Page 19 of Grave Curse

Devouring.

That was the only word I could come up with. Urgency thrummed through him wherever his skin touched mine, making it feel like this kiss was life-or-death to him, and if it didn’t go just right the world would forever turn to ash. Thaturgency fed me, heightening my senses so that I could feel every coarse caress of his whiskers, and the taste of his tongue branded itself onto my brain. It didn’t even feel like a kiss. It felt like…

A sacred vow being sealed.

When the pressure of his mouth at last lifted, I opened eyes I couldn’t remember closing and found him staring down at me with such burning intensity it was a wonder I didn’t spontaneously combust.

“This will be our little secret,” he whispered cryptically, then brushed his lips against mine. “Make no mistake, though—the genie’s out of the bottle now. No way in hell is it going back in.”

Chapter Five

No One Could Know

For the remainder of the day, Tyr’s cryptic words whispered to me, making me a distracted hot mess in every sense of the word. Who the hell did he think he was, planting a life-altering kiss on me, only to insist that it be kept our little secret? What the fuck did that even mean? Was he ashamed he’d kissed me? Was he ashamed ofme, period?

The very thought made me sick.

I couldn’t imagine Tyr having any scandalized reactions about my background, though. He’d had an abusive father who beat the crap out of his mom, then dealt with an insanely sadistic and murder-happy uncle when his dad landed in jail after beating someone to death.

My dead smackhead prostitute of a mother was small potatoes.

Not that she’d been a prostitute when she’d had me. Audrey had just been another teen mom who found out life with a baby was way different than what she’d seen on a reality TV show. My father was someone I’d only met a couple of times. Once because Audrey had hunted him down looking for financial assistance, and once because my mom had just died and I’d gone looking for what remained of my family.

Both times had ended in crushing disappointment.

So if Tyr wasn’t ashamed of where I came from, why did he want to keep the sudden intimate twist in our already-complicated relationship a secret?

The image of Hades swam before my mind’s eye.

I shook my head and logged the register off for the evening, then reached for the shop’s overhead lights. Man, we were bothso screwed up, Tyr and I. I knew Tyr blamed me for all the times Hades wanted to get to him but was too cowardly to confront Tyr one-on-one. He blamed me because I was Hades’s favorite weapon to use against him. I even understood Tyr’s screwed-up feelings about me. It mirrored how I felt about him whenever he chose not to be Hades’s perfect little stooge. Whenever Tyr acted out, that bastard put me in the line of fire.

And it had happened all the time.

The thing was, Tyr had never been behind my torment. Like he said, he had never once hurt me.Hadeswas the source of all my pain. But brainwashing was a hell of a thing. Every time Hades hurt me, he’d do it while insisting that all my pain was because of Tyr’s behavior.

After a while, part of me began to believe it.

I lost count of how many times I’d wanted to scream at Tyr to make him beg forgiveness for whatever he’d done that day to get me punished. I never did, though. Not once. Not even when I was finally ready to die just so I could escape that mad world Hades had woven around me. Instinct told me that if I’d asked Tyr to apologize and bow to Hades’s madness, he would have done it to save me. But it would have broken him. So I’d kept my mouth shut every…fucking… time, protecting him even though he never seemed to give a damn about protecting me.

As time unfurled in that never-ending hell, our childhood closeness faded and we began ignoring each other. I would grow cold with abject fear whenever I’d see Tyr and Hades in the same room together, because whenever that happened,Iwas the one who usually lost something.

A tooth.

A clump of hair.

A pint of blood.

The weak little mortal that hid inside me still felt that way, dreading the two of them in ways I couldn’t explain to myself, even after all these years.

It wasn’t fair to feel that way, of course. Logically I knew that. Tyr had never been the one to raise a hand to me. That terrible night before my mother died, the Night of Blood, he’d even killed for the first time trying to get to me before I could slash my own throat and free us all from that hell.

So maybe that was the problem, I thought, staring at the lit shelves glowing in the semi-darkness without really seeing them. Maybe Tyr didn’t want anyone to know of our kiss because he didn’t want a repeat of the past. He and Hades were in open war with each other now, and Hades would gun for any weakness Tyr had.

That used to be me.

Our kiss could prove to be problematic, so Tyr didn’t want anyone—least of all Hades—to know about it. If it became common knowledge, Hades might even think I was still a weakness for his nephew.

I wasn’t a weakness for Tyr. God, no. I never had been, but I meant so much less to Tyr now than I did all those years ago. If Hades targeted me now, Tyr would probably just laugh and tell Hades to kill me quick so I could finally be out of his misery.

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