Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
LUKA
Edie’s dorm is bursting with personality: artsy prints, posters of singers I wouldn’t be able to name with a gun to my head, pastel hats on hooks surrounding a mirror, and a bulletin board full of memorabilia and photos of her with different people. And a harmonica.
She comes over to where I stand, long legs under a red T-shirt, and hands me a small bottle of some sort of flavored water.
There’s a logo on her shirt, some college thing, probably, but it’s not enough to disguise her sexy nipples that I already want to suck again. I already want her again.
“You have... a harmonica.”
“Yeah. Also, I have a bone to pick with you,” she announces. “Taking my phone like that and sending me away? You cut me off like I was nothing after I showed basic human concern.”
I move to the window, looking out at the campus below—this world so different from mine. It’s late, the dark streets nearly vacant. “I don’t do concern.”
“Clearly.”
When I turn back, her green eyes are fixed on me, unwavering. This is what draws me to her—that fearlessness, even facing someone like me.
“It was fucked up,” I say.
She waits, seeming to want more.
I wrack my brains and realize she deserves an apology. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyebrows rise slightly. “Excuse me, what?”
“Don’t make me repeat it.” I step closer to her. “When you talked about my scars, about wanting justice for me... no one’s ever—” I stop, searching for words that don’t come easily. “People don’t usually see that part of me.”
“The part that was hurt?”
“More like vulnerable. Weak.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not weakness, Luka. It’s humanity.”
“In my world, they’re the same thing.” I reach for her hand, relieved when she doesn’t pull away. “You cared, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that. It’s easier when people are trying to kill me.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you just said that. Don’t I get to care about you? Do you actually hate it when somebody gives a shit about you? Is that the situation here?”
“The caring act usually means they want something from me.”
“Well, maybe I just want you.”
I study the wisp of hair on her cheekbone, going against the impulse to laugh her off. I want to give her some bits of truth, at the very least. “I’m not used to this caring thing. Loyalty, blood oaths. That’s all I get. But the caring thing. It’s... hard.”
She watches me, her expression softening just slightly. “No shit. You took my phone and told me we were done.”
“Dick move, I know. I’m gonna do better. At least I’m gonna try. I want to be better for you.”
If she knows how big it is that I’m saying this, she doesn’t show it. She doesn’t need to know. It’s for me to know that she’s inspiring me to raise the bar for myself and what it means to be a man.
I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re nothing like anyone I’ve ever known.”
She grins. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ve never met anyone who could lecture me on historical accuracy one minute and threaten to firebomb a reformatory the next.”
She laughs despite herself. “I did not threaten to firebomb?—”
“You were thinking it.” I brush my lips against her forehead. “Most dangerous bookworm ever.”
“Most secretly soft-hearted villain ever,” she counters.
“Only for you.”
She snorts and kisses me.
I tunnel my fingers through her hair and deepen the kiss. I cannot get enough of this woman.
Standing on her bedside table is a framed photograph of a young Edie alongside a girl who looks to be a few years older. Matching freckled noses. Matching honey-colored hair. Christmas tree in the background.
“Your sister?” I ask. She has an older sister, according to her file, and that girl’s been in a lot of trouble.
She searches my eyes, and I get this flash of something not right. “You found me. I guess you know the answer to that question.”
“I do know. I know all about you now.”
“What does that mean?”
I take the bottle from her fingers and set it aside. “It means I read your papers, for one thing.”
“You read my papers?”
“Three of them are online, Edie. It doesn’t take much to find them. Anastasia Laskarina: Scholarly Ambitions and Diplomatic Challenges of a Young Byzantine Royal was especially fascinating.”
She blinks at me, stunned .
“I do read, shocking as that may seem.”
“No, it’s not that it’s... shocking.”
“But maybe it’s a little bit shocking.”
“It’s just weird to think of you reading my papers.”
“But it was so very interesting,” I say. “The princess in her pastel gown strolling past marble columns. Writing down her observations.”
“On parchment made of animal skins,” Edie adds.
I slide a finger down the side of her face, tracing her cheekbone. “With a quill pen made from the feather of a swan.”
“Right.” She starts going on about how they made pens because she’s nerdy like that. She wants to find a picture.
My phone buzzes. I glance down, seeing Orton’s name, and check it while she roots around in her schoolgirl books.
Spoke with counter person at bakery - woman matching Edie’s description exactly. Paid cash. Three blocks from her residence hall. Circle cookies delivered precisely when we discussed the meet.
The words blur. Blood rushes in my ears, drowning out Edie’s voice.
Each detail hits like a hammer blow: the timing, the location, her fucking description. The pieces lock together with sickening clarity. And her studies. She clearly understands Latin. She heard us set that meeting.
She heard us.
She told the cops—it could only have been her.
Edie betrayed us— betrayed me.
The realization punches through my chest with the force of a bullet.
How could I have let my judgment get so clouded?
And yeah, maybe she thought better of it and sent cookies to warn us, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a betrayal all the same.
My chest tightens as she holds up a book, open to a page with an image of a quill pen. “Right?” she says.
Were we talking? I don’t even remember, and it doesn’t matter .
A lifetime of ruthless survival has taught me what to do with traitors. It should be simple. Clean.
“W-what’s wrong?” she asks.
God, even now, knowing what she’s done, I want to mark her as mine in ways that have nothing to do with death.
I barely recognize the abomination I’ve become—a kyre who hesitates to kill a spy because he’s drunk on the taste of her scorn.
“Tell me, princess...” I bite out, voice like ground glass. “What did the barbarians do to those who betrayed them?”
“Excuse me?” She searches my eyes—warily. She’s hiding something. How did I not see it?
I force my voice to stay steady. “What did the barbarians do to those who betrayed them?”
“I-I don’t understand...”
“Betrayal. Surely you’ve heard of it. What punishment did they deal to those who violated their trust?”
She shuts the book and clutches it against her belly.
I move in like the predator I am, my blood a roaring inferno.
“Luka...”
“Did they make examples of them?” I settle my four fingertips onto her jawbone, ear to chin.
She’s trembling now. Good.
I force myself to imagine choking her, squeezing the air right out of her. The way her skin would redden. The way she’d struggle.
“Tell me,” I demand.
“M-maybe they would listen first. Let the accused explain the reasons?—”
“Explain the reasons?” I wrap my hand loosely around her throat, skimming the side with my thumb, up and down, up and down. “Make up stories to save their ass? You think they’d allow that?”
“I wouldn’t make up stories.” She pulls at my hand. “Please, if you’d just?— ”
“Tell me,” I demand. “Would they allow excuses? Would they care?”
“What happened to secretly soft-hearted ?—”
“Tell me! Would they care?”
“No.”
“What did they do to traitors?”
She tries to turn away, but I catch her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze.
“Tell me.”
“They... they killed them.”
“How?” The word comes out like gravel.
“Luka, please?—”
I slide my other hand into her hair, fisting it tight. “Tell me how they died. Paint me the picture.”
“Exile...”
“Try again.”
“What? Exile would be a death sentence.”
“What else?”
Tears spill down her cheeks. I force myself to tighten my hold on her hair because traitors don’t deserve mercy.
“Impalement, dismemberment... they would make it gruesome to serve as a warning to others.” Her voice shakes. “Make sure everyone saw what happens to those who betrayed the clan.”
I study her eyes, pale green shot with brown. For one insane second, it comes to me to make a joke about the standard-issue criminal punishment for betrayal.
But that part of us is gone now.
She gazes up at me like a rabbit that knows there’s no escape from the predator—terrified but unable to look away. My chest fills with unnamable darkness.
It would be so easy to snap her neck. I’d send somebody to make the body disappear. They’d wipe down the room, not that I touched much—aside from her .
Storm had a guy spray-paint the cameras I couldn’t avoid before I arrived. I’m a ghost. I always have been.
I let her hair go. “Pack your bag.”
I watch her hesitate. She wants to say no.
“You could always refuse. Yell out. Sound the alarm. I promise you won’t like the results.”
I watch her think through what I could do to her. To her people. To her world.
I see the moment she realizes compliance is her only option.
With shaking hands, she gathers up her things.