Chapter Twenty-One
Veyn
Imay have to kill him.
It’s a thought I toy with while I watch him scoop Lenora up against his chest where she burrows, soft and sweet. Her face nuzzles the side of his neck, and she shuts her eyes as he guides her through my shadows in the direction of the office.
He’s becoming a problem.
A thorn I don’t have the patience for. He tried to take her from me.
I watched him, never thinking he would do something so …
foolish, but he tried. I even waited to see if he truly was just taking her for breakfast. I knew that wasn’t the case when he kept driving.
Taking her nearly too far, far enough that my abilities nearly — nearly — couldn’t reach them.
Such … nerve.
After I allowed him to have her. I made an exception and this is how he repays my kindness? It will not happen again.
The faint whisper of metal hooks clink somewhere behind me. They rattle, following in the metallic tinge of rusted copper and subtle drip of blood on stone, and I roll my eyes.
“Almost lost her.”
The taunt is thick and wet across my brother’s tongue. A tacky purr of someone trying to swallow around spoiled honey.
“She is none of your concern,” I mutter, watching my woman get kissed by the human she is so determined to protect.
Dain gurgles, a wet, sticky sound that only infuriates me further. “She might have to be if you can’t even keep a leash on her.”
“Your human took her,” I spat back. “Maybe you should keep a leash on him.”
The grating scream of hooks scraping across stone distorts Dain’s choked cackle.
“Don’t get testy with us, brother. This could all be over if you let us feed the way we were meant to.”
Rase slips up at my other shoulder, his tier of chains rattling in the muggy stench of Dain’s bloody haze.
“Perhaps you should let us eat him then,” Dain slurs in a whisper barely loud enough to be heard over the steady drip coming off his veins. “Imagine how complacent she would be without the distraction.”
“No,” I snap before he can finish.
“You can’t tell us what to do with our human, Veyn,” Rase growls into my left ear, the sound, an uncomfortable hiss of rusted chains rubbing together.
I face them.
My brothers.
The halves of me torn from my body and forged into the idiots standing before me.
“You seem to forget who is in charge,” I remind them, glancing from Rase’s gray, rusted complexion to Dain’s flayed flesh. Both glower with displeasure that only heightens my own. “You will do nothing until I allow you otherwise.”
Only Dain bares bloodstained teeth from a lipless mouth.
Rase’s mouth hasn’t opened since I sewed it shut centuries before.
The crudely stitched lines have long since become a permanent fusion to match the coils of chain looped through his wide, solid frame — a ring for every time he displeased me.
There are rows upon rows bound across his chest, piercing through the hard cords of his thighs.
They hook around and through his throat.
He’s fortunate.
I could have turned his flesh inside out the way I had Dain. It could be his blood pooling at our feet with every useless pump of his veins.
Yet he does not seem grateful. Neither of them do.
“She wants him alive,” I tell them.
“Since when does the all-mighty Veyn adhere to a human’s wishes?” Rase sneers, blood welling and soaking into the crusty stitching with every word.
“Since I fucking said so,” I bite out. “You do not eat him or hurt him.”
The torn edges of Dain’s mouth cut up into a smirk. “Have you fallen for her, brother?”
I slam the barbed wires curled around my fist into the soft muscles of his exposed belly. His shriek surges through my very soul with pure bliss that I prolong with a twist. Blood splatters. It spews in jets. Even when he clutches the thin layer of exposed nerves, he’s already sinking to his knees.
“I would be very careful about what you say next,” I warn them both.
“I created you and I will destroy you just as easily.” I turn my attention away from the worthless creature wheezing at my feet to the stone-faced demon watching me with pure loathing in his hollow eyes.
“Feed, but if you hurt him or touch her, I will use your skin to paper the walls and hang your innards from the ceiling. She is mine and he — momentarily — belongs to her. Now, go back to your hole. Don’t come out until I summon you. ”
Rase reaches down with thick fingers and pulls our brother to his unsteady feet. Dain clutches his shredded abdomen with a bloody hand and lets himself be led from the room.
I watch them until the hiss and scrape of Rase’s chains are a mere memory and the room no longer stinks of copper. Only then, only when I am certain they won’t go near Lenora do I face her.
I have not fallen for her.
Love is not in my capacity, nor would I wish for it. I’ve seen humans who fall prey to such nonsense. I watched how it tore Lenora from the inside. How it broke her.
Has broken her.
Love is dangerous and unnecessary. I will not allow it.
What I am is fascinated. Fascinated by her odd battle she seems to be having. Curious by the process of her mind; even on the cusp of dark madness, she clings to that … thing humans seem to have. That light. Even murky and dim, it persists and … it’s just so strange.
“I don’t think he’s dangerous,” she’s telling the human. Talking about me, I assume.
I huff to myself, relieved I sent my brothers away before they could hear that.
Stupid girl.
I’m a demon. Of course, I’m dangerous.
“He’s a demon,” the human mutters, and I’m relieved one of them has sense. “I don’t think they’re capable of not being dangerous.”
It’s true.
“He doesn’t feel dangerous,” she insists, and I frown at the reckless comment.
It’s only because I have made a promise and have not fully completed it that she can say that. I have not shown her my true self. Only the remnants of my shadow and only a sliver. Afraid that I would terrify her. Her human mind would be incapable of accepting my natural form.
My frown deepens into a scowl as I latch on to that logic.
Of course, I don’t want to scare her, and it has nothing to do with feelings. Scaring her could cause her to die. I have made a promise. Once I have held up my end of the bargain, I will happily kill her and consume her.
“Fallen for her.” I bark a laugh. “What is there to fall for?”
The human brushes his fingers across the rosy arch of her cheek and she peers up into his eyes with an ocean of trust and … love.
So vast.
So open.
Disgusting.
This will not do.
She is mine and she clearly needs to be reminded of that.