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“Mmm, what an unexpected but utterly intriguing offer. You have my full attention, Galantia.” A twitch tugged on his upper lip, pulling his mouth into a lopsided grin. “Do you know how to cut for the most pleasure? I do.”
Confused by his words, I pressed the blade deeper into his skin, eyes going back and forth between his unmoving stare and the drop of blood that pooled against the silver. “I’ll do it.”
“I can hardly contain my excitement. Feel…” He leaned into the blade until crimson rivulets ran down his throat, dripping warm onto my sternum as he rocked his hard cock against the junction between my legs. “You enjoy the first cut. I shall enjoy the second, and all the ones thereafter, carving myself under your skin the way your fucking father has carved himself under mine.”
An unholy tremble ransacked my hand, letting the blade stutter across his throat, leaving little cuts here and there while he didn’t even flinch. “You’ve met my father?”
“Oh, I know him… intimately. There is no cut, no bruise, no broken bone, nohumiliationyour father spared me.” He sneered, letting my pulse thud loudly in my ears. “Because of your father, I am a million shattered pieces, put back together all wrong. Now get that damn knife away from me before you accidentally hurt yourself. OnlyIget to hurt you.”
Malyr snatched the blade with his bare hand. Not a single tremor shook his fingers as he pushed it off his neck and turned it toward me. His bloodied palm slid to the handle, settling warm and slippery over my hand.
“Open your mouth, little white dove.” He forced the blade higher, placing the cold metal flat across my mouth. “Lick the blade,slowly,until it cuts into your tongue. Ah-ah… don’t turn your head.” He let one finger slip off the handle, stroking the bloody digit along my lips. “Open those pretty lips for me.”
With a slow push of his finger, he parted them. He stroked into my mouth, pulled back, stroked back in, spreading the taste of salt and metal across my gums. The blade pressed deeper into my mouth until the warmth in my belly dropped lower, infusing a strange thrill into the terror that throbbed between my legs.
The blade nipped at my bottom lip. Deepened the sting, quickening my breathing until my bosom rose and fell erratically. A whimper rose from deep within my chest, parting my lips, only to come out as a godless moan.
Malyr’s head jerked sideways at that sound, a reflex too quick and instinctual to be human, like a bird of prey who’d caught the squeak of a mouse. The motion let his black strands fall away from his face on one side, revealing a birthmark that sat beneath his earlobe.
Black. Round.
My pulse went wild, pounding against my temples until my vision blurred around the edges, focusing only on that familiar mark. I’d seen it before, but—
No, this couldn’t be the boy from the dungeons.
That boy was dead.
I’d killed him!
The pressure of the knife lifted ever so slightly. “Have you seen this mark before?”
I quickly forced my gaze back to his narrowed eyes, dread pooling in my belly over how he’d noticed me staring at it. Perhaps he hadn’t seen me that day; perhaps he had but couldn’t recognize me. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t remember—he had hit his head, after all.
A strike of luck.
Because this Raven boy Father had kept at the Tidestone dungeons…? Theprince?He’d apparently survived his head wound and had grown into a vengeful, vile monster. What would he do to me if he ever found out that it was me who had ruined his escape attempt?
I held his gaze. “No.”
“You father had someone needle it under my skin with ink so he may identify me should I ever escape those damn dungeons, forever leaving his mark on me.” He snatched the bodice of my dress with one hand, pulling the fabric down as his legs stepped wider apart, framing mine, caging me in. The other hand lowered the pointed tip of the knife to my sternum, right between the area of exposed skin between my breasts. “Now, I shall leavemy markon his daughter.”
“No!” I shouted, writhing against the weight of his body. “You need me unharmed!”
“Not all parts of you. You shall keep your pretty face and precious womb. The rest, however…” Tendrils of shadows seeped from his form, cold and biting. They wrapped around my wrists, my calves, my entire body, restraining me perfectly in place. “Shall I carve my name into you? That title your kind bestowed upon me? Lord of Shadows? Or perhaps… mmm, I think I know.”
One stab, and he cut into me.
But it didn’t hurt. Not the way he slowly dragged the blade down on my chest, letting my flesh rip open and blood bubble to the surface around the glinting metal. Not at first. No, the pain came a few seconds later, like a sharp, scorching burn that set me aflame.
“Whimper, Galantia,” he said. “Let me hear your sobs.”
I shifted and writhed, but the shadows tightened the harder I fought them, making me feel faint. “Stop!”
“That is not what whimpering sounds like.” The blade cut deeper, all but scraping over bone. “Cry for me, little dove, and I shall do my best to make it pretty.”
“Gods curse you!”
It was the last thing that left my lips before I clenched them shut, sealing away my screams, my pleas, my cries. He would getnoneof them! Instead, I breathed through the violent throb along the lines he carved into me with slow deliberation and precise movements, mind reciting the mantra of my childhood.
