House of Bane and Blood (Order and Chaos, #1)

by Alexis L. Menard

“Not all cages are built with bars.” Some, like mine, were made from the shackles of duty and the chains of domestic obligations.

“I think you are the most beautiful thing in this city, Milla, and I am an admirer of beautiful things.”

He winked. “Then marry me, Milla, before the other guy smells me on your skin.”

I turned slowly, facing that heinous husband I had just bound myself to standing behind me. “I am going to murder you, Attano.” He only held up our agreement in his hand and tapped it with his middle finger. “Paragraph twelve, line three says you can’t.”

“Ahh, yes,” he said as a large hand scrubbed his face. “The scum of high society, those Attanos. Made our way up the class hierarchy the dirty remnant way. Well, princess, this lowly bender just saved your posh family from certain ruin and the fucking Firenzes. Trust me, I’m a hell of a lot better than Felix.”

“It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know.” It was also rude to bring his past lovers around his wife, but here we were.

“You need protection, Milla,” he said, his voice the steadiest it had been this entire time, a wall of sureness. “We might have been rivals in our past, but we are together now. You are mine, and long as you are bound to me, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”

What in the seven hells were bleeders doing with my wife?

“Let go of my wife, or you will die tonight.”

He asked, “Was this the one who bit you, princess?”

“Anyone who puts a gun to my girl’s head will lose their hand.”

But he saved my life when he didn’t have to, and there was a bond between us that had been cast in gold, a gilded thread that tied my soul to his whether we liked it or not.

“You have a face that looks constantly pissed off, making you fundamentally unapproachable, and it's highly arousing to me. When you sat at the bar and Dom didn’t serve you, I thought you might’ve burned down my pub with your glare. The only thing more beautiful than your smile is that look. The one you’re giving me. Right now.”

“I like how your hair curls more when it’s damp outside. I like how your hips look in a silk dress. I particularly like the way you say my name when you’re frustrated, as it gives me a hint of how you’d say it in my bed.” “Nicolai!” “That’s right. Keep practicing.”

“Don’t placate me, Attano. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what men do at night when they don’t go home to their wives.”

I despised how much it bothered me, his nightly activities. I only wished I could get back at him—but how could I do such a thing without leaving the flat?

I couldn’t leave Milla, who still waited at home, most likely with a revolver in her lap ready to put more rounds in me for thinking I betrayed both her fickle friendship and our union. If I could get out of this, get back to her, I’d happily take another bullet to the back if it were by her hand.

My heart broke for him, watching his throat constrict, how his hand slid back and forth down a bouncing knee. Nico wasn’t exaggerating when he said Luther hadn’t healed from his time there.

“Camilla Mercy Marchese-Attano, and my name is my business.”

“Are you going to punish me, husband?” “On the contrary. I’m going to punish the ones who did this to you,

“Whatever you want, Milla.”

“Sometimes I forget how sweet you are, Milla.”

Nicolai Attano didn’t enjoy the idea of sharing his power, the thought of a queen sitting next to his throne over the Row.

I wanted to blur those lines until I had touched every inch of her, until she was covered in darkness. My darkness.

“And my wife,” I drawled, “where do I even begin with her?”

“I see you, Milla. I see all of you. The good, the better, and the best because there is no bad in you. You are enough.

“Wear your black tweed with the silver pocket square. It matches your stupid eyes.” “I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Nico murmured beneath his breath.

“That bender has got it fucking bad for you. His eyes haven’t left this window.”

“I’m not the princess here anymore, Attano. I’m the fucking dragon.

“And just for the record, Milla,” he purred into the crown of my head, “you’re still my princess.” He loosened his hold without letting me go, keeping his hand on the small of my back all the way to the car.

His words came out silky and slow. “Wanting you isn’t hard, princess. It’s all the rest that makes it difficult.”

I was angry at Nico for saying such a thing, for putting me in the same category as someone that should have meant far less to him, but mostly at myself for giving him the chance to make me feel this way.

He didn’t want my heart—he wouldn’t take it. But there was a hollowness where the vessel once beat, as if it had already been stolen. Or given away.

But Camilla Marchese was a falling star, and if I wanted to catch her, I’d have to let go of the rest.

I knew the rhythm of his breath, the notes of his scent, the way his smile always curled on the right side before lifting on the other.

She screamed in agony. The sound moved something in my chest—my heart—shattering it until I was a heartless, soulless thing. It shed any humanity in my body, left me with nothing but anger and retaliation, no purpose beyond destroying whatever caused her pain.

“I hope you don’t expect me to go without you. We’re a package deal now. Where you go, I go. Till death parts us.”

“You won’t get rid of me that easily, Attano. You have successfully corrupted me.”

In the span of a single second, I realized three things: I should’ve told her about the inspector a long time ago. I would do anything to keep her out of his hands. And, most dominant of all those developments, I was hopelessly falling for my wife.

“I’ll buy you another one. Drop the dress, Milla. I won’t look until you beg me to.”

“Every day I sat in Hightower, I prayed to whatever divine wove the fates of our lives. I hoped that the girl in the train car hadn’t perished. Your name was the first I thought of when I walked out of that prison.”

“And not only did she turn out to be a fucking Marchese, a name I once hated more than anything else on this Isle, she had to make it worse by being so unbelievably perfect. The object of all my frustrations and desires, the one I can’t go an hour without thinking about. Tell me, Milla, am I supposed to regret you now? After all we’ve been through, tell me none of it was worth finding each other.”

“I would do it all again,” he said in the absence of my denial. “I would run through fire and burn for you. I would lose arm and leg and limb. I’d do it all over, knowing what would happen to me, if it meant eventually having you as I do now. Milla, I don’t regret anything about you but this,” he spoke in a strained voice, as if holding back a river of temptation, “that now that I finally have you, I must give you up.”

Did my touch not trace the letters of longing across his skin, betray the password to the heart I kept locked away?

There was risk in all business, even that of the heart.

want you, Nico.”

“Now there is a weight there, and it gets heavy when you are gone. You are what I want every morning when I wake, every need of my flesh, every dream when I close my eyes.”

“Fuck it. I’ve fallen hard for you Camilla Mercy Marchese-Attano. I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me or anyone else you have my name and my heart and the rest of my life. You are mine, and I am wholly and irrevocably yours.”

no one gets them like i do

“Your heart.” “It’s yours,”

“Whatever you want, princess. The heart in your chest, the air in your lungs, I’ll take whatever you offer me, and I won’t regret it. I never do.”