brother, Abacus, taught us that much.
At the thought of Abacus, I swallow down my emotion, gritting my teeth and dropping my gaze to the hardwood floor. I follow Azrael through the hallway of the Wildblood house. It’s been their home for several generations now. I glance around, take in the cozy furnishings, family photographs, the tidy mess of a lived-in place. A bright place. A loved one. I can’t help but note how very different it is from the Delacroix estate.
Azrael stops at the door of the room where the ceremony will take place. His back heaves as he forces a deep breath in.
I move to stand beside him, press my hands to his shoulders. He turns to face me, and, in his eyes, I see the rolling of storm clouds.
“You ready?” I ask him.
It takes him a long minute to speak. “She was right about one thing,” he starts, and I know he’s referring to the conversation with Grandmother. “Abacus couldn’t do what I’m about to do. He wouldn’t.”
There it is. The pain of the loss of his twin.
Azrael is right. Abacus was too gentle to do what needs to be done. Too good.
“He was born into the wrong family.” I say, and I mean it. I know what we are. The things we’re capable of.
It was after Abacus’s death that Azrael changed. We all grieved, but Azrael, he grieved differently. He withdrew from us, almost as if trying to figure out how to live with the missing half of himself.
It was then that we stopped talking about anything that mattered. We used to be so close, all of us. Now, he keeps his secrets.
Although to be fair, so do I. The thing that will happen tonight, the choosing of the Wildblood sacrifice, he thinks I don’t know what will come of it. The consequences both Wildblood and Delacroix will bear.
He’s wrong.
Footsteps sound from down the hall.
“Are you ready?” I ask in a low voice.
Azrael’s jaw tenses as he steels himself. His eyes narrow, the storm clouds in the strangely bright shade of gold quieting. Cooling. Icing over. It’s the strangest thing to watch.
He nods, straightens to his full height, and I do the same, flanking him, as the parents of the girls who wait just behind the closed door enter the corridor. The mother, Clara, is practically leaning on her husband, her eyes wet with tears. Is he more accepting of his unfortunate daughter’s fate? There is no way out of it, no way around it.
Azrael takes them in, doesn’t utter a word but gestures to the servant standing at the door to open it. He does, albeit slowly as if he, too, will protect the Wildblood sisters from us.
I follow my brother in, picking up the earthy scent in the strange room overcrowded with plants and books, shelves stacked with bottles and jars and is that some sort of fucking altar? Hell, if I believed witches existed, I’d have no doubt this is where they’d live.
But it’s not the trinkets in the room that draw my attention. It’s the Wildbloods.
