Page 120 of Bite Marks & Broken Hearts

I crawled closer, wrapping my arms around him from behind. He tried to pull away, but I held on. “You were young,” I whispered against his neck. “Sheltered. Impressionable. You trusted someone who was supposed to guide you. To protect you. He was the monster, Seb. Not you.”

His whole body shuddered. “You don’t understand. I signed the warrant. My hand. My signature. I killed her as surely as if I’d—”

“No.” I tightened my grip. “He killed her. He murdered you both that night. You were just as much his victim as Magdalena.”

Seb’s hands came up to grip my arms, his fingers digging in almost painfully. But I didn’t let go. I pressed my face between his shoulder blades and held on while he shook.

“I still see her face,” he whispered. “It’s like the diary entry says. I’ll forever remember it. When they took her. She just… looked at me. Didn’t even cry out. Just looked at me like…”

I stroked my thumb across his chest, right over his heart. “Like she knew it wasn’t really you doing it. Like she knew her brother was trapped too.”

A sound escaped him then—something between a sob and a growl. He turned in my arms, burying his face in my neck, and I held him while five centuries of guilt poured out of him.

We stayed like that for a long time, until the tension slowly leaked from his shoulders. When he finally pulled back, his eyes were rimmed with red, but there was something lighter about him. Perhaps I’d helped, in some small way.

Picking up the diaries, I leaned over to place them back in the chest. Something inside it caught my eye—a glint of silver thatcompelled me to touch it.

“Is this… the crucifix?” I reached down, fingers closing around the metal.

White-hot agony exploded across my right palm. I screamed, the silver cross clattering to the floor as I yanked my hand back. Seb was there instantly, twisting my hand to examine it. Angry blisters were already forming, the skin an ugly red.

“What the fuck?” I hissed through clenched teeth. The pain radiated from my palm in waves of searing heat, like I’d grabbed a hot coal from the fire. Each throb sent fresh sparks of agony shooting up my arm.

Seb unleashed a low stream of curses in what sounded like three different languages. “Does it hurt terribly?”

“Yes! It feels like it’s still burning!” I cradled my hand against my chest, but even the light brush of my shirt against the blisters made me wince. The skin had gone a horrible scarlet, puckering around the cross-shaped burn mark. The pain wasn’t fading—if anything, it was intensifying, spreading deeper into the flesh like acid eating through layers.

Seb grabbed his phone, jabbing at the screen. “Peacock? Are you in the building yet?” A pause. “My office. Now. Flynn’s hurt.Run.”

To Priya’s credit, she followed Seb’s instruction very literally—I heard the thundering of footsteps before she burst through the door, hair escaping her usually neat braid, Rory hot on her heels. Freddy sat perched on his shoulder like a parrot.

“What happened?” Priya’s eyes darted between us, seeming to zero in on my neck. “Sebastián?”

“It wasn’t that,” I managed through gritted teeth. The burn pulsed with each heartbeat. “The crucifix—”

“He touched this.” Seb gestured to the silver cross on the floor.

“Don’t!” I shouted as Rory bent to pick it up, expecting his skin to sizzle like mine had. But nothing happened. He turned it over in his hands, frowning.

“Why’d it burn you and not me?”

“Don’t move,” Priya muttered, already rushing back out.

She returned moments later, dumping an armful of supplies onto the floor—bandages, bottles, dried herbs.

“This will hurt,” she warned, examining my blistered palm with gentle fingers. “But it’ll help with the burning sensation.”

“Here, mate.” Rory dug in his pocket and offered me a small white pill. “This might take the edge off.”

“What is it?”

Rory shrugged. “Could be a painkiller. Could be my ADHD meds. Could be—”

“I think I’ll pass.”

He went back to examining the crucifix. “This isn’t Flynn’s blood, is it?”

Staring at the cross—though the pain made it hard to think—I noticed a small splattering of dark crimson.

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