A Vow So Soulless (Titans and Tyrants #2)

1. Deirdre

Deirdre

“I ’m not marrying you.”

I say it over and over again in the car on the way back from the cemetery. I say it so much that it becomes a sort of whispered chant, or a prayer, the words eventually rendered meaningless in their repetition.

They must be meaningless to Elio too. Because he doesn’t say a single thing in response.

Other than his earlier threat, the threat to marry him or else he’ll tell Darragh where my dad is, he hasn’t spoken again.

He’s silent in his fury, his gloved hands hard on the steering wheel, his jaw set.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen his dark eyes so focused.

Simultaneously trained on the road ahead and sweeping dangerously from side to side, as if expecting more men with guns to jump out of some shadowy place on the sidelines, like a fucking video game.

Only it’s not a video game. It’s my life.

Except it doesn’t feel like real life. I feel like I’m floating outside of it. Like this is all happening to someone else. I’m shaking, my teeth chattering so badly that my words become a mangled mess, but I barely feel it.

We pull into the long drive and through the gate at Elio’s mansion.

More men than I’ve ever seen here before are pacing and standing guard outside, with wary eyes and weapons that I know are there even if I can’t see them yet.

I look at them, all those men and their guns, and suddenly I can’t fucking take it anymore.

It’s too much. Too much blood pooling at the edges of my life.

Eventually, it all starts seeping inside to the centre. Staining. Ruining.

As soon as the car stops and the door is unlocked, my seatbelt is off and I’m running.

Running who the hell knows where. I certainly don’t.

Some part of me is blithely aware that this is a pointless exercise, that I’m a rat in a cage sprinting straight towards the outer edge of the enclosure and that I’ll never in a million years be able to scale that brutal wall.

Another part, the mindless, shaking, rat-brain part, keeps on fucking running.

My lungs burn and my hair whips out behind as I head blindly for the trees.

Shouts go up around me, and a man from the house is already chasing me.

He’s almost within reach. His bare, tattooed hand rises at the periphery of my vision, about to clamp down on my arm.

Even though I know rationally that this man won’t hurt me, not with Elio here, I can’t truly believe it.

The fear has become a frenzy and I have to get out, get away, get somewhere, anywhere . Anywhere but here.

The man slips slightly in the slush, then catches himself. His fingers stab towards me again, disembodied on the periphery, like a severed ghost hand.

But then I hear a voice, not the voice of the man right behind me but his voice.

The voice that shapes so much of my life these days.

A voice that has commanded and cajoled, soothed and seared.

It’s the first time I’ve heard his voice since he told me I’d marry him in the car and that suddenly feels painfully long ago.

It’s a voice I react to even through the adrenaline-fuelled numbness of my flight, a voice that I want to reach for and run from all at once.

“Don’t fucking touch her!” Elio snarls. “Nobody touches her but me.”

Nobody touches me but him.

Because I’m his.

His debtor. His Songbird.

His wife.

No .

That was never supposed to be the way this ended. There was always supposed to be a way out for me. Far-off, maybe, and small as a speck of dust on the horizon, but there all the same. Pay the money. Get my life back.

The running makes my blood pound hard. The place between my legs hurts. And I want to cry and laugh at the same time, because who am I to rant about escaping him when I’m the one who wanted him with me tonight? When I’m the one who let him choke me, let him fuck me?

When I’m the one who took his hand in the snow at Mom’s grave because I wasn’t sure how the hell I would stand up without him?

I can barely stand up now. My knees buckle. I don’t cry out, simply suck in a rattled gasp as I go down. But he has me, he has me , and I should have fucking known he would.

Because he would never let me fall.

And he would never let me go.

Nobody touches her but me .

The strength goes out of me all at once.

I don’t scream, I don’t fight him. I don’t even go back to my muttered prayer of “I won’t marry you.

” I just sag against the roiling wall of his chest, hard and hot as living stone.

After my manic, half-assed escape attempt I half-expect him to toss me over his shoulder caveman-style, but he doesn’t.

He lifts me against his chest, cradling me like I weigh no more than a small child, before turning and taking me back towards the house with powerful, furiously measured strides.

Elio takes me through the front door and absurdly, giddy with the jittery trauma of the night, I think, Isn’t this how a groom carries his bride across the threshold?

There are soldiers stationed in here too, but with a curt bark of “Out!” from Elio, they disperse in seconds.

And then we’re alone.

Elio carries me over to the plush sofa in the living room and sets me down so carefully it’s as if I’m made of glass. Maybe something even more delicate than glass. Because it seems like he’s worried that, even against the soft cushions, I might shatter.

Without taking his eyes from me, he gathers up a throw blanket and smooths it over my legs, tucking it around my waist so it stays in place.

It had always felt so odd to me, that blanket being in this room.

Like some bit of décor put out by a professional house staging company, tossed at a stylish angle, not something anybody actually used – certainly not Elio.

But it’s finally getting some use now. Warm and tight around me, locking my hands in place on my lap. I don’t even bother pulling them out of the bindings of the blanket. What would be the goddamn point?

“Oh,” I murmur softly, my gaze snagging on my feet. “My boots are still on. Elio!” My voice hardens with urgency, as if I’ve just discovered something of life-or-death importance. Something that has to get fixed, and fixed now . “My boots. The floor!”

“Fuck the floor,” Elio says, apparently not caring one bit about all the salt and slush pooling around my soaking soles.

“It’ll be fine. And if it’s not, I’ll rip it all out and put in whatever you want to replace it.

Hardwood or ceramic or fucking seventies shag carpet.

I don’t give a shit. But Deirdre-” He grabs my chin, forcing my gaze up from my feet and into the endless abyss of his eyes.

“I am not peeling one single thing off of you until you stop shaking.” He pinches my chin gently for good measure, then lets go and straightens, adding, “So just be a good little Songbird and ruin my floor already, would you?”

I hadn’t even realized I was still shaking. But now that he’s said it, I can’t think about anything else besides the stuttered locking of my muscles, the banging of my teeth against each other. I’m trembling so hard it hurts.

The cold has clawed its way in and I don’t think I can get it out now.

But Mom always said…

Always said that there was never a cold so deep nor a problem so big that tea couldn’t make it better. Or, at least, make a hell of a good start.

“Tea,” I whisper. But then I blink in confusion, because I’m saying it to no one. Elio is gone. I hear noises from behind me in the kitchen, most notably a kettle already boiling, which means he started making it before I ever even said the word. Before I even thought it.

And my whole world tilts. Forces me to once again acknowledge how my monster knows what I need even when I don’t.

But my instincts rebel against that.

He just dangled the threat of my father’s death in front of me to force me into marrying him! He doesn’t actually care about what I need.

And yet…

He’s making me tea all the same.

Elio brings me a large mug with the string of the tea bag still hanging out of it.

Fine by me. If ever a night called for strong tea it’s tonight.

It almost seems impossible how much has happened.

The swallowing grief of the date marking my mother’s death.

Visiting her grave which I haven’t done in years, only to be shot at.

Having more men die right in front of me.

And losing my virginity.

The man who took it stands before me now, muscled arms crossed over his broad chest. He abandoned his jacket at some point while in the kitchen, but not his gloves of course. As I hold the blissfully hot cup in my hands, I let my gaze track up and down his tall form.

When I get to his shoulder, the place where he was shot last time, I jolt so hard I nearly spill the tea in my lap.

“Are you alright?” I ask, stunned that I never thought to ask before. He could have been bleeding out somewhere on that massive, black-clad body and I wouldn’t have known it until he keeled over from blood loss.

If keeling over was even possible for Elio. Frankly, I can’t imagine it. The man would probably still be standing on his own two feet the second he goddamn died.

I just…

Don’t want that to be tonight.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he replies, his tone giving nothing away.

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious that I’m not,” I say shakily. “But I’m not bleeding anywhere at least.”

But then he cocks his head, and I cringe, because that isn’t even true, is it? This night has made me bleed after all. I’ve got the pad stuck to my panties to prove it.

“I didn’t get shot,” I clarify flatly. I stare at him as steadily as I can. “Did you?”

“Tonight?”

“Of course, tonight! I know you’ve been shot other times!”