Page 244 of The Nightmare Bride
I gritted my teeth so hard my mouth flooded with the taste of metal. Ironclad. Ky had called me that once, and I believed it now,mademyself believe it. Zephyrine could fight all she wanted, but I’d bend her.
I’d break her, if I had to.
The dagger shrieked.GUARD HER WHERE SHE BELONGS.
A cry tore from my throat as I plunged the knife into Amryssa’s headboard. “You guard her, for fuck’s sake! You’re her mother!”
Whatever shred of Zephyrine lived inside capitulated. Ifeltit recoil like a kicked puppy. Then it circled back, more softly this time.Yes, it sighed.Help her. Guard her.
The dagger glowed violet. Skeins of magic unfurled and slid down the headboard, seeking Amryssa’s skin. The tendrils seeped into her, and within moments, her brow smoothed. The straining line of her throat softened. “Harlowe? It... What did you just do?”
“Kept you...safe...” I said, then threw out a steadying hand, because her coverlet had melted. Caustic goo adhered to my skirts, burning my skin wherever it touched. The room kaleidoscoped around me.
Panic flickered, but I pressed its spiky edges flat. I could last another minute. Iwould. After all, I’d just cowed a goddess, or a piece of one.
If I could do that, what else was I capable of?
“You have to go,” Amryssa whispered.
“I know.” I kissed her forehead, then scrambled off the bed. Black beetles swarmed my shoes, their tiny mandibles snapping, snapping, snapping.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” I gasped, and ran.
Dark thoughts chased me from the room.You’ll die here, and no one will care. Nothing will mark your passage from this world but a heap of picked-clean whiteness.
“Shut up,” I hissed as I locked Amryssa’s door and stumbled toward mine. The hallway rocked like a raging sea as blood welled from beneath the baseboards.
I ducked into my room and slammed the door. Ky awaited on my bed, wearing nothing but breeches. My chains and manacles were already assembled, needing only my wrists and ankles for completion.
His lips tilted. “Another few seconds, and I would’ve come for you.”
For a moment, I just stood there, buttressed by the sight of him. He’d ironed himself out since our confrontation in the swamp, and now confidence glowed off him, brighter than the myriad candles, more solid than the inhuman shapes scaling the walls.
Because those weren’t real.Hewas.
I was, too.
The moment I realized it, the nightmare’s illusions dulled. I took a tentative step, then another. True steadiness escaped me—my legs wobbled and my muscles squirmed atop my bones—but I made it to the bed and planted my hands atop Ky’s shoulders. And...goddess, he was so intensely solid. Like sun-warmed stone beneath my palms.
He peered up, wonder in his eyes. “You feel it.”
My stomach flip-flopped, but the longer I gazed down, the more the storm’s efforts receded. It was like I was inside the nightmare, yet apart from it, somehow. “I feelsomething.”
He took hold of my waist and stood. I stared up. My fingers glided from his shoulders to his neck, then up into that glossy hair.
He shivered. For long moments, we just stood like that, an island of stillness amid the maelstrom.
“You should probably chain me now,” I said, husky.
He nodded and let his hands drift to my dress, unfastening the hooks that ran down the front. “We won’t continue our earlier conversation. Not yet.”
I shook my head. No, now wasn’t the time. Whatever the truth, whatever he had to tell me, I set it aside. I only cared that he was here with me.Forme.
That right now, in this moment, I was seeing him with utter clarity. And that, in all the time I’d known him, he’d never once hurt me. He’d only proven himself, over and over, in a thousand different ways. He’dcaredfor me.
Whatever Vick had over him, then, whatever Ky had to confess, it wouldn’t change that. “No, I’d rather talk about something else.”
“Such as?”
