Page 2 of Heartless Enemy

She started at my touch, and then blinked several times. Rain still ran down her face and coated her lashes. I tried to keep the worry off my face as I watched her.

At last, that vacant expression on her features disappeared and her eyes focused on me.

“Levi,” she said, a hint of confusion in her tone, as if she couldn’t quite remember how she had gotten here. Then her eyes cleared completely, and fury flared up like hellfire behind them instead. “I want him dead.”

My heart stopped. Had someone hurt her?

“Who?” I demanded.

Rage roared in her eyes. “Everyone.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

“I want them all dead.”

“Spitfire,” I ground out, tightening my grip on her chin and forcing her gaze back to mine. “Did. Someone. Hurt you?”

“No.” Her gaze sharpened as she cocked her head. “Yes.”

Releasing her chin, I flexed my fingers while the urge to paint the streets with blood crashed over me. “Give me a name and I will burn the fucking world down for you.”

“Ulric Smith.”

I was halfway to summoning a blade and stalking off to hunt the guy down when the name registered fully in my mind. Stunned confusion pulsed through me as I jerked to a halt and instead turned back to Eve.

“As in, your old captain who was forced into retirement?” I asked. “The one you said took care of you after your father died?”

“My father didn’tdie!” The words ripped out of her like a snarl. “He was killed!”

Pain spread through my chest. Indeed, he hadn’t simply died. He had been killed. By dark mages. And that was the reason why Eve would never be mine. The reason why she would never stay with me. Why there would always be a massive hole full of sharp edges and pulsing pain where my heart should be. By all hell, if I had known who the dark mages were who killed him, I would’ve torn the world apart to go back in time and slaughter their ancestors so that they would never even have been born.

But I couldn’t do that.

Instead, all I could do was to stand there uselessly and say, “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“He killed him,” Eve interrupted.

I blinked. Water streamed down my face, and I wiped the rain from my eyes so that I could focus fully on Eve. She didn’t even care about the rain crashing down over her. She just stared back at me with those eyes like pits of hellfire.

“Captain Ulric Smith,” she spat the name like the foulest of curses, “killed my father.”

Disbelief slammed into me with the force of a boulder. “What?”

“He killed him. Ulric killed my father.” She raked her hands through her hair, pushing the wet strands from her face, and then started pacing back and forth with the restlessness of a wild animal trapped in a cage. “I read the report. The real report. Dark mages didn’t attack our tavern. The constables did. My dad was a dark mage sympathizer. That’s why there were dark mages at our tavern that night. The constables attacked because they wanted to arrest them. And Ulric shot the lightning bolt that killed my father.”

She bit out each short choppy sentence as if she could barely restrain herself.

“And then he lied to me about it,” she growled while still pacing back and forth, her boots sending splashes of water flying around her with every hard stomp of her feet. “My whole life. He lied to me. Told me that I should become a constable. Made me feel like shit about the dark impulses that sometimes broke through the careful façade I always maintained. Tried to suppress my true nature. And instead make me more likehim.”

The acid in that final word could have seared a hole right through the stone street below our feet.

Eve abruptly whirled around and stalked a step back up the street while declaring, “I’m going to kill him. Right now.”

Lurching forward, I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to a halt. “No. Stop.”

She whipped around and shoved my arm aside. Her eyes flashed like lightning strikes as she snapped, “I am going to kill him!”

“No, listen to me—”

---