Page 42 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
We stare one another down. Ashen’s breath spills heat across my skin. The cinders and smoke of his wings curl through the space behind him, obscuring the light of the stars in thick shadow.
“I will not harm you,” he says again, his voice low and quiet. Black flame coils in his eyes. I feel their heat as they take in every angle of my face, brightening when they rest on my lips.
“You already did harm me.Again. Like, literally two seconds after you said you wouldn’t. Or has it escaped you that you’re still pressing glass into my chest, you fucking asshole?”
As if he really had forgotten, Ashen slowly lifts his palm from my heart. Shards of glass fall to the floor. Some linger, embedded in my skin. Ashen looks down with a crease between his brows and picks a splinter from my bloodied chest, then another, not bothering with the ones still stuck in his palm.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his eyes not leaving my flesh as he pulls another fragment free. “I made the only choices I could for a chance to save you.”
“Apologies don’t mean shit when you do unforgivable things like,I don’t know, convincing someone to trust you and then betraying them to have them locked in a fucking dungeon where they’re starved and tortured for a month.”
“That was Eshkar’s doing, not mine,” Ashen says, his voice still quiet. His thumb presses to my jaw when I squirm as he pulls a long splinter free.
“Oh right, I forgot. My bad. You just stood there and watched that part, doingnothing. What youdiddo was rush to embrace another woman mere hours after fucking me in your car. And your house.Houses, actually, pardon me.”
His gaze lifts and bounds between my eyes as he edges closer still. “Whatever you think you saw is not what you saw.”
“What a surprise. The truth is lies. Reality and illusion are blurred. And the common denominator in all this fuckshit isyou.”
We are immobilized in taut silence, my rage burning beneath my skin, my throat encased in Ashen’s steadying grip. Just like in his room when he pressed me to the wall, I think I can escape if I really want to. And part of me does want to run as far away from this place as I can get. An even more reckless part wants him to squeeze his hand until the world and all its suffering falls away. But more than I want to admit, a big part of me wants to stay right where I am, a sail in the winds of fear, tethered to his hand.
Sorrow and desire consume the fight in my flesh, one cell at a time. No matter how hard I fight, my heart is still determined to rebel against my mind.
“Why, Ashen?” I whisper. Wrathful tears gather in my eyes. They are drops of fury and loss and longing. “Why are you doing this? Tell me the honest truth, just once, if you tell me nothing true ever again.”
The flame in Ashen’s eyes does not dim. But within the fire I see more than anger and frustration. I see despair. I see agony and suffering. He has endured fresh pain and trauma, and it still plagues him, haunting every breath.
“Why do you think?” he asks, watching me for a reaction. I refuse to give one. Ashen breaks my gaze and leans close. Gooseflesh skitters across my neck and arms. Warmth blooms low in my belly as his lips brush my skin when he whispers in my ear. “Libbu isriq, ekimmu.”
The words slither into my chest and coil beneath my bones.You have stolen my heart, vampire.
“Then have it back,” I whisper. “I cannot be your weapon.”
“I didn’t claim you would be.”
“You didn’t have to. You clearly want to take more power within the Shadow Realm.”
Ashen’s smile turns acidic as his gaze collides with mine. “Do you really believe that’s why?”
“Why else would you do it?”
“Why else indeed.”
I huff, leveling him with a poisonous glare. “You either tell me nothing at all or you tell me nothing true. I don’t know why I’d expect you to change course now.”
“You would only burn my words if I did.” Ashen’s eyes stay fused to mine for a moment longer before they return to my chest. We fall into silence as he pulls the fine splinters of glass from my skin with the precision of a surgeon and the patience of a lover. I glower at him but he doesn’t look at my face, his attention taken up with the pieces of the broken ampule still stuck in my flesh.
I turn my gaze away when tears I can’t blink back crest over my lashes. One slips down my cheek and lands on my clavicle, lingering on the ridge of bone before sliding toward my heart. Ashen’s hand stills. His thumb presses the drop, stroking it across my skin until it dries.
“Enough,” I whisper when he goes back to the tiny flecks that still dig into my skin. I try to push him off but he bats my hand away.
A muscle ticks in Ashen’s jaw, his expression full of determination and resolve as he keeps his focus on the work of his hand. “It is not done yet,” he says, but I don’t know if he’s talking about the glass that pierces my skin, or the fate that pierces my heart.
CHAPTER17
When Ashen finally lets me go, I storm away without another word, leaving him to the empty night where he belongs. After finding the others and enduring a little protest, I make my way back to Villa Datura on my own, though I’m very certain my solitude is just an illusion. Ashen is close enough that I can feel him, making sure I get back all right but keeping his distance.
That feeling of being guarded doesn’t stop when I get to Villa Datura. It follows me as I make my way through the grounds and enter the guest house. I stop for a moment in the kitchen to find a bottle of wine, preparing to head to my room where I fully intend to plot my revenge while getting plastered.
