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No, this was more like…like turning somersaults in the pool, my stomach flipping over itself as I lost myself in the icy waters of her eyes. Fear tingled through me, but also something more, something that made my skin flush and my pulse race erratically.
My cheeks felt warm. My lips parted, as though I was going to speak. Going to cry out for her to help me, to take her away from this place, to take me on one of those adventuresshewas heading toward.
Her eyebrows, straight black streaks across an unearthly-pale face, rose up a little, the only reaction to seeing me. For a moment we stared at each other…
And then she looked away and swept out the door, tiara in hand.
The night air rushed in, making me shiver despite its warmth, and it did nothing to cool the fire that seemed to have been litinside me. Distantly, I heard my father's anguished cries as he realized the tiara was now gone, out of his grasping hands.
"You stupid woman!" he raged at my mother. "All these years you've had it, while I struggled and borrowed! Why did you keep it hidden from me?"
My mother's reply was soft, trembling. "It...it was all I had left of my family."
I'd seen the tiara only once before, when I'd been "exploring." Years ago, there was one day when my parents were both out and I was left alone, and I crept into the forbidden basement and poked among the boxes. The basement seemed to me to be where my parents kept the broken things not broken enough to be thrown away, though they never had them fixed.
The broken things just stayed there in the dark, as dust and time crept over them.
And among those broken things I found a treasure. A sapphire and diamond tiara so bright and gleaming that I'd assumed it was fake, despite the weight.
It had been buried, boxes in boxes, under all the broken things.
Now, I realized, ithadbeen real.
But the next time I went to look at it, it had gone, and I never saw it again until that day, swinging casually from the ice-eyed woman's long fingers.
Heavy footsteps stormed across the living room floor and I darted upstairs and into my room, heart pounding, and hid in the closet.
The front door slammed, but I stayed curled up in my closet long into the night, unable to calm my spinning mind. The ice-eyed woman dominated my thoughts.
Her cool confidence, her sharp beauty, the simmering danger that clung to her…
I was terrified of her.
But another part of me thrilled at the memory of those piercing eyes sliding over me, lighting an unfamiliar fire low in my belly. Yes, this woman was dangerous. I knew that instinctively.
And yet I longed for another glimpse of those pale eyes.
I wanted to feel her gaze on me once more.
CHAPTER 2
Aurora
NOW
I stareat my reflection in the full-length mirror, hardly recognizing the bride looking back at me. The ivory satin and lace of the heavy wedding dress clings to my body, accentuating every curve until it flares into a full, long train. My dark blonde hair is styled into elegant curls, my makeup airbrushed perfection.
I look every inch the blushing bride—except for the dread in my eyes.
When my father told me a month ago, on the day I turned twenty, that he'd arranged a marriage for me, I knew I had no choice. Just like I've never had a choice in anything else. And I knew what it meant: that finally, my father's debts had become too heavy for him, and I was the price for his freedom.
I'd always known this would happen. I'd even secretly hoped sometimes that I'd be turned over to the ice-eyed woman who had come to collect the debt my father owed to the Styx Syndicate. But the years had gone by and the woman had never come to collect, even though my father still hadn't paid off that debt.
And over the last four years, the Styx Syndicate had become the most feared gang in Chicago, violent and untouchable, the kind of people even the Mob were worried about. I knew that because my father's poker games, held down in the basement of our house, often featured important politicians or men high up in law enforcement, even a judge. I would creep halfway down the stairs to the basement and listen to their talk, stories of the things the Styx Syndicate had done—their vicious murders, their cruelties—and those tales made me sick with dread.
And yet I was fascinated, and the gossip from my father and his cronies kept me informed. According to them, this syndicate of mercenaries had greatly increased their power and territory, rivaling or besting the mafia in several areas. I hung on news of them, poring over the internet rumors about their leader, unnamed and never seen. But I didn't really care about Hades, anyway.
It was the woman I wondered about. That ice-eyed woman who worked for Hades and who, despite her threats, had never reappeared to claim the rest of my father's debts.
