Page 148 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Iwanted to set the pet bed in my chambers on fire. I glared at it, sitting at the foot of the real bed as I worked through several calming exercises.

Other than mild groping, Brennan had employed stellar self-control. He’d said I’d taste so much sweeter when I was finally his.

I laughed bitterly to myself before taking my hundredth deep breath. I’d seized my opportunity to stash one dagger away—underneath the pet bed, where no one but me would ever wander. The other was underneath my pillow, more accessible but also riskier. I could always play it off as self-defense, leftover from my escape from Rune.

It was a mindfuck to be back here, of my own will.

Stranger still was that while this room had remained unchanged and untouched, ready for my return, I was an entirely different woman.

I could hardly reconcile the heartbroken, traumatized girl who’d chosen to sleep on a glorified pillow meant for a dog rather than a real bed. The girl who’d been drowning in guilt and shame, mourning the loss of the first man who’d ever made her feel safe.

Yet she fought anyway. Without her resilience, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I would never have learned that Rune still loved me, that I was still deserving of the life of my dreams.

I glared at that pet bed and everything it represented. My fists clenched and unclenched, my mind running around trying to figure out what the hell Brennan was planning.

My ears tingled, and my head jerked violently to the right to stare at the main door.

I was not surprised by Brennan’s change of heart. I’d already mentally steeled myself for the possibility he might try to fuck me. I would do everything in my power to avoid it.

The door swung open.

It wasn’t Brennan who entered my rooms.

I lifted from the bed and backed up, pretending to put a bed and distance between Liza and me out of fear. When in reality, I was moving closer to the pillow where my dagger was hidden.

Liza made no sudden movements. She stalked forward slowly, confidently, like a wolf cornering injured prey. She was cloaked in black now, not a strand of her short brunette hair out of place.

“You felt my magick, that night in Odessa. You remember that, Scarlett?” she asked. It might’ve been the first time she’d used my real name instead of calling me some variation of little human.

Her blood-red lips were shiny under the dim witch light above.

“Yes.”

I was safe. She wouldn’t hurt me, not in any lasting way. Brennan should’ve already threatened her, dissuaded her from sharing our secret about the tunnels. But why was she defying him to toy with me?

“Aw, look at that sharp little mind run in circles,” she said, as if speaking to a child.

I was close enough to grab my dagger. I’d just need to be impossibly quick about it.

“Yet, not sharp enough to ever wonder how I uncovered Rune’s obsession with you.”

I had wondered, but honestly, I’d chalked it up to her seeing me with Uriah that one time when he was on bodyguard duty. I’d assumed she’d put together all the small hints and clues we’d been unable to conceal.

It hadn’t really mattered how she’d found out. Or at least, I’d thought it hadn’t.

“Do you remember what I’d asked for, when I touched your arm that night, and you felt my magick on your skin?”

My heart was hammering, caught between my survival imperative and my drive to understand Liza’s motivations.

She was at the front of the bed now, caressing the bedpost as she stared me down. Only five paces away.

“You asked me for my secrets,” I said, my voice raspy.

Liza grinned. “I told you I could sense one inside you that was bigger than all the rest. Silly me, when I dreamed of your connection to Rune, I assumed that was the big secret.”

“Dreamed?” I echoed.

This talk of secrets had my guts twisting.

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