Page 48 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

N ell awoke with a start.

She and Sig had held each other through the night, dozing at times, and others simply touching, kissing, clinging. She’d fallen asleep wrapped in the veil of his wing, his breath warm against the back of her neck.

But now, as she blinked into waking, she realized the bed beside her was empty.

Breath hitching, she sat up too fast, the room tilting sideways. Her hand fumbled to the sheets where the indentation of his body still shallowed. A faint shimmer of wing dust hung in the air like frost caught mid-fall. Uselessly, she ran her fingers through it.

The opal on her finger flared once and then fell inert, suddenly twice as heavy as it was before. Nell stared down in disbelief and pushed the blankets away in a sudden, graceless motion.

“Sig?” she called, voice hoarse and dry. Her breath caught as she listened, seeking, searching for the bond. And nothing but silence met her.

Wait—not quite silence, but an emptiness, like something had been scooped out and left a hollow in her chest. Traces of the bond still lingered, pulsing faintly, but muffled now.

She glanced in horror at the floor. His clothes, which had puddled there the night before, were missing.

Nell swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, moving too fast and too slow at the same time. Grabbing her robe, she tied the sash with trembling hands and stepped into the hallway, heart catching in her throat.

The air in the apartment was wrong. Heavy. Thick.

She darted into the living room, her eyes darting across the familiar objects as if they held answers. The room was still and dim, streaked with angled morning light. Everything was as it had been the day before. But Sig wasn’t there.

He’s just in the kitchen, Nell told herself, trying to tamp down her rising alarm. He just stepped out. You’re overreacting.

But her breath became shallower, and the bond remained faint, like the sound of a radio played in a faraway room. With growing dread, Nell moved slowly to the kitchen. He wouldn’t have left, no, perhaps he went to pick up breakfast before— she pushed the thought away.

Hesitantly, she reached the threshold of the kitchen and paused, suddenly terrified to go in. Gulping, she peered inside and saw the half-empty fruit bowl, the mugs in the sink, a dish towel draped over the back of a chair. But her eyes flashed to the pantry door and—

—it wasn’t a pantry door anymore.

In place stood the Lustrum. Its red, lacquered surface shimmered in the low morning light, gleaming like a pool of blood that had been disturbed by a gust of wind. The doors throbbed, and the air shifted with it, becoming a low-pressure hush that pressed into her eardrums.

On the counter was a single folded note, with her name written on the front in tight, elegant script.

No.

Heart skidding sideways, Nell stepped forward slowly, keeping one eye on the Lustrum like it was a predator that might suddenly lunge. Its surface rippled again, like a muscle twitch in something vast and not entirely asleep.

Her fingers shook. She didn’t want to touch the note. Didn’t want to read the words she already knew were waiting, words she feared she already knew. Her hand closed around it anyway.

Pulse hammering in her throat, she slowly unfolded it.

My Nell, my beloved, my heart—

I cannot let you go into the Lustrum. I will not let it take you. I am going in your stead.

I pray to all the gods that will be enough to save you.

You are worth this and more. You are everything.

I love you, always, in this world and the next and all the others to come.

—Sig

The gasp that split from her was sharp and broken. “No,” she whispered, clutching the note to her chest as if she could suffocate the words written on it. “No, no, no.”

Panic radiated out from her core, burning along every nerve. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing, reaching, concentrating on the bond. It was still there, but dim and distant…and just beyond the red doors that stood looming over her. The opal ring on her finger burned white-hot, tunneling up her.

Sig, curled around her, whispering the morning song of his people.

The moment their marks aligned. The bloom of his slit beneath her fingers, open and shining just for her.

His body inside hers, claiming and claimed.

His vow: I will walk with you into the Lustrum.

Through the flashes of him, she felt the thread of something else whispering, limning her memories with something harsher and older.

You were offered, it whispered.

You were taken.

The pattern is incomplete.

The building groaned beneath her feet and the floorboards creaked like vertebrae.

Fury rose in Nell’s chest. No. She would not let it end, not now, not like this. Last time he had protected her, had broken the pattern to lay claim. It was her turn, now.

The Lustrum loomed before her, its surface roiling, too dark, too deep, too aware. Like a wound that had become sentient.

She reached out and pressed her palm flat to the center of the door. As she watched, the opal ring’s light stuttered, shifted…and began pulsing at the same tempo as the doors

Nell leaned in. “Either you take us both,” she hissed, her breath brushing the surface of the doors,“or you take neither.”

The doors did not open. They shuddered beneath her palm once.

“I am not asking,” Nell shrieked, slamming her hands against the doors with all the force she could muster.

As soon as her palms crashed into the wood, her opal flared, splintering with light that began to spread from beneath her fingers. It climbed away from her, crawling along the lacquered surface. The doors warmed beneath her hand.

“He is mine,” she snarled, watching the light curl, growing brighter with every pulse. “And I am his . I will not leave him there alone.”

The ring flared again, so brightly it hurt to look at, and the light sank into the pulsing red of the door, disappearing like water poured on dry ground.

As the last of the light disappeared into them, the doors opened, slowly and silently.

Nell didn’t hesitate or wait for them to change their mind.

Drawing a deep breath, she stepped through.