Chapter 18 Cressida
eighteen
Cressida
Five Nights to Samhain
Lucetta makes me hold the knife until my palm cramps.
“Again,” she orders.
My shoulders burn with strain, but I grit my teeth to power through it. My spine’s damp with sweat, my cotton tank glued to my skin beneath the aged and scuffed leather jacket I refuse to peel off. This warehouse is a tomb, and my bones do not forget the cold.
She taps the flat of her blade against my wrists, sharp enough to sting but not to break skin.
“Guard up.”
“I am guarding,” I grumble.
“You’re posturing.” She cocks her head. “Now, put your guard up.”
I roll my eyes and bring the knife higher, getting into position for the . . . however many fucking times today. The concrete under my boots is chalked with lines from our drills. Circles, X’s, and a crude map of the little deaths I should be trying to deliver if this were real.
It’s not yet, but with Giselda going on her damn mad sprees, there’s no telling when it could happen.
Sunniva lounges on the crate she’s claimed as her own in this place with another lollipop between her teeth. Her thumbs are flying over the mobile as she tracks three dead-drops. “You two look fucking hot. Like cute little murder ballerinas planning your next target.”
Lucetta’s mouth twitches at Sunni’s commentary. “Feet.”
I shift my stance, and she whips her blade at me in a blur. Mine meets hers, metal screaming as they clash together. Shock snaps up my arm, and I grin because it feels damn good to hit something I can actually see.
“Better,” she says and shoves forward until I have to push back.
We don’t talk about the calendar Sunni’s placed on the wall.
The five black X’s that are left before the circle around October thirty-first says enough.
Sunni has drawn a little crown above the date and written ‘BLACK DRESS, BLACK HEART’ underneath.
Lucetta, bless her, has crossed out the heart and replaced it with ‘VEIL’.
As if they believe I need a reminder for my rebellion.
I can already hear my brother’s disapproving sigh in my head.
Lucetta pivots and slides her blade back into its sheath. “Water and then we’ll go again. Drink before your hands shake.”
“They don’t shake,” I reply.
“They will.”
“Not before I shove the blade in your gut,” I sing-song.
Sunniva hops down and shoves the bottle at me. “You’re getting meaner,” she says cheerfully. “I like it.”
I unscrew the cap and gulp. “It’s the reminders on the calendars.”
“Oh, naughty bird. Lying like that. We both know it’s the fact that your monster man is vibrating through that bond like a beehive, reminding you who you’re about to tie yourself to.
” She makes a buzzing sound as she moves her hand through the air.
“He’s either planning a massacre or thinking about giving you a hand necklace. ”
“That man is doing both, obviously,” I say.
Lucetta’s chaos altar is wilder now. New photos are slotted under pushpins at crooked angles and threads connect names to places with grim, red-circled words.
“Tell me again why your dress won’t be white?” Lucetta asks. “Although, I can’t deny how fun it’ll be to see Kingston seize in public.”
“Because I’m not some altar lamb,” I reply. “And because Halloween is for the witching hour, babe. Plus, I don’t owe anyone purity optics.”
“The combat boots are my favorite part,” Sunniva says with a snicker.
“You’ve told The Firm tailor?” Lucetta asks.
“I told him not to faint when I asked for black. He tried to sell me a compromise with an eggshell color.” I shiver in disgust. “I threatened to call Konstantin, and he gave me a custom seamstress instead.”
“Power,” Sunni crows. “Use it, babe.”
My mobile buzzes across the table and a message from the seamstress pops up.
SEAMSTRESS:
Fitting confirmed for tonight. Delivering to your location. Veil options sewn and boots sized.
Sunniva leans over my shoulder. “Oh, tell her I need a black veil too.”
“You’re not getting married.”
“Duh. But I’m going to a funeral.”
I bring my elbow back into her gut, snickering when she lets out a sharp cry.
Lucetta slides a new printout under a magnet.
“The nurse from the clinic finally responded.” She points at a tiny red dot on the map.
“She said Giselda used to come alone for supplies. Morphine vials went missing the same months that bodies spiked in that neighborhood. She said she’d meet if it’s women only. ”
“We won’t go alone,” I say automatically.
“I didn’t say we would.”
“Do we tell Konstantin?” Sunni asks.
“He’ll move the city to find her if we tell him before we have a time and place.”
Luce shrugs. “So, we get the details and then we tell him.”
“Asset, not liability,” I murmur, more to myself than to them.
Sunniva sets her mobile down and squeezes my knee. “You are an asset, doll face. He knows that. He just doesn’t like that he needs you.”
Lucetta pulls a length of cloth from her pocket. “The seamstress gave me a piece of the veil to use as a test strip. It won’t snag on the blade hilts if we tack the edge and we’ll stitch a comb you can rip free if you can’t see out of it.”
“Wedding prep as survival training,” I say. “It’s very on brand for my life now.”
“You chose your brand, babe. Black dress, black veil, and combat boots. You’re doing this on your terms, in your way. That matters.”
“Kingston will hate it,” I say, and can’t help the small flicker of delight at aggravating my brother.
“He’ll pretend to hate it and then keep a photo hidden in his wallet like a repressed Victorian father,” Sunni says.
“He likes pretending he’s the stern one,” I reply with a laugh.
“Kingston is the stern one.”
“You have not seen him drunk on Christmas, my friend,” I tell Luce.
Not that I’ve seen it more than a couple times. My brother rarely lets go, which is kind of sad.
Lucetta’s mobile buzzes and she glances at it before tossing it to Sunni. “Dead-drop two pinged. Same route as last week, but earlier.”
Sunniva scrolls through whatever is on the Luce’s screen. “She’s moving the timeline. Or . . . she’s testing us.”
“Halloween,” I say. “It keeps circling back there. She knows that would be the night we’d pick to seal our bonds and say our vows. You don’t really think she’d be stupid enough to do start anything there, right?”
“Fear is a conductor and blood is a battery,” Lucetta says.
“Thanks for tonight’s lullaby that I don’t even understand.”
Lucetta sighs, grabbing a bottle of water. “It means that fear fuels the charge, and blood is what feeds it. When you put the two together, you’ve got power, violence, and, eventually, inevitability. Now, drink.”
“Okay,” I reply, sucking down gulps of water. “So, let’s make plans for the worst-case scenario.”
It doesn’t take us long to make it to the cathedral and even less time to talk them into letting use it for practice.
We move, and it feels good, like the scream lodged in my chest for months finally found a place to bleed.
We run the patterns until my body remembers them better than my mind and rehearse exits until the path feels etched beneath our feet.
We make lists of what we’ll carry, who we’ll call, and what to set on fire if the time comes.
Sunniva laughs too loudly at her own jokes and mine when they spill out sharp and mean, because if she doesn’t, the silence will crack open and Giselda’s voice will crawl out of the echoes between us.
When my legs begin to tremble, Lucetta calls it. “All right. We’ve been over this goddamn plan so many times, I’ll be seeing it in my sleep.” She glances at her watch. “We have to get back to the warehouse for your fitting. You’re no use to me if you’re fainting in a puddle of tulle.”
“I’m not wearing tulle.”
“Precisely. I don’t know why you told her to meet you there instead of at your place.”
“Because Konstantin is always at my place. Call me superstitious, but I don’t want him seeing my dress before I’m marching down that aisle. Plus, I knew we’d be at the warehouse working on this shit.”
It’s not long after we’re back at the warehouse that the seamstress arrives flanked by two assistants.
All three of them are dwarfed by the garment bag swinging between them that’s big enough to hide a body in if you knew how to fold it right.
Their gazes keep snagging on the murder board pinned to the far wall, their eyes flickering away too late to pretend they weren’t staring.
She doesn’t falter, though, which is why I chose her. Her hands are steady as she sets the bag on the table and draws the zipper down, slow and deliberate, like she’s peeling back the skin on a secret.
The dress exhales into the room, and the girls gasp quietly as they get their first glimpse.
Black—so black it swallows light whole—matte silk spills to the floor in a liquid pour, ribs cinched hard with bone-stitches structured like armor.
The skirt coils and drifts like smoke when she shakes it free.
It’s a promise of movement that looks more spectral than bridal.
The veil tumbles after, cathedral-length and sheer, thorned vines ghosting across its surface that’s only visible when the light strikes it sideways.
And there, at the bottom of the bag, are my boots.
Polished, steel-capped, and gleaming like weapons that someone had the audacity to call beautiful.
It’s me.
I’m the someone with the motherfucking audacity.
Sunniva whistles. “Holy shit. Marry me instead.”
“You can be my flower girl,” I quip.
“Rude.”
Lucetta circles once, appraising the build of the dress. “Weight’s in the hem. That’s good. She’ll have balance in case we have to run.”
I snort. Leave it to Luce to see the practical side of my dress.
The seamstress, Imogen, helps me into the dress behind a folding screen we dragged out of a corner. When I step out, Sunniva’s eyes go bright and Lucetta gives a slow nod of approval.
I look at myself in the long, cracked mirror and my eyes turn a bit glossy. Instead of seeing the stranger that I expected, the reflection in this mirror is a version of me that stopped apologizing.
For who I am.
For where I came from.
For powers I had no control over.
I see a woman who has chosen to be unapologetically loud in a world that tries to take women’s voices.
My mobile peals and my big brother’s name flashes across the screen.
I swipe and put him on speaker.
“Little sister,” he greets, his voice exhausted but his fondness coming through. “Tell me you’ve selected something appropriate.”
“Black,” I tell him cheerily. “All black. Try not to faint in front of our enemies, dear brother.”
He lets out a pained groan. “Cressida.”
“You love me,” I sing-song.
“I do,” he replies softly before clearing his throat. “Stay safe.”
“Always.”
Kingston hesitates and I smirk. “And you’ll . . . let him protect you, yes?”
“I’ll let him try.”
“Bloody hell, you’re impossible.”
“You say that as if I don’t have the same genetics as you.”
“Brat,” he mutters before hanging up.
Sunniva laughs as she drops onto the ratty catch Lucetta probably pulled from a dumpster somewhere. “If Kingston ever finds out his little sister has been practicing running knife fights in a dress, he’d put himself in a coma.”
“He’ll survive.”
Imogen pins the hem and marks where the veil comb should sit so it won’t catch if I turn too fast. Lucetta tests the rip-away with a short, brutal jerk, and it holds then lets go exactly when it should.
“Perfect,” she whispers.
By the time the fabric is boxed and the women are gone, we have three new messages waiting for us on the encrypted lines Lucetta had set up. One is rubbish, the other is bait we can tell from a mile away, but the third feels different.
Sunniva reads it twice then hands it to me without commentary.
UNKNOWN
Clinic. Back lot. Wed. 1 AM. No Men.
I sigh. “Looks like I have to tell Konstantin now.”
Night creeps closer as Lucetta runs me through the drill one last time. When we finally lock up, the city’s breath is visible in the air. Lucetta peels off toward the car to sweep the street, and Sunniva links her arm through mine.
“You’re really doing it,” she says. “Black dress, favorite holiday, and your favorite monster. One hell of a fairytale, doll face.”
“It was always going to be Halloween for me. It’s the only day that truly calls out to me.”
“And the monster you’re tying yourself to?”
I swallow as the bond throbs once like a heartbeat answering her question.
“He’s not the only one who is a monster,” I admit quietly.
“Look at you,” she whispers in a wicked tone as if she’s proud. “Growing up a villain.”
We’re almost to the car when the bond sends a jolt through me hard enough to make me grab the door. I get a glimpse of violence, smoke, and heat. It passes as quick as it hit, but my hands are shaking when it’s gone.
“Cressi?”
“I’m okay.” I breathe through the burn in my chest. “Something happened. I think he’s fighting again.”
“He always is.”
I rest my forehead against the cold metal for a second longer and let the anger and fear and that stupid, treacherous love settle where it belongs.
Not block, just redirected, like Lucetta said.
“Okay,” I say, straightening and sliding into the car.
Five nights until I put on a black dress and vow to my monster man that I choose him. Now, forever, and always.