Page 33 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

“It–it’s alright,” I said, my breath short and broken as I regained it. I crawled to his side of the couch and pulled myself onto my knees so I was facing him, a foot or so between us. “You had no idea it was me. It’s okay. I took you by surprise. We’ll get a doorbell or something installed on your secret passage.”

He didn’t lighten at the joke. Instead, he clutched his face in his hands. “F–forgive me.”

Because of my mark on his throat, I could feel his grief, and I knew just how devastating its weight was.

Reaching for him, I gently ran my fingers over his and pulled his hands from his face, tugging them into my lap. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

When I pulled his hands away, I noticed them. His tears. They caused his eyelids to swell, adding a tint of gray with the blood that rushed to them. They made his eyes glitter like diamonds and ice in the dark and coated the lower level of his lashes in dew-like pebbles.

“Ruby...” He said my name again, but this time his cadence was different. My name in his mouth sounded like the final prayer of a condemned priest who’d lost all but his last hope...

Throwing myself into his arms, he held me as he never had before.

He buried his face into the juncture of my neck and shoulder, his glacial tears like bliss against my flame-hot skin.

The rush of his breath kissed my throat where he’d promised to mark me.

I felt his body shake gently against mine with his silent sobs.

He broke down, collapsing against me, and his shoulders heaved.

It was then that I realized...

He already knew.

“I feel him, Ruby,” he said in a low-pitched rasp. “He’s going to take you from me. Like he’s taken everyone else.”

My muscles in my shoulders quivered, and I swallowed back a gasp when the points of his fangs scraped the flesh over my collarbone, trailing up my throat. Like he was checking to make sure I was still alive. Still here.

Stillhis.

I held him to me so tightly I could barely breathe. My poor lungs couldn’t catch a break, but it didn’t matter. The burning sensation was nothing compared to the heart-wrenching need to be as close to him as possible.

My hand curved around the back of his skull, his silvery hair like silk against my skin as I held him to my breast.

“I won’t let him hurt you.” I don’t know what compelled me to repeat those specific words from Sterling’s past. They weren’t attached to any good memories.

Something told me it was the right thing to say, though.

They’d been the words of comfort he’d given to Catherine and Elizabeth when no one had been there to do the same for him.

He pulled back in my arms, his bewildered stare running me through.

“What did you say?”

“I won’t let him hurt you,” I said again, and then another time. When he collapsed back into my embrace, I kept repeating those words until I lost count.

Wrapped tightly around Sterling, I stared up at the ceiling as I chanted.

The more I said it, the more the words took a different shape. Sinking deep into my core, they forged into something new. No longer was it a mantra of comfort but an oath. One that was so absolute, I could almost taste its metal, molten and sharp like a freshly smithed sword.

A sword I had every intention of shoving right up Thomas Knight’s ass.

Chapter fourteen

Broken Heart

IsatwithSterlingon the sofa, both of us so tightly entwined around one another that it hurt. His fingers dug into my shoulders as he clutched me to him, feeling the rapid-fire hammer of my heart as it battered against his sternum.

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