Page 32 of Boy of Ruin
My pulse pounds in my head.
I can’t even hear her, her mouth opening and closing as she takes a step back, her chest heaving, some excuse coming to the tip of her tongue about why she interrupted my time in the bathroom.
But I’m not listening.
There’s an edgy, twitchy feeling in my hands, and before I can stop myself, I close the space between us, grabbing that black bandana around her throat and backing her up against the wall in my bedroom.
Her nails come to my forearms, clawing at me.
I don’t feel it.
I don’t feel anything.
See anything.
But them.
I don’t mind the darkness.
For Noctem, it’s a requirement, they told me. Dark spaces. Three nights of no food or water.
I almost laughed when they said it, thinking of my time in that fucking cage. But Lucifer was watching me carefully, and I thought about when he came to see me down there.
I didn’t laugh.
He was smiling.
Now, though, he’s not around. None of them are. It’s just me, my knees curled up to my chest, arms around my shins. It’s a cave of some sort, and we were blindfolded and led in here. The rest of them split up. No one asked me to go with them. They pretended I wasn’t here at all, save for Ezra, whose dark hazel eyes connected with mine in the glow from his flashlight.
One second.
Just a split second, and I thought maybe he’d want me with him. I thought about the bobby pin. The box of matches. His whispered words.
But I didn’t do as he asked, and the look he gave me wasn’t one of kinship.
It was fucking hatred.
Sometimes, I think he knows what I did to Kameron.
Doesn’t matter. It’s better for me this way.
I’m not sure why I bother keeping up appearances. I’ve got a house. Money from the family I fucking slaughtered. I could cut ties with them all.
I saw on the news they reported I shot the Forgues.
I huff a small laugh in the damp, wet underground of this cave, thinking about it. I did shoot them. Three of them, anyway.
But I did so much fucking worse than that.
The house burned down afterward. After I got out. I started that blaze with the matches from Ezra, but it was Lazar Malikov that finished it. He was waiting when I ran out of the house.
Right into his arms.
He didn’t hug me.
Didn’t hold me.
His eyes—so blue they seemed unnatural—were on the fire. The house engulfed in flames in the night, on a street that I’d never seen.
