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“I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula
don’t miss him, the way you miss a pair of shoes that you grew out of, a memory of a glowing summer, or even a pet you’d lost. I do not miss him. He is missing from me.
A vital organ torn from my gut. A severed limb.
person who made me feel human. Seen. Safe. My heart and soul were never mine. They had always been his, and now they belong to no one. They are lost, forgotten, alone.
I warned them what I would become if they took him from me. Now there is no need to fear the reaper. They should fear the woman who loves him.
It dawns on me that he will be the first of many, the domino at the front of the line, and I will not stop until all those guilty pay for what they did. What they took from me.
Grim’s lovely bride with a dead body at her feet as her wedding gift. The temptress of light. My one and only mistake, the girl who’d cheated death.
“I told you never to kill using emotion as fuel. Yet, here we are, Lyra.”
Henry gave her the trauma that birthed a curiosity, planted the seed of morbid desire. A hunger. A craving. But it wasn’t my father that turned Lyra into a monster. It was me.
“What are you going to do, kill me in my sleep?” “Don’t flirt with me like that.” I smirk, watching the color of her cheeks turn pink.
He’s not allowed to have her either. No one is. Because even though I can’t have her, she’s still my ghost. She still haunts me. And every single murderous inch belongs to me.
“Skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony wood,” he reads aloud, lifting his gaze to mine with a knowing smirk. “Is this page marked because where you stopped or because it’s your favorite Grimms’ fairy tale?” “It was my mother’s favorite,” I answer softly, pinpricks running along my spine. “She used to read those to me as a kid.” “Smart woman to raise her daughter not to believe in happy ever afters.”
“Wicked people dancing on hot coals and kings dying from their greed is happy. Not for those who watched Disney classics, but for people like me.”
“Maybe I’d die for you, Thatcher Pierson,” I mumble. “But death is inevitable for us all. It’s what you’d do for me that matters.”
“You’d disappear again, just like you did when you were a little boy, just to keep me safe.” I push off the doorframe, turning to walk down the hallway with his eyes still on my back. “And I didn’t even ask you to.”
“You are my masterpiece, Alexander. Look at what I’ve created in you. Structured. Controlled. Perfection.” I stand in the snow in nothing but a pair of boxers, and my tiny bones rattle. The sound of my teeth clacking together rings in my ears. “Pain is a feeling. What do you do with feelings, Alexander?” “Kill them.”
I never thought there would be anything stronger than the urge to kill. Until I tasted her.
The kind of friends you dream of as a lonely kid. I lift the bottle up. “To all of us surviving.”
“I’m disappointed, pet. I was hoping to find a man between those pale thighs. I’ve been itching to kill something.”
“What I would do if I caught another man touching you. Are you picturing me slicing him to pieces while he begs for his life? How I would make him apologize to me for ever laying his eyes on you. For stupidly thinking you belonged to anyone but me, pet.”
“Darling.” He traces the front of his white teeth with his tongue, a starved animal ready to feast. “I’d rid the world of men who breathe the same air as you.”
“I own you, Lyra Abbott. Your body, your soul, your heart. Even if I can’t have it, I own you.”
“Better be quiet, pet. Don’t let your friend know how good the hands of a killer feel inside your pussy.”
“Your gift,” I state, that fluttering from earlier coming back, and I pause before I continue. “You’re sunlight.”
“Scarlett,” I mock, “here I thought you of all people would appreciate the beauty of things that were dead inside.”
“I crave you,” I exhale, the admission slicing my throat on its way out. “My body wants you every second of the day and twice as much at night. I want you in the most unhinged ways, ways that would scare you.” My forehead drops against hers, and my eyes close as her breath fans across my face.
“I’m incapable of giving you what you want.” My throat is raw. “A relationship? A man who loves you? I can never be that. You will always require more from me, and there is nothing more I can give. I’m uncaring and cold. Love doesn’t live in my world. I’m a killer, darling. That’s all I will ever be.”
“Do you know what thorns wish they could say to roses, darling phantom?”
“That they deserve more,” I begin. “You deserve more than I can ever give you. I’m incapable of holding your heart, of taking care of it. Stop giving it to me. Stop before I kill it for good.”
“Oh, darling,” he purrs, swallowing my tears, “you’re worth it. Bloodshed and all.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” I nod in agreement. “I’m much worse.”
My lack of a soul wasn’t because of the evil that had infested my mother’s womb or my father’s corrupt DNA. No, I didn’t have one because it belonged to her. I think when we were created, instead of splitting our spirits in half, they gave both of them to her in order to keep them safe. To remind me, when the time was right, that all I am is hers to carry.
“Human beings are disgusting. I don’t touch them with my bare hands, and you think I’m going to eat their flesh? Some stalker you are. Do you even know me?” My jaw drops. “You jerk!”
“There are many faces of a killer.” His tone is indifferent. “It’s almost never the creep in the corner. It’s more likely to be the man in the center of the room. We’re chameleons, able to blend in and copy emotions.
Thou shall not kill, but if you must, kill those deserving of death.
“Have you tried telling him no? That you have zero interest in taking his place on the board or owning the town?” “Every chance I get. I’m super polite about it, too. I add a ‘go to hell’ after every conversation.”
She is my obsessed angel, and I am her possessive god.
boy who was turned into a weapon before he knew what it meant,”
“I never understood how they called you a monster when you were always so beautiful. This was how I kept you close when I couldn’t be near you.”
“My father told me when I was young that if I ever felt, I had to kill it. That was how I remained perfect.”
“Every single time I saw you, I’d stare at this pretty little throat and think about the bruises I’d wanted to leave just so everyone would know who owned you. I wanted to hold you so tightly your ribs cracked. When you spoke to anyone else, I was half tempted to rip them apart. I wanted to ruin you, end you, just because I knew I could never fucking have you.”
History will not repeat itself this time. I will not lose her to another Pierson.
peaceful. Instead, she looks more like a wild animal. Bushels of hair sweeping in every direction, so fluffy and curled that it’s almost hard to see her face. She sleeps with her mouth open, and there isn’t an alarm clock in the world loud enough to wake her.
My friend had been wronged, and it was okay for me to be angry, she’d said. It was the first time anyone had recognized an emotion in me and let me know it was okay to feel it.
“Roses each have their own unique smell.” His voice is like charcoal. “Just as every woman carries a specific fragrance. Even in death, that deserves to be recognized.”
“These roses are my design.” He looks out into the garden. “But you will be my legacy. My perfect creation, Alexander. Do you remember my very first rule?”
You can’t demand a lion turn into a zebra. I can’t demand a boy who knows nothing of love to navigate a relationship flawlessly as a man.
“Who I am, who I become, that has nothing to do with him anymore.” “He
He isn’t a monster or a killer—he looks angelic, trapped in euphoria.
“I think I knew you in a past life. Do you think that’s crazy?”
