Page 19

Red.

I’m covered in red.

Seeing Desmond’s blood staining the white petals, dotting the white fabric… that snaps me out of my daze at last.

“You can’t do this, Adrian.” Even as he settles into his place in front of Father Francis, waiting for me, still holding the bouquet in his gun-free hand, I struggle to resist the urge to touch him, to make sure it’s him, to make sure he’sreal.

I haven’t quite given up on running yet. To, from, away… but that’s impossible. With Dallas and his lazy grin watching both the priest and me with a predator’s gaze, I’m not leaving this church a single woman—and weallknow it.

Still, I need to put some space between us, and even if it’s only a few feet, I stumble in my heels away from Adrian.

His eyes sparkle, one part mischief, one part dare. “Be careful of the corpse under your feet, princess. You don’t want to get any more blood on that dress of yours.”

Then, with the slightest movement, he transfers the bouquet from his right hand to his left. He twists the wrist on his right hand, drawing my attention to the brand on his palm. The ruined skin.

The mark of the Owed.

It’s a flash of a reminder that, in Harmony Heights, a man like Adrian Heller can do any fucking thing he wants.

Including marrying me, it seems.

He jerks his chin at Father Francis. “The longer you take, the more that blood will seep into your carpet, Father. Might want to get a move on.”

Father Francis’s eyes dart to Adrian’s hand. I can just about see the gears spinning in his mind, wondering whether he should force me to marry Adrian or find a way out of this for the both of us.

He doesn’t know that I didn’t want to marry the dead man on the floor. Or maybe he did, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

It’s not going to stop him now, either, because Father Francis… he saw the mark, too. He knows that Adrian is a member of the Order, and that it’ll be up to the Order to deal with the fallout from Desmond’s death inside of St. Catherine’s. For all hedoesknow, this was arranged. Maybe Adrian’s uncle gave him permission to do this.

Just like with Desmond, though, I don’t know why he would want to be my new groom—but he’s standing there, with Dallas as his witness, as he waits for me to do my part.

As if I’ve forgotten, Adrian holds out the bouquet to me once more. “Princess.”

Okay. I can’t help myself. This is insanity, all of it is, but that’s the second time he’s used a name for me that no one ever has before. I thought I was hearing things before, but that time… there’s no denying it.

Jack is the King. Dallas is his only child, and the first fistfight I ever saw in person was in second grade when an older kid called Dallas ‘Prince’. Dallas blackened Stu Marone’s eye and knocked out his two front teeth. After, Sebastien Reynolds took a pair of safety scissors out of his backpack and hacked off half of the older boy’s hair while Connor Heyward pinned Stu down. Desmond took the cheap shot, kicking Stu in the nuts while he was already on the ground.

Adrian, of course, was the one who told Dallas about the unfortunate nickname before coming up with a way to distract the schoolyard monitors so that the other boys could get revenge on Stu for upsetting one of them.

From then on, I always thought of the quintet as a solid group. No one referred to them as anything other than the Boys, though I gave them my own secret nickname in middle school: the Heirs. Everyone knew that, one day, those five would rule the Order—and Harmony Heights.

Ten years later, Jack Collins is still in charge. Dallas is obviously a top enforcer, and Adrian must be right up there with him. Do I know what happened to Connor? Or Sebastien? No. Not yet.

And Desmond… being in the Order didn’t save him. In fact, I’m pretty sure it condemned him.

Or maybe that was just me.

But ‘Princess’? I have my legacy in the Order, my family going all the way back to the beginning, but I’m no princess. I was a sullied Offering who rejected becoming a Used until some way, somehow I ended up in this bloody wedding dress.

I swallow, and ask, “Princess?”

Adrian waits for me to accept the bouquet from him.

Knowing that he’ll only answer me if I do, I clutch it with trembling fingers.

He nods. “‘Princess’ because that’s what you look like to me right now, Loni.” He lifts his hand, dappled with blood, warm and alive, and he caresses my chin. “You look likemine.”

I swallow roughly. He shifts his hand, trailing it down the column of my throat, nestling his fingers in the curve of my shoulder before cupping the back of my neck.