Chapter 5 · Blood on His Hands

Mara had the knife out before Ronan got to his feet.

The blade shook in her hand. Not because she was scared. That was what she told herself, anyway.

Ronan was still on one knee beside the glass bed, blood drying black across his shirt, his face turned toward the image trapped under the cracked surface. Elena Voss lay there in frozen moonlight. Her throat cut. Her hand stretched toward somebody she would never touch again.

And Ronan was beside her.

Older than the boy from the first memory. Broad-shouldered. Hard-faced. Covered in blood.

“Don’t move,” Mara said.

He looked at the knife first. Then at her.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.” She stepped around the bed, keeping the glass between them for half a second, then realized how stupid that was. A bed wasn’t protection. Not from a wolf. Not from him.

The room smelled wrong. Old dust. Rust. Milk gone sour decades ago. Under it all, something coppery and hot that came from the memory itself.

Her mother’s blood.

Mara swallowed hard and hated that he heard it.

Ronan’s jaw tightened. “Mara.”

“No.” She came around the corner of the bed. “You don’t get to say my name like that.”

“I know what this looks like.”

“You were kneeling over my dead mother.”

“I know.”

“And Silas walked in with a knife.”

“I know that too.”

Her laugh came out thin and ugly. “Wow. Great. So we’re finally doing honesty?”

The glass bed flickered again behind him.

In the memory, older Ronan pressed both hands over Elena’s chest. Blood slicked his fingers. He was shouting something, but no sound came through. His mouth kept forming the same word.

Mara leaned closer despite herself.

Mom.

He was calling her mom.

Her grip on the knife got tighter.

“You knew her,” she said.

Ronan didn’t answer.

“You knew her before that night.”

Still nothing.

The nursery lights buzzed overhead. One of the old hanging mobiles began to turn on its own. Little glass wolves. Little silver moons. Their shadows crawled over Ronan’s face.

“Answer me.”

“I knew Elena.” His voice was low. Careful. “Not the way you think.”

“What way am I supposed to think?” Mara snapped. “Because right now I’ve got a dead woman, your hands covered in her blood, and my father spending half my life telling me you killed her.”

“Your father lies when breathing gets boring.”

“Don’t talk about him.”

“He had me dragged out of your house in chains.”

“And why would he do that?”

Ronan looked at the floor.

That did it.

Mara crossed the space between them and shoved the knife under his jaw.

The tip touched skin.

Ronan didn’t flinch.

Not even a little.

His throat moved against the blade when he swallowed. His eyes stayed on hers. Gray. Tired. Way too calm for a man with a knife at his neck.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Her breath caught.

“What?”

“If you think I killed her, do it.”

“You think I won’t?”

“I think you should decide before the room does it for you.”

Mara pressed harder. A red bead appeared beneath the blade.

The sight of it should have made her feel better.

It didn’t.

“You were there,” she said. “You were there when she died.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His gaze dropped to the glass bed.

“Ronan.”

“I came because she called me.”

The answer landed crooked in Mara’s chest. “My mother called a wanted fugitive into our house?”

“I wasn’t wanted then.”

“You were what? Seventeen?”

“Eighteen.”

“And she trusted you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He gave a short, humorless breath. “You really want that answer right now?”

“Yes.”

“No, you want one you can use.”

Her hand jerked forward.

Ronan caught her wrist.

Not hard. That almost made it worse.

Mara twisted, but his fingers locked around her pulse. Warm. Bloody. The contract mark under her skin burned like somebody had pressed a cigarette to it.

“Let go,” she hissed.

“You’re cutting yourself.”

“I said let go.”

His thumb shifted away from the mark. His face changed for half a second, pain flashing there so quick she almost missed it.

Then he released her.

Mara stumbled back one step. The knife stayed up.

Ronan looked down at his own palm. Fresh blood had seeped through the bandage around his ribs and smeared across his hand. “Elena trusted me because she had nobody else left to trust.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I know it sounds like it.”

“No. It sounds convenient.”

“It was not convenient.” His voice sharpened. “Nothing about that night was convenient, Mara. Your mother was already bleeding when I got there. The house guards were dead. Your father was gone. And Silas was inside the property.”

“My father was gone?”

“Yes.”

“He said he found her.”

“Your father says a lot of things.”

Mara stared at him.

The memory under the bed moved again.

Older Ronan turned his head toward the nursery door. He heard something. His whole body went tight. Then Elena’s bloody hand grabbed his sleeve.

This time, sound leaked through.

Not clear. Not normal.

A broken whisper scratched through the room.

“Take her.”

Mara froze.

On the bed, Elena’s lips moved.

“Take Mara. Don’t let him—”

The image snapped apart in a blast of white.

Mara flinched so hard the knife almost slipped from her fingers.

Ronan caught it before it hit the floor.

His hand closed around the blade.

“Hey,” he said. “Look at me.”

She did.

Bad choice.

His palm was bleeding around the knife. Bright red ran over his knuckles. He didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he was good at pretending.

“She knew I was there,” he said. “She sent for me. She gave you to me when you were a baby because she knew somebody was coming for you.”

Mara’s stomach turned.

The first memory came back in ugly little pieces. Her mother, young and terrified. Fourteen-year-old Ronan with blood on his sleeve. Baby Mara wrapped in that faded gray blanket.

Don’t let them mark her.

Mara backed into the old crib. The wood hit behind her knees.

“Who was coming?” she asked.

Ronan’s fingers tightened on the knife blade.

“Silas.”

“He was a council enforcer then?”

“He was worse than that.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means he didn’t work for the council.” Ronan looked at the walls, at the four family crests carved into the nursery paneling. Voss. Calder. The other two Mara knew from old council records. “The council worked for him.”

Mara wanted to call him crazy.

She wanted to laugh in his face.

Instead she looked at the carved Calder mark and remembered Inez’s hands shaking around the contract papers. Inez had known something. Not enough. Maybe. Or too much.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mara asked.

Ronan’s mouth pulled tight. “Because you were already trapped in a marriage contract with me, and every time I tell you something, it makes me look like the bastard in the story.”

“You are the bastard in the story.”

“Fair.”

That stupid answer almost cracked something in her. Not forgiveness. Nothing that easy.

Just the part of her that wanted to scream until the room broke.

She wiped her free hand over her face. Her fingers came away wet. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.

Damn it.

Ronan saw. Of course he saw.

He didn’t come closer.

That was worse too.

“Give me the knife,” Mara said.

His eyes narrowed. “No.”

“It’s mine.”

“You nearly dropped it.”

“Give. Me. The knife.”

For a second, nobody moved.

Then Ronan turned the handle toward her.

Mara took it. Their fingers brushed.

The contract mark flared.

A pulse ran through the room.

The glass bed lit from underneath, not silver this time but deep red. Like blood under ice.

Ronan jerked back.

“What did you do?” Mara asked.

“I didn’t do anything.”

The mobile above them spun faster.

Glass wolves knocked into each other. Click. Click. Click.

Then the nursery door, the one made of black iron and welded shut, appeared inside the glass bed.

Mara saw the memory again.

Older Ronan crouched beside Elena’s body. The door opened. Silas Quinn stepped through with a knife in one hand.

He looked younger too. Less gray at his temples. Same clean jaw. Same dead, polite eyes.

Mara had seen him at council dinners. He always smelled like expensive soap and cold metal. He always smiled when he said something cruel.

In the memory, Silas shut the door behind him.

Ronan rose, putting himself between Silas and Elena.

Silas looked at Elena’s body.

Then he looked straight out through the glass.

Straight at Mara.

Her lungs stopped working.

“No,” Ronan said.

Silas’s mouth curved.

The sound that came from the bed wasn’t old or warped this time.

It was clear.

“Mara,” Silas said.

Ronan grabbed her arm. “Don’t answer him.”

Silas kept looking at her from inside the memory.

“You always did have your mother’s eyes.”

Mara’s mouth went dry.

“That’s not possible,” she whispered.

“It’s a recording,” Ronan said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it.

Silas lifted the knife in the memory. Elena’s blood shone along the edge.

“Your mother made one mistake,” he said. “She thought hiding you with him would save you.”

The contract mark on Mara’s wrist burned so hot she cried out.

Ronan pulled her behind him.

Silas smiled wider.

“And now you brought him back to the door.”

Something slammed into the real iron entrance.

The whole nursery jumped.

Dust rained from the ceiling.

Mara spun toward the sound, knife raised.

Another hit came harder.

Metal bent inward with a scream.

From the other side of the door, somebody laughed.

Then a man’s voice called through the crack.

“Council hunters. Open up.”

Ronan’s hand found Mara’s waist, dragging her back from the door.

The iron split down the middle.

And through the widening gap, Mara saw silver eyes staring in.