Chapter 25 Cressida
twenty-five
Cressida
I’m wide awake.
Of course, I am. Why wouldn’t I be after finding out that my husband is part of one of the most notorious underground secret societies within the mafia?
Floorboards exhale under each step I take, as if the house is rehearsing being alive. The fire in the library has burned to coals, yet the air still holds the scent of smoke and old paper. That sweet-bitter scent stitched into these rooms since the keys landed in Konstantin’s hands.
Bed would make sense, but instead, I’m roaming the halls as I process the shit he’s told me tonight.
Venatori Nocturnus.
Not stories or shadows. Not the bogeymen children whisper about to scare each other quiet.
They’re real.
The law under the laws. Five bloodlines, five men in tailored suits who learned how to sit still long enough to pass as men.
He didn’t name them, but he didn’t need to. The circle has pressed against the air around me for weeks, and now Konstantin’s truth gives shape to the other silhouettes in the dark.
Tiernan Fitzpatrick.
Battista Tersigni.
Inacio Zaragoza.
And Kingston.
My brother, the drama queen in denial. He claims to hate theatrics but still remembers all his lines.
If he isn’t one of them, I’ll eat my knickers.
The hall widens and a portrait meets me at the landing. A woman in smoke-dark silk with a black ribbon at her throat, her expression schooled like she’s holding back the good part of a secret. The painter gave her eyes that look past you like she’s warning someone to wait their damn turn.
I stop under her frame and tilt my head until the light catches the varnish just enough to see the brushstrokes behind her eyes. “What’s your name?”
A draft answers my whisper, cold fingers lifting the hair at my nape. Down the corridor, a door settles with a sigh, the soft click of old wood changing its mind. Some would call this house haunted, but it feels rude to call whoever lives here a ghost when she is clearly busy.
The back stairs railing curls under my hand as I start down them. Halfway down, the banister chills, and a thread of lavender slides through the air. It’s the same scent as the nurse at the asylum, but thinner, older.
Konstantin feels me moving through the house because he drifts into my mind, warm and steady.
I pause as curious about something.
I’m okay, monster man. Just walking the dark so it doesn’t get lonely.
He loosens his hold on the bond, but only a little. The man is constitutionally incapable of relaxing. It would be cute if it weren’t so fucking homicidal.
There’s a churning in my gut that leads me back into the library.
Konstantin said our blood can’t be replicated.
That it changes, the cells die when it leaves our bodies.
That’s why we’re chosen, why they are so untouchable.
But the drug Giselda is pushing is no longer just poison.
It’s a mockery of what we are. An attempt to turn our powers into something cheap and broken.
I picture the addicts on the streets, their bodies failing, their eyes hallowed out by something they don’t understand.
Are they test subjects? Casualties of a war they don’t even know is happening? Does she crawl into their minds and force them to take it? Or do they know what they’re getting into when they push the plunger and infect their veins with corrupted power?
The thoughts claw at me desperately.
What if her weapon is more than chemistry? What if she’s found a way to steal pieces of what make us who we are?
It should make me feel safe that it’s not working the way that she wants. Instead, it makes me furious that she’s killing innocent people senselessly.
Anger cuts cleaner than fear, so I allow it to reign.
I follow the ghostly fingers urging me to the vintage desk that sits in the corner of the library. My fingers drift along the wood, unsure what the hell I’m looking for, just knowing I’m supposed to be looking for something.
That cold draft brushes along my neck again when my fingers touch the bottom drawer. It only opens partially, but it’s enough to see the ledger inside.
The drawer resists when I try to tug the ledger free, like it would rather keep the past to itself, but soon opens spilling its secrets.
The cloth cover cracks from a spine chewed by time.
Receipts. Letter folded like love notes from the city to the family who used to sleep under this roof.
Halfway through the pages, something flutters loose and lands on the desk with the hush of a moth.
A sepia photo with a scalloped edge stares up at me. The same woman from the hall photo. The more I study the picture, the more I see it. How her face resembles mine if you were to imagine me in another time. Handwritten on the back is a name and a date.
Elara Vale, 1894
“Elara,” I murmur, and the lamp hisses as if it’s pleased to have her name in the air again.
Skimming through the rest of the ledger, I find dates and deliveries and one that reads something about seeing a doctor at midnight in a hand jagged enough to break the nib. The entries falter out after that.
“Did you love someone who ruined you?” I ask the room. “Did you make a crown out of chains and call it devotion?”
Something cold curls around my knee. It’s not an answer exactly, but it’s close enough.
I slide the photo back into place and move to follow the chill that leads me to the window that faces out over the city.
From our throne on the hill, the city gleams like a graveyard of gods, all glass and steel towers and flickering lights.
Somewhere out there, Giselda’s sharpening her grin and sending death in cupcakes and corpses.
Somewhere out there, the past is watching me plan a future it wants to rip apart.
My palm presses to the glass, the cold biting into my hand. It’s colder than it should be, a good indication that I’m not alone in here.
The bond prowls inside my chest, restless, much like the man on the other end of it. Kon is awake now, coming for me, always coming for me.
So, I talk fast. To the night, to the ghost, to myself.
“She’s binding her serum to something alive. That’s what the toxin clings to. It degrades quicker when it doesn’t have a host, doesn’t it? It’s a hitchhiker, a parasite. No wonder it’s breaking her addicts until their corpses line the street.”
That cold rushes over me again as if Elara—because I’m pretty sure that’s who our new roommate is—agrees with me.
Giselda’s face swims up, the two sides of her battling in my mind.
Fifteen and laughing without care and now ruined with eyes fevered with prophecy.
There’s a version of her that didn’t learn to love pain, but it’s not this one.
Giselda calls it power, promises a new law, so that women like us won’t need permission to sit on thrones.
For her, this is justice. But it’s not. It’s just . . . rot.
“The bride will burn,” I murmur, repeating the threat Kon told me about.
My breath fogs the glass, and I draw a tiny scythe in the moisture before wiping it away. “Come try me, bitch. But you better bring matches.”
I turn and freeze. Elara stands just beyond the lamp’s reach, her feet whispering along the floor. If I look straight at her, her shape and features blur, but if I look sideways, she snaps into focus with a ferocity that makes my eyes water.
“You’re not my ghost,” I murmur, “but you belong to this house, don’t you?”
The veil between the dead and the living ripples and my bond stirs with it as if it recognizes another kind of tether.
“Did you love someone who was a monster, too? Or did you become one to survive them?”
The temperature rises then drops, the same as her shoulders. A draft lifts a page then sets it flat again. A faint rust stain marks the blotter.
“Fine,” I say softly. “You can stay. Stick around. But don’t try to cage me or hurt me. I’m not here to harm you in any way.”
Her ribbon stirs as if in a wind that doesn’t exist, smoke curls around her, and then she’s gone.
The bond tightens right before Konstantin fills the doorway, a black silhouette against the dim light. Black briefs hug his hips, not hiding anything from my view, and his inked chest ripples as he folds his arms across his chest.
“Lisichka,” he rasps.
He crosses the room unhurried, wrapping me in arms that feel like the only real thing in this world of shadows. His warmth seeps into my skin, chasing away the cold that’s settled deep in my bones.
“Come to bed,” he murmurs, his mouth close enough for me to taste the words. “I can’t sleep without you.”
The line hits harder than it should. This isn’t swooning—this is gravity pulling me down.
My palm settles against his ribs. “Bossy.”
“Hungry,” he replies.
“Both,” I allow.
His laugh breathes into my hair as he pulls me tighter to him. His woodsy scent wraps around me reminding me of my favorite season. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat is a fragile anchor.
In the hall, Konstantin kisses my shoulder through the strap of silk, a reverent, ruinous press of mouth that says I am not a thing that can be protected from everything but he loves me anyway.
Sleep comes at last with a bogeyman’s heartbeat against my spine and ghosts watching over us with a promise that I’ll never walk these halls alone.