Page 11 of BRATVA'S Poisoner Bride
I don’t need to run. I need to be ready. Footsteps sound in the gravel outside.
My lungs seize, then expand. Reflex. Preparedness.
The night presses its face to the window, dark and watchful. I step back into the hall, silent as a cat, and move toward the stairs. My heartbeat is a steady warning. A readiness. It’s a creature inside me waking and stretching its claws.
A knock.
Three sharp raps. The same rhythm. The same insistence. The same man.
My body responds before my mind can catch up, heat blooming, pulse quickening. I press a hand to my sternum, furious at the reaction. How easily my stupid body betrays my brain.
I descend the stairs without hurrying.
When I reach the door, I draw one slow breath, then I open it.
Diomid stands on the step, the cold wind tugging at his coat. Snow dusts his shoulders like he walked through winter entirely unbothered. His eyes take me in piece by piece, lingering where they shouldn’t, heat flickering in places heat has no right to be.
But his voice is cool when he speaks.
“I managed to get hold of your father. He had to go out of town for business,” he says. “He’ll be unavailable for some time.”
Unavailable.
A tidy word for abandoned.
I don’t react, because I’m not surprised or hurt, oranythingI suppose. “Then you’re here to what?” I ask. “Check on me?”
His gaze darkens in a way that makescheckfeel likedevour.
“Yes,” he says. A promise disguised as a courtesy. “I’m here to make sure you’re safe.”
I hold that gaze, unblinking.
“Safe from whom?” I demand, keeping my voice level even though the back of my neck has begun to prickle.
He lets his eyes settle on mine. His amber orbs to my icy blue. He doesn’t say anything.
But I already know.
Diomid
She asks who I’m protecting her from.
The question hangs between us like the second before a trigger is pulled. Her breath is steady, her chin lifted in quiet defiance, and she has no idea how much that steadiness tempts me.
I step past her without asking permission. The house seems to exhale as I enter, closing ranks around us. Shadows cling to the corners like they’ve been waiting for me. Elizabeth’s hand hovers near the door, fingers curled slightly, not quite brave enough to push it shut… not foolish enough to leave it open.
“Lock it,” I say.
She blinks once, then reaches back and turns the bolt. The soft click feels louder than the gunshots I’ve heard. It feels final.
The storm brewing outside groans against the windows. Inside, the silence sharpens.
I take in the details of the home I glimpsed earlier: the cracked molding, the peeling wallpaper, the photographs of ancestors who stare as if judging their descendants’ weakness. This place used to be something. A family. A future. Maybe even a fortress.
Now it’s a mausoleum made of sighs and disappointment.
Elizabeth stands with her back straight, hands clasped like she’s holding herself together. The faint scent of lemons clings to her skin, warm and clean and completely at odds with the cold violence buried beneath it.
