Page 9 of Consume Me (Immortal Vices and Virtues: All Hallows’ Eve #4)

Kendall

I shove open the first door I see and slip through it, heart pounding. The music fades the second it shuts behind me, muffled like the walls are spelled to contain the noise. Alone, I force air into my lungs, panicked at the idea of the strange male confronting Klyn.

Ugh. Out of all the people I could have run into tonight, it had to be him. My brother-in-law’s best friend. Who would almost certainly run home and tell Tori he’d spotted me here.

The fae male looked ready to murder him on sight. The very hot, very attractive, very sexy face male.

If I stay here long enough, I’ll be next.

I force my feet to move, my breathing shallow, my heart pounding. Distance. I need distance between me and that fae male I left behind. Time to collect my thoughts. It doesn’t take me long to notice these halls are nothing like the ballroom I left behind.

Gone is the warm, perfumed air and laughing crowd. Back here, everything feels colder. Quieter. The silence isn’t comforting; it presses against my ears like a vice. Like the house is holding its breath, watching.

Moving quickly, I try to find the exit, but none of these passages look familiar.

When I reach a fork in the halls, I glance around, trying to get my bearings.

The corridor stretches in both directions, lit by sconces that glow blue-white like captured starlight.

The walls are high, the ceiling vaulted, shadows pooling between carved columns.

Doors line each side, all closed. No sound emanates from any of them.

I hesitate, considering the idea of hiding rather than continuing to search for a way out.

From their fancy holsters, the daggers hiss at me to heed our bargain.

The hour is now. Our enemy is upon us.

Far behind me, a door opens and shuts.

I pick a direction and move.

My heels echo against the marble, too loud, too fast. I should take them off, but I don’t want to stop. Besides, I need to feel the pain, the pinch, the blister forming on the side of my toe. It’s the only thing that feels real right now.

What the hell just happened?

I danced with the man I was sent here to kill. The man who should have killed me.

And instead of ending him, I let him touch me.

I let him hold me. I let him whisper words that peeled back my armor like it was made of paper. I let him make me feel .

And the worst part?

I liked it.

Not just because he’s the most gorgeous male I’ve ever seen. Because the entire time my hand was in his, the whispers stopped.

The entire time he touched me—silence.

No tempting pleas to slit a throat. No rising chorus of promises or threats or sweet, seductive bargains. The daggers didn’t utter a single sound as long as the stranger held me in his arms.

For those few minutes, I had peace.

The first I’ve known since the day I bound myself to these fucking blades.

I have no idea how or why it happened, but I already ache to touch the male again. To let him touch me. If it was only meant to distract me, it worked flawlessly. I’d thought only of his hands. His mouth. His heat. The way he looked at me like I was the center of gravity.

Gods, what is wrong with me?

The daggers rattle softly, like they know the answer.

You broke your promise , they hiss inside my head as I run through the maze of halls.

You were supposed to kill him.

You made a bargain.

My stomach churns. I pause and press a hand against the wall, steadying myself.

They’re right. The male I’m running from is the reason why I came. This is what I agreed to. One last kill. Then, no more voices. No more dreams of death. No more waking up drenched in someone else’s blood.

But how am I supposed to do that after the way he looked at me? The way he touched me like he already knew every broken piece and still wanted to hold them together?

With no answers to those impossible questions, I can finally admit to the horrible truth I’ve known since the moment I looked at him: How am I supposed to kill my own mate?

A sob claws at my throat, sharp and raw. I swallow it down.

I can’t do it.

I can’t .

Which means…

I’m never going to be free.

I’m going to carry these cursed blades until they rot me from the inside out. Until they push me too far and I give in. Until they use my body and mind like they’ve used every bearer before me.

I round another corner, not even sure where I’m going anymore. Every hallway looks the same—opulent and endless. Like a museum built by a sorceress on a power trip.

I pause at the closest door and try the handle. Locked.

Another one. Same thing.

Third time’s the charm. It creaks open into a long gallery lit by moonlight pouring through a set of narrow windows on my left.

To my right, as far back as I can see, paintings line the walls—landscapes, portraits, battles frozen in time.

A harp sits unused in the corner. Dust motes hang in the air like enchanted snow.

I step inside and let the door shut behind me.

Here, at least, I can breathe.

I cross to the far window, pressing a hand to the cool glass. Outside, fog coils across the lawn like smoke. The party feels a million miles away.

And then I hear it .

Footsteps.

Not hurried. Not hesitant.

Deliberate.

I spin, reaching through the folds of fabric and drawing the daggers into my hands before I even know I’ve done it.

I don’t want to kill him, but I refuse to remain defenseless if he tries to come for me.

The door creaks open. He steps into the room like a shadow given form, tall and dark and so fucking composed it makes me want to scream.

As if the ground didn’t shake underneath us ten minutes ago.

And when his eyes find me hovering in the shadows, he looks at me so calmly, I wonder if he knows what I do.

That he’s the one I’m fated to love—and apparently to destroy.

“Don’t come any closer,” I whisper, blades trembling in my grip.

They hiss and curse, echoing my warning.

He stops. But not out of fear.

I can see it in his eyes.

He’s studying me. Weighing something.

I force myself not to notice how handsome he is.

How utterly delicious he looks in that jacket, especially because I can tell in one glance that he’s not the sort of male who uses his body for formalwear and small talk.

No, this fae is a warrior. A soldier whose body has been trained and honed to do things far more deadly than dance with strange women at parties.

Of course I’m not noticing any of that.

“You’ve come to kill me,” I say.

“I meant to. But now…” He trails off.

“What now?” I press.

He takes another step toward me, but there’s no threat in his movements. He looks past the daggers into my eyes. “I cannot harm you.”

“Why?” The word sticks in my throat, but I force it out.

A beat passes. “Because you’ re mine.”

The daggers writhe . They want blood. His blood. They whisper in my ears, louder now, faster, trying to drown out everything else. Do it, do it, do it. Seal our bargain.

A familiar buzz starts between my temples.

“Will you kill me?” he asks.

He takes another step closer.

I flinch. My knees buckle. “No,” I whisper.

And then?—

The daggers yank free of my hands and rise into the air.

Hover in the air between us. A low, hungry hum fills the room, shaking the glass windows in their frames.

The art threatens to tear itself from the walls.

The harp makes a haunting, screeching sound as if a phantom hand has plucked its strings.

A sense of power, deathly dark and full of rot, spreads over me. And I realize with no small amount of horror that whatever power I thought I knew from these daggers, what they’re capable of is so much more than that.

So much more than I can prevent.

“No,” I breathe, gaze fixed on the daggers. “Stop. I didn’t give you permission?—”

The blades tilt toward him.

My mate.

I wonder if he’ll fight. Or flee. But instead, he shifts.

Right there in the gallery, in a flash of bone and magic and ancient power, the male drops to all fours—his body stretching, reshaping, fur turning dark as ink beneath the shaft of moonlight.

A wolf.

A massive, deadly, star-marked wolf .

My breath stalls.

Because I’ve seen this wolf before. In that repeated vision of my own death. A wolf standing over me, blood on its muzzle, eyes burning with sorrow.

This is it.

The moment I die.

But instead of striking at me?—

The wolf lunges at the daggers.

They slash at him, the carved runes sparking along their handles, but he moves impossibly fast, jaws snapping, and tears one of them out of the air. Using his teeth, the wolf presses the blade to the rune burnt into his front leg.

The blade shatters. Explodes into nothing but light and ash.

The other dagger drops to the floor, clattering against the marble. Silent. Limp. Like it’s lost half its soul.

And I collapse beside it, shaking, gasping, alive .

My palms press against the cold marble as my body folds in on itself. Everything hurts. My skin hums with secondhand magic, my ears ring with residual screams, and my vision swims.

The intensity of the visions grips me tighter than they ever have.

As if the destruction of that dagger only served to make its hold over me somehow worse.

Visions careen through my mind, picture after picture, all of them bloody and full of nightmares.

I lose sense of myself, my body completely at the mercy of my mind.

When I come out of it, the sound of the remaining blade is a keening wail that threatens to drive me mad. I grit my teeth against the pain inside my head. It’s nearly unbearable. My palms are clammy, my knuckles white from the fists I’m making against the floor.

But I’m alive.

That’s something.

The wolf watches me from across the distance, so still I wonder if it’s turned to stone. But then its snout flares with an inhale. I flinch, but it ignores me as it stalks to the remaining dagger. I realize what it means to do, and fear grips me.

“Wait!”

The wolf’s head snaps up.

My breath catches, stealing my voice.

I want to ask it for mercy. But all I can see when I look at the beast are those sharpened canines covered in my blood. My own life force ceasing to be. My horrible vision finally made real.

“Please… I think it might kill me if you destroy it,” I manage.

The wolf snarls back at me but makes no move to finish it—or me—off.

The darkness slithers and slides across the doors of my mind, looking for any tiny crack it can find. My cheek lands against the cool marble. I close my eyes, waiting to see which predator will finish me first.

I don’t hear him shift back. I only feel his presence—heavy, magnetic—as he kneels in front of me.

Then I feel hands sliding around me. Warm and rough and sure.

He pulls me into his arms, lifting me as he pushes to his feet.

He starts for the door, and I glimpse the dagger still lying on the marble, untouched.

He chose me, not it .

For some reason, that snaps me back to myself, and I’m very aware that a strange man has just picked me up and is carrying me off.

I immediately start struggling. “Put me down. I can walk.”

“Not where we’re going,” he says roughly.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You’re not going home, that’s for damn sure, and you’re not fit to go back to that party.”

“You don’t get to say where I go, you— Hey!”

I’m jostled—hard—and instead of setting me on my feet, the bastard throws me over his shoulder.

Like I’m a damn satchel .

“Are you serious right now?” I slap at his back, to absolutely no avail. “Put me down!”

He doesn’t answer. Nor does he seem at all thrown off by my fists slamming into the back of his rib cage. He just walks—long, determined strides down the hall.

“I can walk, you overgrown, broody caveman!”

Still nothing. I might as well be yelling at a tree. Or hitting one.

He shoves through another door, and I realize with a start that we’re suddenly outside in the open air. But rather than the main entrance with glowing lights and the possibility of other guests nearby, I see only a high-hedged path leading straight into thick woods.

Not good.

“Where are you taking me?” I demand, twisting to look. Panic threatens, and I consider the idea of screaming for help. “Hey. Answer me. ”

Not a word. Just a low grunt and the flex of muscle under my ribs.

A second later, I feel a shift in the air. Magic. Old and sharp. My stomach flips.

A portal opens ahead—silvery, crackling, shimmering at the edges. Through the rippling surface, I glimpse a room, dark and unfamiliar.

“No,” I breathe, realization dawning. “No way. You are not portal-napping me!”

I kick my legs, slam a fist against his back. “Put me down, you psycho!”

His only reply is to adjust his grip like he’s annoyed I squirmed. I suck in a breath, preparing to scream like bloody murder.

I don’t get a single sound out before he walks up to the portal and steps through.