Page 12 of BRATVA'S Poisoner Bride
“You know why I’m here?” I ask her.
She lifts her chin a notch, icy gaze cutting. “That isn’t a question.”
There it is again. That spark. Too wild to be ignored. Too bright to belong in a dying house like this.
I step closer, testing the edges of her courage. Her pulse flutters in her throat like a tiny bird beating its wings against her skin, but she doesn’t retreat.
“Your father is vulnerable,” I say, voice low. “The family is fractured. Piotr’s death leaves a power vacuum. Enemies smell blood.”
“And?” she challenges.
“And you’re alone.”
Her breath catches with something akin to recognition.
She turns toward the kitchen without answering, forcing me to follow. The lemon cake sits cooling on the counter, glaze shimmering under the low light. Domesticity laid over a bedrock of violence. A tableau of contradictions.
She touches the oven door with fingertips that I know measured poison.
“You think someone will come for me,” she says, not looking at me.
I move behind her. Close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her back. Close enough that if she turned, she would collide with my chest.
“They will if they figure it out.”
She goes still. Utterly. Beautifully. Still.
“And you?” she asks, voice no louder than a breath. “What do you want from me?”
Everything.
“I want the truth,” I murmur. “And I want it from your lips, your mouth.”
Slowly, she turns.
We’re only inches apart.
She looks up at me like she’s deciding whether I am salvation or another kind of purgatory. I’m not sure she understands the answer is both.
“I already told you I didn’t love him,” she whispers through clenched teeth. “It was a match organized by him.”
I lean in, letting my breath brush her cheek, letting her see the hunger I’ve stopped trying to hide.
“I know that much,” I say. “Because love wouldn’t have killed him.”
A tremor of recognition curls through her. Her throat moves as she swallows. She’s fighting herself, the part that wants to trust me and the part that knows trust is fatal.
“I’m not confessing anything,” she says, but the denial lacks conviction.
“You already have,” I reply.
My gaze drops to her hands and her long elegant fingers. Fingers steady enough to deliver death one careful dose at a time.
I raise my hand and take her wrist lightly between my thumb and forefinger, my touch a quiet claim. She inhales sharply.
“You’re not afraid of me,” I say.
“I’m not afraid of anyone, anymore.” Her voice wavers, and the vulnerability in it hits me like a blow.
