Chapter 3 #2
“I love you,” I tell her again, because, honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever get to say it enough. “I love you more than any soul has ever loved another.”
Nellie says nothing in response, her silence as deafening as the ringing of a death knell. But I don’t need to think about that either. I just need to get her through this first night of many.
“I’m your person,” I remind her, because as much as I now own her, she owns me too, and I’ll keep reiterating that until I take my last breath. “In every darkness, in every light, I am yours and you are mine.”
Penelope’s eyes are big and round as I lead her through the house, her hand in mine, traversing corridors and stairwells, each one grander and more opulent than the last. We head away from our rooms, the spaces dipping between shadowed and well lit, until we make it to the centre of the house.
Polished wooden railings encircle the open space below and above, a stained glass dome ceiling overhead.
There are people milling about where we stand looking down on them from two floors above, a further three floors above us.
Nellie grips the banister with her free hand, her delicate fingers curling over the mahogany.
She peers down, her eyes flicking everywhere, over everyone, trying to take it all in.
I try to see what she sees, how she sees it, but this is so normal to me, natural. A hundred of Father Black’s closest followers dressed in formal wear, clinking champagne flutes and rocks glasses like they’re all completely sound of mind. Normal.
Nothing and no one is normal in The Obsidian.
We are demons and monsters and the things that go bump in the night.
But it is all we know.
To Nellie this is nothing more than a rich person’s farce.
Slowly, her gaze comes to mine, blinking those curled black lashes over her even darker eyes, she looks up at me, chin lifted high, and I picture her on her knees, looking at me in just the same way.
Tear tracks down her cheeks, mascara dotted beneath the bone of her arched brows, and my cock buried so deep in her throat I can see the tip of it in the hollow.
Inhaling deeply, I blink, bringing myself back to the now, my cock twitching with the need for attention, but there’ll be so much fucking tonight, it won’t have to wait for long.
“Is this just a normal party?” she asks me in not much more than a whisper. “Nothing… weird is going to happen here?”
A smirk curls my mouth into something that, I’m certain, must look demonic because her pupils flare as her gaze flicks to my lips before coming back to my eyes.
“So many weird things are going to happen to us tonight, Nellie, I’m not even sure how to explain them. But you’ll meet my brothers first.”
Without another word, I tug gently on her hand, and she trails along behind me as we descend the two floors of curling steps down into the main room.
A harpist sits alongside a pianist, both of them playing something calming and soft together. The music a cover for the cut-throat conversations we pretend not to overhear as we thread through the minglers.
That’s when her fingers tighten between mine.
As people start to notice her, a vision in pink.
The eyes of everyone we pass begin to dagger into our spines, she feels it as though it were a physical blade.
I feel it as though I’d like to take that blade and stab it into each of their fucking eye sockets.
Nellie’s eyes instantly find mine as I glance back at her over my shoulder.
Offering her a subtle dip of my chin in reassurance, no one will touch her here, not unless they want to die a slow and torturous death.
We continue to move through the open hall towards the room I know my brothers will be awaiting our arrival.
She squeezes my hand in acknowledgment, keeping pace as I turn away from her once more, never pausing my stride.
And then we’re breaking through the clusters of nosy watchers, stepping into a darkly lit room with only very few people inside.
“Bro’s been taking his sweet fucking time,” Tolly, the youngest of us, chuckles deeply, alerting our brothers to our entrance.
“Thought you got lost,” he grins, slowly blowing out a ring of smoke where he lazes back on a chaise lounge in the far corner of the vast room.
Nothing but clusters of uncomfortable ornamental furniture, heavily shaded lamps and dim sconces filling the space.
“You been hiding?” he laughs again, exhaling more rings of smoke from his vape, all while his head tilts, grey eyes locking on Nellie.
We are all hunters in this family of ours.
“Keep your eyes to yourself unless you want to fucking eat them,” I gnash out, clacking my teeth together as I pull Penelope forward, into my side, my arm draping over her shoulder, curling it possessively down her front, my hand splaying over her lower belly.
He roars out a laugh like a hyena, slapping his thigh loudly before pushing the same hand through his light hair, shaved on the sides, a little longer on top, the ashy blonde strands just grazing the arch of his brow.
His gaze drops to my hand, one brow lifting slowly, but he doesn’t move from his languid position, graceful in a way that shouldn’t really be at all.
White skin tanned from the sun, giving the exposed flesh at his open shirt collar a golden glow.
His smile is blinding white, bright, straight teeth in perfect alignment.
And I know that whatever shit he’s about to spew right now is going to make me want to knock each pretty little pearl straight down his throat.
“Easy, Tolliver,” the guy perching next to him says, one of the inner circle members we grew up with, Tolly’s best friend, Rune.
Rich brown skin, black curls cut close to his scalp, the sides fading down into nothing but smooth dark skin past the tops of his ears, round black disc-shaped earrings pierced through each lobe.
“No need to wind him up when he’s only just gotten back,” he tuts at my brother.
“Billy-Boy’s probably a lil tired.” He smirks at me as he speaks to Tolly, canting his head as he stares up at me, his body slouched back.
“Tell your brother how much you missed him, Tolly,” he teases, nudging my youngest brother’s shoulder with his own.
“Enough,” Gore rumbles, drawing all eyes across the space to his huge six-foot-six frame.
Towering over us all without any effort on his part, he pushes a warm, light brown, tattooed hand through his flop of dark brown curls, shaved to the scalp on the sides, a decent length on the top that he wears pushed back.
Ink starts on the underside of the tip of his chin, painting down the length of his throat and decorating every inch of skin all the way to his toes.
With a single one on his right temple, an initial in calligraphy, D.
His black on black shirt and slacks combo pulls taut across both his chest and thighs as he straightens, heading towards us, his movements threatening to pop off every tortoise-shell coloured button running down his front as he does.
Locking eyes with me, deep dark green, smouldered emeralds scorched by hellfire, “Billy,” he greets quietly, because Gore is nothing if not composed, immaculately put together, blank in all ways so there’s never anything exposed that can be used against him.
My older brother claps me on the shoulder, thick fingers tight over my trapezius, comforting, before dropping his hand, his head turning towards the woman at my side.
“And Penelope,” his deep voice rumbles, his hand lifting, held out in offering, “I’m Gore.”
Nellie’s pretty dark eyes lift to mine before she considers taking his hand, both of hers down by her sides, silently asking for permission which I give easily with a dip of my chin.
But the fact she checks, looking to me, to keep her safe, to protect her from all the other monsters.
It cuts me up inside, having her trust, knowing I’m probably going to shatter it.
She lifts her hand, her fingers and thumb like a child’s in the huge grip of Gore’s as they shake in greeting, and then Tolly is pushing to stand at the same time as Rune, both men always so in sync.
They, too, each take a hand. Rune’s dark eyes flicking to mine with a smirk as he drops his mouth to her knuckles, a chaste kiss that lingers just long enough to irritate me before he straightens, drops her hand.
Tolly doing the same thing on her other side.
But Nellie knows, pressing herself further into me, my arm still dropped over her shoulder, hanging down the length of her front, hand on her upper belly.
I think of it growing round with my baby, my fingertips pressing divots into her skin where my grip tightens with the thought.
Possessiveness floods through every inch of me in anticipation, and as our last brother, Bram, steps forward, appearing out of the darkness like a ghoul, Rune and Tolly backing away, I feel a growl rumble in my chest.
Bram is as tall as I, six-four, thin and lean, his form long and slender.
Pale white skin and straight hair as black as night.
All of his facial features are pretty, in an old school, aristocratic sort of way.
Angular and slim. A touch feminine in the crystalline blue of his eyes, framed with heavy ink lashes behind the smear-free lenses of his black framed glasses.
It’s the only similarity between us, polar opposites in every way except our eyes, though his are darker, sapphire almost, than my light blues.
“Bram,” he nods to Nellie in his version of introduction, ignoring the animalistic warning sound creeping free from my chest.
His hands are folded behind his back, his suit the only perfect one amongst us, a tie, waistcoat, silver pocket watch, everything pressed and ironed to perfection.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Nellie,” she replies quietly, her big eyes momentarily flicking up to mine.
Bram offers her a rare but genuine small smile, before backing himself away into the shadows, evaporating with the shade like he’s not here at all.
“You ready for tonight?” Tolly asks, grin wide, he and Rune, sitting upright now, both on the end of the chaise lounge. “New year.” He grins wider, Rune’s head cocking to the left at the same time my brother’s does, their collective gaze flicking to my girl when Tolly says, “New sacrifice.”
Nellie flinches, it’s subtle, but it’s there, my grip crushing her now as I pull her into me even fucking closer.
“Listen here, you fucking shit, I’l-”
“Not tonight.” That’s all it takes for Gore to silence us, our future leader, a low rumbled order.
He’s ten years my senior, I’m to be his second, Bram our third, Tolly our fourth.
We are brothers in blood, sharing the same father, but it’s loyalty that binds us above all else.
I love my brothers fiercely, more than anyone or anything, despite our competitive upbringing.
I kill for them, would die for them, but holding Nellie beneath my arm, her heart clattering in her chest, the drumming of it spilling down my ulna into my wrist, her rapid heartbeat vibrating along each finger, I realise that’s not entirely true anymore.
It brings my gaze up to my brother. Gore’s dark green eyes not on me, not on anything in particular, but they’re still hard, like they always are.
Unreadable. And I think about Gore’s Pair, the things our father did to her, the trouble she has now, sometimes, being lost inside her own mind for long stretches of time.
I wonder how he hasn’t retaliated, hasn’t murdered Milus, hasn’t exacted revenge on the god who hurt her. Taken off his head and stuck it on a pike. That’s what I would do if Milus -father, leader, god- ever put his hands on my Penelope.
And as I glance down at her, her heavenly demonic eyes already on mine, I worry, not for the first time, what I wouldn’t do for her.
It is a foreboding, this omen that could possibly be our love.