Chapter 6 · Glass, Silk, and Lead

Three locks. I counted them, because counting was all I had left.

Clunk. Clunk. The third one hissed like the room was exhaling. Then Lucian Corvo dropped me off his shoulder, and my bare feet hit cold marble.

"Contract time, Mrs. Corvo," he'd said in the hallway. Now he didn't say anything. He just stood between me and the door, loosening his cuffs one button at a time.

My wedding dress was still wet from the bridge. Rain, sea spray, and somebody else's blood. His blood or the assassin's, I couldn't tell anymore.

"You said the first night," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You said you'd make me beg."

"I said a lot of things." He rolled the sleeve to his elbow. A scar ran down the forearm, white and ugly. "You want me to prove which ones I meant?"

"I want you to choke on them."

He smiled. It was the worst thing he'd done all day.

The room was all glass on the far side. Floor to ceiling, forty floors up, with the Atlantic throwing itself at the cliff below. Lightning lit the whole bedroom white, then dropped it back into black. The bed sat in the middle like an altar, black sheets, no pillows on my side. He'd thought about it. Of course he had.

I backed up. Not because I was scared. Because I needed room to think.

He walked me back anyway. Slow. Each step he took, I took one in the wrong direction, until my shoulder blades touched the window and the cold went straight through the silk.

"There she is," he said quietly. "No knife. No daddy. No cousins."

"You shot my mother."

His face didn't move. "Your father drowned my brother."

"Liar."

"He was eighteen, Bianca."

"So is my sister. Almost. Nineteen. And you're holding her in a cage downstairs." My breath fogged the glass beside his head. "So say it. Say what I'm here for."

He put one hand flat on the window beside my face. Palm wide, knuckles scarred. His other hand found the back of my neck, and it was warm. That was the insult. A man who ruins families should've had cold hands.

"Three hundred and sixty-five nights," he said. "I take what I want. You don't pretend to like it."

"Good. Because I won't."

"Then lie better."

He kissed me.

Not gentle. Not slow. It was a bite and a dare, and I bit back hard enough to taste copper. He made a low sound in his throat, half laugh, half growl. His thumb pressed under my jaw and tipped my head back against the glass.

I hated that my hands went to his shirt. I told myself it was to push him off. My fingers closed in the wet cotton and pulled instead.

"Liar," he murmured against my mouth.

The zipper went first. Then he got impatient. The silk tore down my spine in one long, shredding rip that I felt in my teeth. Cold air hit my back. Then the cold glass. Then his mouth on my throat, hot enough to make me gasp.

"Don't," I said.

He stopped. Right there. Lips against my pulse.

"Say it again," he said. "Like you mean it."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

The silk slid off my shoulders, down my arms, and pooled around my ankles. I stood there in nothing but lace and his ring, eight carats of blood-red stone biting into my finger where I fisted his collar. Lightning flashed. He looked at me like he'd been starving for five years and had just been handed the one thing he swore he'd never want.

His shirt hit the floor. Skin on skin. Scars, heat, heartbeat. His heart was going as hard as mine, and I would've given my left hand not to know that.

"Look at me," he said.

I did. Mistake.

He lifted me, easy, like I weighed nothing. My legs locked around his hips before my brain voted on it. My back hit the glass again, and the storm roared right behind my skull. His hand slid under my thigh. His breath was ragged on my mouth. Every nerve I'd sworn to shut down was awake and screaming his name.

"Bianca," he said, rough. "Last chance to tell me to stop."

I should've said it. I knew that. My mother would've said it.

Instead I dragged his mouth back down to mine.

He shifted his grip. I felt the heat of him against me, one thin layer from the point of no return. His forehead dropped to mine. I held my breath.

And a tiny red dot slid across his throat.

I saw it first. A pinprick of light, sharp as a needle, sitting right under his jaw. It trembled with his pulse.

"Lucian—"

He was already turning. Too late.

The window exploded.

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The sound hit before the glass did. A heavy, flat crack, like the sky splitting. Then everything came in at once: wind, rain, a million pieces of sparkling dust blowing across the marble.

Lucian's whole body slammed into mine. We went down hard. His arm clamped around my head, his shoulder took the shards, and I felt him grunt against my ear.

Second shot. It chewed the headboard into splinters six feet away.

"Stay down!" He rolled us under the bed frame, naked skin and glass, my cheek crushed against his chest. His heart wasn't racing anymore. It was dead steady. That scared me worse than the bullets.

"Who the hell knew we were in this room?" I yelled over the wind.

His hand found my face. Wet. I thought it was rain until I saw the red smear on his palm.

"Nobody," he said, and the lights died. "Nobody but the people on my payroll."