Page 6 of Bad Bishop

My legs clayed into stone. I couldn’t run even if I wanted to.

His head twisted in my direction. Slowly. Leisurely. Almost tauntingly.

Our gazes clashed in the moon-frosted courtyard. Two animals—a predator and prey—standing on opposite sides of a riverbank.

His shadowed face twisted. He was contemplating something.

Assessing. Scheming.

A rakish half smile pulled at the corner of his lips.

A decision had been made. My belly coiled into knots.

He advanced toward me. I scooted back, my butt dragging along the fountain’s edge until I felt the water skimming the back of my thighs. It was ice cold. Running would be futile. He’d chase me, then catch me, then punish me.

I knew that, even though I didn’t knowhim.

As he got closer, I saw he was missing an eye. The entire left side of his face was scarlet red. His nose was broken. A human skull was pinned under his arm.

And yet…he was beautiful. Beneath the blood, drainage, and fluid coming from his eyeball, and bruises, and gore.

Beautiful like violent art.

His entire demeanor was abrasive, even without all the blood. Like his existence was an attack on mine. And yet, I couldn’t look away.

My heart felt like something foreign I accidentally swallowed. I wanted to vomit it out of my body. I’d never been so scared in my life.

His mouth moved, and my eyes clung to it.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?” He examined me through his one good eye, lethally amused. “If it isn’t the Ferrantes’ innocent little princess.”

Even though I read his lips and couldn’t hear him, his voice somehow still rolled against my skin, gripping the back of my neck, forcing me to look up and meet his gaze.

He raised his free arm, tracing his knuckles along my cheek. My eyes flared, and a scream stranded in my throat. His still-warm blood painted my cheek.

“What should I do with you? Fuck you, kidnap you, or simply kill you?” he mused aloud.

I had every reason to believe he’d do all three.

My brothers weren’t nice people, and his meeting with them obviously didn’t go as planned, judging by his face. This was retaliation. I was his payback.

His hand ascended my cheek, fingertips gliding across the shell of my ear. He paused. I thought he’d rip it clean off my head. Instead, he seized the ribbon keeping my fair hair in the braid, pulling it slowly, rubbing it between his fingers with rapt fascination. My hair tumbled down my back.

He licked the corner of his lips, his stare invasive, detonating all of my walls at once.

I forced myself to meet his stare. My whole body trembled with fear, but I didn’t scream, didn’t try to run away, didn’t do anything stupid.

I lived with psychopaths. I knew the surest way to become prey was to act like it.

“You’re the simple one.” He assessed me through his hooded, cold eye.

I didn’t answer, but his words stung.

That’s what people said behind my back.

To my face, too.

That I was simple. Dumb. Disposable. A punishment the Ferrantes were saddled with for their grave sins. Hell, even my father called me his pretty little burden.