Page 69 of Malice
“They were desperate. They’re starving and dying in the streets. The world is ending, and they don’t understand, and I... I just killed them all without a second thought.”
“You are the daughter of a horsewoman, and you were threatened and trying to protect those you cared about. That is the beginning and the end of the conversation,” Grim stated.
“But—”
“No,” I said, agreeing wholeheartedly with Grimsby. “You did what you were born to do, Red. There’s nothing to feel sorry about.”
“I wasn’t born to do this. Succubi feed for survival, not to kill. I’ve never killed on purpose. Not once.”
I was still holding her face, so I dropped my hands to her shoulders so I could give her a little shake and interrupt her spiral. “That wasn’t a succubus power, Red. That was all Famine.”
“Excuse me?”
“What you just did? That was from your mother. Sin can do the same thing. We’ve seen him do it. It’s called soul stealing.”
“If I did it, they’d call it reaping,” Grim offered.
“Not helping,” Malice muttered. The assertion mirrored my own, telling me that Malice was as laser focused on Merri and her state of mind as I was.
“Why aren’t you more upset with me? Lilith hid me away after I killed Jimmy. She wouldn’t let me be near her clientele after I accidentally fed on them all. She wasn’t proud of what I could do. She was scared.”
Grim shifted until he was in my line of sight, allowing us to exchange a look.
“Pretty sure that had nothing to do with power and everything to do with control,” I mused. “In both those cases, your use of power was unintentional.”
“So was this,” she shouted, flinging out her arm.
“Was it, though?” Malice asked.
Merri flinched. “Of course it was.”
“No, wildflower. You knew exactly what you wanted to do. The only reason you’re upset right now is because you’re not familiar with that part of yourself. There’s a difference between instinct and losing control. Losing control would have been notstopping until every human who walks the earth was laying at your feet.”
“Trust him on that one. He would know,” I said.
Beside me, Malice nodded. “As would I.”
Tears swam in her eyes, and as one crystalline drop fell, I caught it with the pad of my thumb. “You were so very brave, little succubus.”
A wet cough came from Sin as he lay on the ground, slowly healing. Merri’s shoulders tensed, and she jerked in an attempt to go to him.
“Sin,” she whispered, but I stopped her.
“He’s fine, Red. Don’t look at him right now. He’s too vain to let you see him like this.” As I glanced over to the bloody mess that was the horseman Famine, he gave me a thumbs up. I let out a soft huff of laughter. “I promise he’s okay. He’ll be good as new in no time.”
I could see the disbelief in her eyes, but she’d been through this with us before. We couldn’t die.
Cupping the back of her head, I pulled her into me and pressed my lips to the top of her head. “We will always come back to you.”
“I hope so.”
Malice cleared his throat. “As touching as this is, we need to get back to the château, and I suppose we’ll have to figure out how to dispose of these bodies. It won’t be long before the stench is unbearable.”
“That’s rich, coming from you,” Grim said. “You specialize in rot and decay.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to roll around in it. I’ll leave that to you.”
I rolled my eyes, still holding Merri close. “Maybe we should worry about how the hell they got through the wards in the first place.”
