A Heart of Bitter Poison (The Shadow Realm, #2)

by Brynne Weaver

No betrayal is worse than when it’s delivered by the hand of someone you love. Like the Reaper and me.

I expected him to fight for me.

What a dick. Or, as Ediye and I have dubbed him, That Asshat Reaper Motherfucker.

“Hello,” I say. She says nothing, only narrows her eyes at me. I like her already.

Sad little pinky, I sign before waving one of my little fingers in her face. You won’t really deny naked pinky, will you? He’s missing his hat. Only your song will cheer him up.

So morbid and gross and hilarious

I drop to my knees and raise the blade, slamming it down into my dead enemy’s chest. No sooner does the knife crunch through his bones then I’m drawing it away to strike again. My vision vibrates with red rage. I drive it into his lower abdomen. I use both hands to drag the blade up toward his chest in a vertical line, then I plunge one fist into his warm viscera and tear his intestines from his flesh. I shove them into his face and heave a silent scream across his skin. You should know how this feels, I say. I punch my bloody fist into his cheek. You should know–

So satisfying

“Lu wants to know if we can call you Cole the Mole now.”

Cole winces, gritting his teeth as he lifts a blanket from the couch and walks over to lay it across Eryx, whose robe hangs open with an unflattering view of his balls. Not that there are many flattering views of balls when you think about it... They aren’t really the most aesthetically pleasing body parts if you ask me. I guess angel balls are the best we can hope for, and I can now say as an authority that they aren’t any better than your average balls.

I don’t usually eat much human food at all. It doesn’t always have… positive results. But straight-up sugar is at least easy enough to digest. See also: fuck the consequences.

“Ashen is a demon, Lu. If you give your heart to a creature of the shadows, you have to learn how to love the darkness as much as the stars.”

I have an urge to thank her. But, for some reason, also a much, much greater urge to kill her. Viciously. Like, a bathe-in-her-blood, cast-spells-from-her-bones kind of killing. I’m not sure why.

Why isn’t he fucking looking at my boobs? Though if he does, I might slap him. I haven’t decided. But either way, he’s a fucking asshole.

“Pfft. There’s nothing to share. I’m not a fucking whale carcass for two sharks to fight over. I’m the fucking orca that swims up all stealthy-like and kicks both their asses.”

I will take great delight in witnessing your undignified, embarrassing demise.”

“Please try not to kill me with it. I’m growing tired of resurrecting in the Shadow Realm. It is… deeply unpleasant.” “If you don’t want me to do it, stop selling it to me so hard,” I say

he’s threatening to turn people’s eyes into cake pops just because he’s worried about you.

I am officially deceased. I might look alive on the outside, as my blush will tell you, but my insides have died and dissolved into a puddle of scum.

Asshat Reaper Motherfucker.

He’s always beautiful, but when he laughs he’s radiant.

Even my epic Rocket Appartmento espresso machine is still there. Damn it.

Truthfully, it doesn’t usually take long to find a douchebag. They abound on this earth like a fucking plague.

“I never told you how the lifetimes I have spent taking souls have eroded my own. I did not tell you about everything I have lost over decades of time. I should have told you then, how every moment spent with you brought me out of the shadows. How being with you was like landing on a paradise shore after swimming through a sea of grief. How being apart from you is like being cast into a cold and merciless darkness.”

“The worst thing was that I never told you I love you, Lu. I should have told you when you trusted me with your voice for the first time. Or when we sat in the desert at Saqqara. Or when we stood beneath your name in the library. Even when I held you as we passed into the Shadow Realm. I should have said it over and over until I was sure you would never doubt it. You would have known I was coming for you. That no matter what happened, I would find a way to get you out. That I would give up anything for you.”

“I will help you find yourself again, Lu. I have enough love for both of us, until you are ready to change your mind.”

“I love you, my vampire. No matter how you change, or what you lose, or what you gain. You are my Lu, always.”

“Sometimes, even demons have to have faith in love, my vampire. And I have faith in you.”

“Ki murangen, naga ekimmu,” he whispers. I love you, my vampire.

“I am so sorry, my Lu. I am.” His voice is so thin and strained. I’ve never heard him like this.

I swear, I will do everything in my power to give you your vengeance. If you want to burn every realm, I will hand you the match and stand with you until the last cinders fall. I will pay for this promise with my life if I have to.”

Alberto is conscious, but completely paralyzed. “What the… what are you, a fucking cat bringing home birds now?” Ashen lifts a shoulder. “I thought you’d be hungry.” “So you went and got me takeout?.. And severed his spinal cord?..”

“There won’t be a moment between now and sunrise when one part of me isn’t inside a part of you.” “Salacious. Release me from your clutches, for I am a pious and holy damsel.”

“I love you, Lu. My beautiful, otherworldly, magical goddess Lu,” he whispers.

“The others are making lunch.” “I’m on a douchebag-only diet and they don’t cater to my tastes.”

“Decades of time pass without change. One day bleeds into the next. They flow as a slow procession of memory and regret that becomes static and unchanging, until life is just existing. And suddenly you find yourself in an alley, face-to-face with a beautiful, brazen, bold vampire and she infuses your world with color and light. One breath of time, and you realize you have been living in monochrome and shadow. One night was all it took to change my life.”

“Listen up, sex fiends,” Ediye says from the other side of the door.

The jackal’s amber eyes meet mine and I hear the swish of his tail, even as he whines.

I love him

“Get fucked, Ember,” I say, and with a vicious hiss I punch her in the face with all the fury I can channel into my fist.

“Nothing is wrong with you, Lu. Your heart is full of courage, and to love is an act of bravery.”

Blood saturates the snow, creeping ever further as it consumes the pristine powder. It’s… deeply satisfying.

“You clearly fought a fitted sheet and lost.”

“Safe travels, lesser being,” he says as he pulls away. I huff a laugh

I wonder for a moment if I can pull some kind of vampire seniority over her, but then I’m dressed like a parachute and I smell like sex and blood, so… probably not.

“Payback for what?” “Trying to make my mated mark into a dick is probably a good place to start.”

that for a distance before I reach a

To watch you resurrecting next to me, to know I would have more time, even if measured only in moments… It is a happiness I have never known.”

“Oh, vampire. You are in imminent danger.” “Of being fucked blind, I hope.”