Page 72 of Lovely Violent Things

As the needle pierces her skin, I lift my eyes to measure her response to the pain. Her gaze snags on mine. “Nerve damage,” she explains. “From the car accident. I don’t feel much. There…”

I rest my fingers along her inner forearm as I suture. Like the scar tissue dulling her senses, she wants to mute her emotional pain. Devyn went for the hurt by impairing the armor Halen uses to shield her psychological wounds from herself.

Her rising desire to replace that hurt with physical pain practically strangles me, and I have to grit my teeth not to deliver on command.

“I received an email,” Halen says, blessing me with a distraction. “I had requested a copy of your juvenile file.”

Needle held over her arm, I bring my gaze to hers.

“I didn’t read the email,” she says. “I deleted it.”

I let the silence stretch as I begin the second stitch.

Halen inhales a sharp breath, her forearm tensing. “You said at the ravine that family are willfully ignorant, that they refuse to see how dangerous loved ones can be—”

“I got my eyes from my father,” I say, pulling the thread taut. “Heterochromia, a trait passed down. There’s nothing insightful to learn here, little Halen. Just an unoriginal story about a bastard with impossible expectations. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I felt relieved, knowing he wouldn’t be around much longer. That my mother would have peace, that I’d be free of his constant pressures to achieve, to be him. But then I realized…” I halt my actions to look into her beautiful face. “Every time I stared in the mirror, it was his eyes staring back.”

The spray of the shower hums in the quiet stillness of the room before she says, “How dangerous was he?”

I lower my gaze and begin the final stitch. “Dangerous enough that I didn’t want him able to see my mother in his last days…days spent in a toxic vacuum of his self-loathing and vile reprimands. Dangerous enough that I stabbed his eyes out with his twenty-four karat gold pen so he’d be buried without them, and I’d never have to see him in the mirror again.”

I tie off the stitch and lean down to snap the thread with my teeth, placing a kiss over the black stitches before I draw upright.

She tucks her arm under the blanket. “Thank you,” she says, her words holding a deeper meaning to my offered truth.

I nod once. “I told you, sweetness. All you ever have to do is ask. No need to waste resources.”

But she did, and her actions speak so much louder than her words. Despite her obsession to prove I’m her serial killer, she deleted potentially damning evidence to reaffirm her theories.

And she wants me to know.

“All right,” she says. “Now tell me everything else.”

So I do. I tell her what she needs to hear to make the connections, to link the pieces together mentally and see the bigger picture of the puzzle. The digital recorder I took from the police department, making a recording of speaker feedback from the conference room to use as the chirping sound of the moth.

While the ankle monitor is water resistant; it’s not waterproof. A decisive difference that will prove beneficial when Agent Hernandez is required to inspect the bracelet I left in the holding cell for its malfunction, to be determined that a day-long trek through thick marsh waters shorted the receiver when it became submerged.

As the ascension ritual requires a certain level of intoxication, I knew that in Devyn’s inebriated state, her delusion wouldn’t be difficult to manipulate. I’ve had a little practice at that with Dr. Torres.

Halen takes a moment to process what I tell her, then: “How did you know…that—” she nods, indicating the blood skull I used to depict the death’s-head hawkmoth “—would work on Devyn.”

“You,” I say honestly to her. “You told me the Overman would incorporate the Harbinger into their delusion.” I tow the cover off her shoulder to inspect the cut there. The sight of the bite mark fans an ember of fury in my chest.

“Show people a reflection of what they fear,” I say, “and they will question their convictions.”

She nods slowly. “It’s fine,” she says, trying to recover the mark. I keep hold of the blanket, forcing her to meet my eyes. “It’s not as deep.”

Reluctantly, I release the blanket. The desire to sink my teeth into her and deface the mark is a demon throbbing beneath my flesh.

“You nearly beat a man to death,” she says, shifting the topic, “and I almost let you. It’s my convictions that are questionable.”

“For hurting you.” I tip her chin up, not concealing the rage still fueled at the memory. “And I’ll always be that man, Halen. The one who will spill blood for you. I should have torn out his entrails and let Devyn feed them to her minions. If that makes me a monster, I have no quandary in that regard. I might have stormed the castle and swept the princess into my arms, but I’m not the knight in shining armor.” Forcefully, I push my hands past the blanket and palm her waist. “In fact, I would destroy that fucker to steal the girl.”

She wets her lips, and I track the sweep of her tongue across her mouth like a starved beast. “Neither am I,” she confesses, stilling my breath. “I’m not some saint. I stole the murder weapon. I stole the knife, Kallum.”

The reason why she went back inside the police building to begin with. I nod knowingly. “You still have time to return it.”

Pulling her lip between her teeth, she shakes her head. “I have no quandary in that regard,” she fires back at me.

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