Page 45 of House of Crimson Hearts
The bubbling pit of fury simmers up again in my gut. And yet, her fucking blood is a pull I cannot resist despite how fucked off I am with her. Despite how my fingers twitch on the edge of the bath, desperate to grab a blade and fling it at her.
I lean back in the bath, the tip of one nipple rising above the water, the cool of the air making it stiffen all over again. I watch as her eyes flick to my breasts. I know she’s seen. I know she likes it.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I shouldn’t be teasing her like this. I hate her. She took my sister away from me. Destroyed both our lives. Maybe the Chief was right. Maybe I’m exactly where I should be. I can partner with one of the vampires and investigate all of them. Maybe I’ll find evidence of Octavia’s wrongdoing. Hell, maybe I can be the one to execute her. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.
“Well?” she asks.
“Well what, Octavia?” I was clearly too busy plotting revenge to catch what she said.
“Would you rather partner with Gabe, who will be utterly useless in any trial other than a history-based test? Or is Dahlia more your thing? She is butch… and she loves pussy even more than I do. But perhaps your masc tendencies wouldn’t marry well. I guess that leaves you with Sadie.”
“The sister with white hair?”
“That would be the one.”
“Doesn’t she have a reputation for being more bloodthirsty than even you?”
She nods at me.
I grunt in frustration. Octavia has a point. “Maybe Xavier wouldn’t be so bad after all,” I say, mostly to get a reaction out of her.
And I do get one.
Her nostrils flare and she stands upright again. I sink under the water, grinning. There’s nothing sweeter than pissing her off. I pull my hands through my hair, washing the soap out. When I rise out of the water, I startle. She’s right at the bath’s edge.
My hand is already on my blade and pointing it at her chin.
“So quick to react, little hunter.”
“My name is Red.”
She tilts her head at me, “Is it?”
“What is that supposed to mean.”
She stands up, her back straight, looking down at me from above the bath. There’s a smile curling the corner of her mouth, and I can’t work out if it’s a sneer or something a little smugger.
She spins on her heel and walks to the door, setting her hand on the knob. She glances over her shoulder. “Because I thought your name wasVerity.”
My mouth drops. My body erupts out of the water. No one calls me that. That name was lost when my mother died. Heat floods my cheeks, rage and lust and desire to make her pay for so trivially spilling my truth.
“How the f?—”
But she cuts me off by wrenching the door open. I throw the blade at her head as she walks out, screaming, “How the fuck do you know my name?”
But the door slams shut and my blade lands exactly where her head was a millisecond prior.
Chapter16
RED
Ileap out of the bath, snatch up my blade and grab the towel. My feet slip as I race to the door, but I gather my balance and charge after her. I stop. I never, ever go anywhere unarmed. And right now, I am completely butt naked save for the towel and the single blade. I back up and grab the other one so I have one in each hand. I don’t trust a soul in this godsforsaken mansion.
Especially not now.
No one, and I do mean no one, save Amelia knows my real name, and even Amelia doesn’t call me Verity. And she certainly wouldn’t have told Octavia fucking Beaumont it. No matter how mad I am at her right now. The day I changed my name I’d gone home from the Academy. Neither of us were of age to drink, but she’d persuaded me to celebrate in style. So we snuck half empty beers from the local pub and poured them over my first red tally mark tattoo. She was so proud of my first kill tattoo, she vowed to call me Red from then on. And that’s how it stuck. We spent the rest of the night watching the stars and stealing dregs of beer together until we fell asleep in the pub garden.
She wouldn’t betray that, no matter what.
