Page 56 of What did you do?

Realization slammed into me.

The spice and smoke fragrance of Malum Mendax.

I grabbed ahold of the wall to keep myself up. How could I have been so stupid? He’d been inside my room, watching me. My fragmented heart throbbed violently in my chest.

The dream…

I knew he was in the dark room with me now, the heady smell of him coiling around me. I could feel the fingers of his smoke trailing lightly up my leg. I could feel scentless smoke bleeding out of my arms uncontrollably, searching for him like a magnet, recognizing his smoke.

A low, lupine snarl echoed from the back.

I pressed my back against the wall and slid toward the door. I knew I could never outrun him, but I would make it as difficult as possible for him to catch me.

My knuckle finally hit the round knob, and I forced myself to stay calm and quiet my breathing. I needed to hear everything in the room, know exactly where it was.

I screamed as a gloved hand bracketed my throat to the back wall, holding me up by the neck as my legs buckled. His horrifying presence dominated the space in front of me, his smoke rolling in thick plumes over my body like it was trying to consume me. His warm breath ghosted across my face. I stabbed my fingernail into the V-shaped scar on my thumb to stop myself from fainting.

Feeling him in front of me now, I knew it hadallbeen real.

Malum Mendax had been in my room, touching me.

My body couldn’t decide what to feel at the realization that he wasn’t actually dead. Ignoring the sense of relief that washed over me, knowing I hadn’t killed him, I struggled to focus on the bigger problem—he knew everything now.

And he was going to kill me for attempting to assassinate him.

My stomach tightened to the point of pain. I was going to be sick.

I felt his stubbled cheek brush against my face before his deep voice softly rumbled into my ear.

“Do you know what happens to pets that run away from home,Calypso?” His hand around my neck pressed me harder against the wall. “They get punished.”

Hearing him use my real name and not the nickname I had given him summoned goose bumps across the back of my neck.

He knew my real name. How did he know my name?

If he knew my full name, he could crawl inside of my mind and impel me. He could make me doanythinghe wanted.

I had watched him take down a monster as big as a house simply by impelling it and forcing it to take its own life. Icouldn’t even imagine what he would do to me—the obsession that betrayed and tried to kill him.

His hand released my neck to skate down my clavicle.

“You’re—you’re dead,” I forced out breathily, trying to jump-start my brain into action. Something was happening in my chest with his closeness and the realization that he wasn’t gone forever.

“Only on the inside,” he whispered across my skin, hovering his lips just above where my neck and shoulder met.

He was touching me, but the room was so dark, I couldn’t see him right in front of me. All of my senses amplified, taking in his heavy breathing and the hushed sounds of his clothes moving. I couldn’t stop my fingertips from stretching out to graze the heavy fabric of his cloak.

I heard the slip of leather against skin. A glove being removed. I flinched but couldn’t escape with his hand still pressed to my breastbone, keeping me in place. His bare fingers skimmed along the side of my neck so slowly, he may as well have been counting every pore.

Mendax let out a deep sigh. “Make me alive again, Caly.”

The sound of cracking and shattering echoed through the darkness. The creature from the back let out an angry snarl.

Mendax’s hand fell away from my chest, and my instincts finally emerged—I didn’t waste a second before I reacted. I no longer needed to hide who I was from him. He would learn quickly that the real Calypso was a far cry from the helpless Callie Peterson he was obsessed with.

I moved quickly, ready to slam my hand into his face after precisely angling my movement for enough momentum from the rotation to break his nose. As soon as I swung though, my hand only touched empty air.

He was gone. Whether from the room entirely or just no longer in front of me, I had no idea.

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