Page 85 of XV (Fifteen) (War of Roses 1)

Terror rips through me as he captures my hand against his palm, forcing my grasping fingers to scrape the carpet, grabbing something solid. It’s hard, conforming to my grip. I identify what it is without even having to look down: the knife. It’s almost too big for me to handle with one hand. Too heavy. It takes two tries before I can lift it and eye the beautiful, lethal edge.

“You think you can kill me, Little One?”

I’ve pointed the blade at him without realizing.

Laughing, he tightens his grip and lowers the tip toward another target. “I’ll give you the same choice your husband gave my mother,” he explains. “Decide who you want to kill. The part of you that belongs to him?” He applies enough leverage to force the sharpened tip to kiss the flesh of my forearm. “Or the small, pathetic piece of you he never managed to touch?”

Oh. My free hand trembles against the floor. Reaching around me, he seizes my wrist and tilts it, exposing where the veins lie. Instinctively, my naked ring finger flexes, sensing the imminent danger.

“Do it,” Mischa commands. “Make your choice. Or are you so fucking weak you’ll die completely for him?”

He lets me go, leaving my trembling hand to hold the knife alone. It twitches in the air, wavering toward various directions.

Him. Me. The floor.

Back again.

“Do it,” Mischa goads, his mouth near the nape of my neck. There’s no fear that I might turn on him again. The enemy he’s presented is far more formidable than he will ever be: myself. “Do it!”

The blade falls, cutting side down, and pain explodes through my entire being. White. Endless…

Through a haze of tears, I see red. Red floors. Red walls. Red, painted skin.

My heartbeat surges, forcing hammering blood through my veins. With the scent of salt tainting the air, Mischa’s grating voice is my only anchor to sanity.

“Keep going,” he says thickly. “Do it. Do it!”

But I don’t even know where exactly the knife continues to strike.

Or, in the end, which part of me is cut away.

Rose? Ellen?

Regardless, one woman dies in the fiery torrent of blood and agony.

And she doesn’t even scream.

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