Page 124 of Wicked Tides
My gaze flashed to his in disbelief. A deep “v” plunged down his shirt where loose laces barely kept it together. I could see his jagged scar stretched over his sternum, beautiful and gnarly.
“What?” I spoke.
“You speak as if you’re just as vile as the rest. So, slice me open, take the thing that is keeping you from invading my waking mind, and do what you claim you’re built for. Cut it out, Dahlia. Take my free will as your mother once did. Kill me, if that’s your wish. There is no reason to keep me alive, after all. The sons won’t find you here. Perhaps you were pretending all along to care for the girls just so I would bring you here. Is that it?”
When I did not take the blade, Vidar stepped back and turned it toward himself, pressing the tip into this already scarred skin. Iwatched it sink in and with nothing more than a stifled groan, he sliced upward.
“Vidar, stop,” I hissed. “You’ve gone mad.”
“Was that not your intention? To drive me mad?”
He clenched his jaw with a low growl as he dug into the shallow wound with the knife’s tip and a small, bronze pendant slid free, bloodied and warm. Crimson wept down the groove of his hard chest and stained his shirt, but he ignored the mess he’d made.
I stared wide-eyed at his chest when Vidar tossed the little pendant at me without a care and then threw the knife to the ground. The blade lodged in the grass, standing upright. I caught the pendant in my hands and stared at the seemingly worthless piece of metal. Such a tiny thing and without it, he was without armor.
“You’re a fool,” I whispered.
He raised his arms up in presentation and cocked his head. “I’m without a shield. The boy in the cage who killed your mother has no silentium to protect him. No men to pull their guns. No bronze blade to slit your throat. What will you do now?”
The puzzle pieces were trying to align, but they wouldn’t snap into place. My mind was in pieces and trying to think of an answer to that question had me feeling crazed and almost panicked. I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head.
“Do not ask me that.”
“You can’t do it. Why, Dahlia?”
“Stop it.”
“Here I stand, alive. I thought you were a killer. I thought it was in your nature.”
“And I thought you would have killed me before you let it get this far!” I paced backward, raking my hands through my hair. “The plan was simple. I was to manipulate you into feeling something for me. I needed you to not kill me before I could kill you, but I needed your ship to stay away from the sons and to know the girls were safe. That much has never been a lie. I peeked inside your soul, looking for the softest parts. The parts I could use. All you had to do was care for mein the end so I could win this stupid game.” I took a breath to let my words sink in, for me and for Vidar. “And all I had to do was not feel something for you in return. I failed at that, as I’ve failed at so many other things. I feel too much for you, Vidar. My heart aches for you, my greatest tormentor, and it is ripping me apart, a fact you enjoy, no doubt.”
Tears stung my eyes and blurred the image of his face. I tried to keep them from falling, but they, like so many other things, were beyond my control. They soaked my cheeks, sapping the strength from my limbs. My walls had crumbled. I had surrendered to something I never wanted to surrender to and I felt the weight of it pulling me down.
“I walked in your dreams and found myself weakened by you yet again.”
Slowly, his expression went lax as if some burdensome weight had been lifted away. It confused me. I expected to see ire. Disdain.
“That dream—that nightmare—I don’t even know whose it was,” I admitted. “I’ve not been able to tell for a while. It pains me to realize how many fears we share. How many weaknesses. We are so similarly broken that I cannot distinguish one nightmare from the next and it’s turned everything upside down. In trying to twist and bend you, you’ve twisted and bent me and you didn’t even know you were doing it.”
Rather than speak, Vidar just stared at me, his chest bleeding and his heart beating so loudly, it drowned out my own. I didn’t know what I expected him to say.
I never thought my heart could ache without being pierced by a man’s blade, but Vidar was proving me wrong.
Unable to take the weight of his stare any longer, I pivoted and started to walk away.
“So, you’ll run,” he said after me. “I think you are many things, but never have I thought you a coward.”
I stopped, balling my hands into fists. I could feel my fangs aching and my heart thundering against my ribs. Frustration and need clashedinside me and created something monstrous. Something I didn’t know how to tame.
I turned toward him again, my eyes darkening. I could see his warmth. The ripple of his pulse in the air. I could see it because I was a predator, but instead of hungering for his flesh, I hungered for his touch. My insides burned to feel him. To taste him. My instincts screamed at me to tear him apart and resisting the primal voices in my head was driving me insane.
But… it was almost thrilling, too.
I walked toward him, narrowing my eyes as my hands shoved against his shoulders. He stumbled backward, hitting another thick tree. The impact made him grunt. Taking a deep breath, I caught the tantalizing scent of his blood and peered down at the red stream coming from his chest.
“Do not forget what I am, Bone Heart,” I hissed. “Not when you are so rash, you tempt my impulses. I will show you how soft your heart truly is.”
I threw the silentium pendant at him as I moved forward.
