Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The coatroom door shut behind me and I stilled. My fingers were latched around the brass door handle while my other hand was spread across the oak wood with its knots and grains. Dropping my gaze to my black shoes with their industrial stitching and crepey leather, I wiggled my toes. Good gods, Varen had been deadly serious. He really had wanted me naked, not in a pair of sexy high-heels, but these shoes, while he knelt behind me. Kinky.
Astonishment lightened my weary spirits at the rather detailed list Varen had written of all the deliciously wicked things he wanted to do to me...and then it faltered only to dissolve away as anxiety crawled along my bones, clawing at my fraught nerves with the hunger of a predator. Expelling a thin breath, I pressed my fingertips harder against the cool wood as if I could hold myself together by leeching the solid strength from the coatroom door.
The entire day I'd been a jittery mess, jumping at every small noise, searching the faces of the people I worked with, and constantly wondering if they knew what lurked beneath my aunt's skin. So many terrifying thoughts spun around in my head like I was juggling unpinned grenades, and with every downward glide, they threatened to explode my sanity apart.
The knowledge that the malevolent thing was now able to show itself anytime, no longer restrained to a full moon.
The sinister mystery I'd yet to unravel between my mother and aunt.
The threat it had made against Varen's life.
My haphazard plan to steal wyrmblood.
Time was slipping through my fingers like grains of sand. I needed wyrmblood, now, to ensure I kept Varen safe and alive.
And moments ago, Varen had seen through me as if I were a pane of glass.
I could see intuition shifting within his eyes, their color much like a bruised plum that darkened further with understanding. He knew there was more to it than me simply being tired. In that moment of weakness, I'd wanted to tell him everything about the dark creature that inhabited my aunt, that I was trying to save her by stealing items needed to break the spell. I'd wanted to beg for his help or at the very least have him wind his arms around me and tell me everything was going to be all right. But what would he do?
Would he help me or stop me?
A dull throb beat behind my temple, and my fingers drifted from the door to massage the ache in tiny circles. A moment later my nose tingled with phantom pain where the bone had shattered last night. Before the sun had risen this morning I'd waded through the eerie forest to retrieve my aunt's lost flashlight, retracing my steps to where brambles had tugged off my hat. I knew Varen hunted through the Hemmlok Forest to make sure that none of Jurgana's beasts had escaped and I didn't want him to come across evidence of my panicked flight. The drizzling rain had washed away our scent from the night before, as well as the blood caught in the fissures of the tree bark and splattered upon its coiling roots.
