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She dug the knife into his ribs. He did not hear her approach. Her slippers were nigh silent and easily drowned by his speech. He stiffened, his back straightening and going rigid, as she slipped the kitchen knife farther into his body from behind.

He did not fall.

He did not even make a noise.

He simply stood stock still.

Everything seemed to stop and hang in the air. Finally, he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “If you wish to kill a man properly, go through the fifth and sixth ribs. Four inches higher and to the left of the spine, to reach his heart.”

She staggered away, yanking the knife from him in the process.

He grunted as she did. “The sensation of a knife sliding on bone is one I will never learn to tolerate.” The man did not even seem to bleed. Almost nothing oozed from the wound she had paid him. And what did come from the slice was dark, nearly black, and certainly not that belonging to a living man.

Clutching the knife in front of her in both hands, she staggered back until she hit the table that dominated the center of his library. Panic consumed her. Her words left her in nearly a scream. “What are you?”

With a beleaguered chuckle, he fully faced her and smiled, a sarcastic, halfhearted thing. “I am your husband.”

Turning, she ran. She knew not to where. She did not think she cared. But she ran from him. She ran from her husband.

Her husband, the master magician.

Her husband, the necromancer.

Her husband, the monster.