Page 50 of Bound

The pie woman—Glenda, he reminded himself—was standing frozen at the edge of the town square, a bundle of clothes at her feet where she had dropped them. Her face was set in such dramatic terror that Slate wanted to chuckle.

Ruby raised her hand. “Hello, Glenda.”

Glenda screamed again, her face ruddy. She was shaking, her eyes flicking between the two of them like she didn’t know what to be more scared of—Slate, with his shadows leaking behind his skull mask and his chin dripping with gore, larger than any mortal she’d ever seen, or Ruby, dressed in matching shadows and a dagger made of night held in her hand.

“It’s not what you think,” Ruby tried.

This only made Glenda screech louder. She stumbled back, horrified tears pooling in her eyes.

“It’s the B-Bygone,” she cried. “The Bygone has come to break the ward and take us as his eternally damned servants! Flee for your lives!”

“We’re not breaking the ward,” Ruby argued.

Slate leaned down. “It’s not worth talking to this mortal. We need to go.”

“But the dog spirit,” Ruby started.

Slate pointed into the woods in the distance. “They went in there. I can smell them. Are you coming with me or would you like to get reacquainted with your townsfolk?”

Ruby looked at Glenda, who was trying to scrape the fallen clothes back into her arms while she fled. She was still screaming, her face blotchy with panicked tears.

“I think I’ll go with you,” Ruby said.

Slate stared around the strange, shadowless trees.

“She’ll never shut up about that,” Ruby said, sliding her dagger back into her thigh holster. “What was she saying?Damned servant?And I’m wearing your shadows,andyou’recoveredin blood!”

Slate lashes his tail, irritated. He thought shelikedwearing his shadows. And she hadn’t seemed very bothered by him being covered in blood before, even after he had worried about it.

“She should watch her tongue,” he snarled.

It came out even more savagely than he intended. Savage enough that Ruby stopped, her brows rising.

“Or what?” she asked. “Will the dreaded Bygone take her as a damned servant?”

“I have no use for servants,” Slate snapped. “I…”

He tried to stop his tail, which was lashing so hard it clouded up the plain, boring leaves. Her discomfort unsettled him in ways he didn’t fully understand. There was so much he didn’t understand about himself since she had shown up. For millennia, he had a quiet, sensible existence. Then she appeared and suddenly he was lusting and hunting andwanting. The only thing that made any of it worth it was the ridiculous rapture she afforded him.

And soon, it would be gone. They would renew the ward, and she would leave. Existence would return to normal. No more rapture, no more uncertainty.

Unless…

Slate blinked, the idea setting up dark roots.

Unless hemadeher stay. They were bound. After he renewed the ward, she had to do something for him. It could be anything.

Ruby moved closer. “Slate?”

Slate pulled himself out of his swirling thoughts. His tail wasn’t lashing anymore. Instead, it was wrapped around her wrist, pulling her close. She was frowning, the stark light of the mortal realm making her dark dress look pitifully pale.

I thought you liked being mine, he thought.

He forcibly loosened his tail from her wrist and stepped back. “She should still watch her tongue. I should eathernext for the things she has said about you.”

Ruby’s frown deepened. “What things? Since when do you know the things my neighbor says about me?”

Slate hesitated. He had never specified where he found her chocolate, nor any of the food he had been bringing her. Most of it was from the townsfolk of Sweetsguard, who were starting to complain about a thief.

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