Alice #3
"I made you powerful." His voice stayed warm, patient. "And tomorrow night, they're going to try to tear me out of you. Do you know what that will do to the bond you just formed with the vampire?"
I swallowed hard. "Dae said—"
"Dae told you the truth. We're woven together now—you, me, him. One continuous thread. Cutting me out will cut him out too." He took another step closer, and his eyes were full of something that looked almost like regret. "I would hate for you to lose that. I know how much he means to you."
"You don't know anything about—"
"I know everything," he said quietly. "I've been inside you, Alice. I've felt your joy, your fear, your wanting. I know exactly how much you love him."
The words hit me like a slap. I wanted to scream, to shove him away, to wake up—but I couldn't move.
Marcus studied my face. "I'm not your enemy, you understand?
I never was. I'm just a male who's been alone for a very long time, trying to find his way back to the family he lost." He paused.
"You remind me of her, you know. The Alice you were named after.
She was brave too. Beautiful. Powerful. She also loved someone with everything she had, and it destroyed her. "
"I'm not her."
"No," he agreed. "You're not. You're better. You're mine."
The possessive word slid off his tongue like honey, warm and smooth and practiced. But something about it—something in the rhythm, the cadence—felt wrong.
I studied him for a long moment. Then I asked, "What do you love about me?"
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You said I'm yours. So tell me what you love about me."
His smile returned, slower this time. "Everything. Your magic. Your strength. Your beauty—"
"What else?"
He tilted his head, confused. "Your…courage. Your—"
"What do I feel like?" I interrupted. "When you're inside me. What does it feel like?"
His expression shifted. "Warm," he said softly. "Like sunlight after decades in the dark. Like finally coming home."
"And when I was with Dae? What did that feel like?"
His pupils dilated. "Like standing in a fire. Like joy and fear and wanting all intertangled together. Like the most beautiful thing I'd ever—" He stopped. Smiled a little. "You don't need the details. You were there."
But I did. Because every single thing he'd just described was a sensation. Not one of them was about who I was. Just—what it felt like to be inside my emotions.
He was describing me the way someone describes taking heroine.
"Say my name," I said quietly.
"What?"
"My name. Just my name. Without the my in front of it."
He frowned, but obliged. "Alice."
Flat. Nothing in it. Just a word.
"Now say it the way you said it before."
"My Alice." And there it was. The tenderness, the aching weight. But it didn't fit. It sounded recited, like he was reading lines from a script.
Killian's words echoed in my head: Marcus thinks you're the reincarnation of a woman he lost generations ago. His own brother loved her. Marcus killed them both.
His brother.
I stared at Marcus, and the pieces clicked into place.
"What did your brother call her?"
His brows pulled together sharply.
"What did he call her? The woman he loved? The woman you loved."
He pressed his lips together, glaring at me, and I knew I'd guessed correctly. He didn't have to answer me.
I knew.
A brother who'd had Alice first, who'd called her my Alice with a tenderness that belonged to him, just as Dae-Jung did with me. And Marcus had taken it. Claimed it. Stolen it. Because he wasn't capable of feeling that on his own.
He was a thief. Not just of power or magic or bodies.
Of love itself.
Something close to pity tried to move through me, but I shut it down hard.
"No," I said.
Marcus's smile faltered. "Alice, my Alice—"
"No." I took a step forward. "You don't get to call me that. You don't get to offer me power like it's a gift when you stole it from me. And you don't get to pretend you love me."
His expression darkened. "You don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly." I met his eyes and didn't look away. "You're not in love with me. You're addicted to me. And tomorrow night, I'm cutting you off."
The air suddenly changed. The temperature in the room plummeted, and something vast and cold looked out at me through his eyes. Something cosmic and ancient and utterly inhuman, with no face and no name and no mercy.
Then it was gone.
Marcus was gone.
I was alone in the kitchen, and the light through the window had shifted to amber.
***
I woke with a start in my dark bedroom.
Dae was still dead to the world beside me, his muscular arm thrown over his eyes, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
I didn't try to wake him. I wasn't ready to leave this moment with him. Not just yet.
The bond might break. I might lose Dae. My magic might weaken again. I might go back to being the gentle, harmless Alice who brought cookies to coven meetings and never caused any trouble.
And I'd still do it.
Because the alternative was allowing this thing to live inside of me.
Through the small crack between the curtains and the wall, I watched the light outside shift to amber.
I wasn't afraid of him anymore.
And tonight, I'd show him exactly what that meant.