Page 61 of The Madness Within

“You’re not human,” he hissed, trembling. “You’re worse than what you kill.” I leaned down, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “I am the consequence.”

Then I drove the scale into his sternum.

One obsidian fragment.

A symbol. A sentence.

He didn’t die instantly. He choked on silence first. And when the light finally left his eyes, it took every lie he ever told with it.

I left him in his chair.

Suits bloodied. Spine twisted.

And on the desk in front of him, his own business card, soaked through with his final breath.

Gregory Harriman was pronounced dead two days later. Cardiac arrest, they claimed. Stress.

The headlines said nothing about the stench of ash. Nothing about the missing security footage. Nothing about the scale embedded in his ribcage.

But I knew.

And now, so do they.

The law bent.

I didn’t.

That night, I returned to my mansion. The quiet was suffocating, like it’s holding its breath, waiting for something.

I was anxious to see Ember.

I stepped inside and immediately sensed it, the absence of her. My heart stuttered for a moment before I shook it off. I headed straight for her room, checking the usual spots, but she was gone.

The bed was empty. The window’s open just a little, like she slipped out unnoticed.

The familiar scent of her was still in the room, but it was fading. Panic set in, but I forced it down. I moved quickly, checking the house again, my mind racing.

“Ember,” I muttered under my breath, my pulse quickening. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, have left.

The silence in the house deepened. It’s wrong. And I knew she didn’t do this on her own. I could feel it in my gut, thescentof fear.

It was there, lingering.

I moved back to her room, standing in the doorway, my gaze lingering on the bed, the open window. And that was when I felt it, the burning need to find her.

“Where the fuck are you, Ember?” I hissed, the words a snarl of rage and desire.

Chapter Twenty-Four

??The Beast’s Fury

Ember

It was too quiet.

Too still.

The air in Dorian’s mansion had always felt thick, but tonight it was suffocating. The shadows had grown longer, darker, and despite the lavish rooms and luxury, there was no comfort in the stone walls.

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