Page 24 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

I pick up the clothes first, folding them lazily and tossing them onto the chair instead of the floor. A bra dangles off the corner of her bedframe, and I snort, shaking my head as I grab it.

I stack the books properly, shifting the heavier ones to the bottom so they don’t topple. A few papers fall loose in the process, and I reach down, catching the edge of a file with my name on it.

I flip it open, and sure enough, it’s my case files.

A slow smirk tugs at my lips.

I snap the file shut and toss it back where I found it.

I wipe the dust off her desk, straighten the notes she left crumpled. I collect the empty wine glasses and stack them neatly.

Then my gaze lands on the photos pinned to her corkboard.

And for the first time in a long fucking time, something beats my imagination.

Faith’s smiling in them. Some are candids, her caught mid-laugh, mid-eye roll, mid-something. Others are posed, arms slung around friends.

She looks… happy.

I don’t know what I expected, but it sure as fuck wasn’t this.

I move closer, dragging my fingers over one of the pictures. The girl in these photos—she isn’t the same one who challenges me at every turn, who throws sharp words like daggers, who doesn’t flinch under my gaze.

She isn’t scared.

And that does something to me. Something I don’t want to name.

I pull back, tearing my eyes away. That’s when I see a flyer, pinned haphazardly to her corkboard. State Penitentiary Halloween Party.

I huff a quiet laugh.

I fold the flyer back and drop it onto the desk.

I look at the gift I brought her and lay it down on her bed. Next to it, I leave a note. It’s not much. Just a little something to remind her that I was here.

That I always will be.

Then, I turn and walk out, replacing the lock with the same ease I picked it. Leaving her room, I make my way to the State Petitionary. This is going to be one hell of a Halloween.

Veridian State Penitentiary is drowning in a cheap, over-the-top Halloween makeover as I stroll through the gates. The air is charged with artificial excitement, thick with the kind of mystery that only exists when people are drunk enough to believe in it.

The grounds have been turned into carnival, each corner decked out with lazy horror clichés. It’s all for show, but the crowd eats it up, drawn in by the promise of a good scare and an excuse to act like idiots.

One of the bigger attractions is the “Hall of Illusions,” a mirror maze meant to fuck with your head. It’s fitting. This night is one big trick of perception, where nothing is really what it seems.

Beyond that, there’s the “Ghoul’s Grotto,” an underground setup that looks like a horror movie set. People in grotesque masks lurk in the shadows, waiting for their moment to jump out and scare some unsuspecting asshole. It’s predictable, but it works.

Still, none of it holds my attention for long. Because no matter how much fake horror they throw at me, my mind keeps circling back to Faith.

The night drags on, and I find myself in the “Mystic Grove,” a section strung up with twinkling lights, thick with incense and the bullshit promise of fate.

Fortune tellers lounge behind tables, waving their hands over tarot cards and crystal balls, selling people lies wrapped in mystery.

The crowd moves slower here, caught up in the illusion that maybe, just maybe, they’ll hear something worth believing in.

I spot Faith before my brain even fully registers it.

And fuck me, I almost need to grab onto something to keep from going to my knees.

She’s dressed as an angel, which is fucking ironic because there’s not a single holy thing about the way she looks right now.

A short, flowing white dress clings to her frame, stopping just high enough to turn every step into a goddamn sin.

The sheer sleeves slip down her arms. Soft white feathers curl from a halo sitting lopsided in her hair, and fuck—her hair.

Loose, wild waves spill over her shoulders, catching the glow of the lanterns like they were woven from something celestial.

Like the light itself bends just to kiss her.

It isn’t fucking fair.

That someone like her exists in a world so full of depravity.

That something so pure could even breathe the same air as people who don’t deserve to touch her shadow.

It’s like she was made to balance out the worst of this place, sculpted into something unreal just to remind the rest of us that we were born in the dark.

And those eyes—

I always thought eyes were the most useless part of a person’s anatomy. I never cared for sight, but looking at her, I see how blindness would have been the cruelest fate.

And now that I’ve seen her, I’ll never unsee.

She is imprinted in me, burned into the marrow of my bones.

I don’t just want her. Want is too small, too human. I need her. In my blood, in my veins, in the space between my ribs where the ache of her absence would turn me into something unrecognizable.

The universe was reckless to let me see her. Because now? I won’t stop until she’s mine. If I have to break her to make her stay, then so be it. A shattered version of her is better than a version I don’t own.

I’ll be the nightmare she won’t wake from.

The obsession she won’t escape.

And the addiction she’ll crave more than freedom.

Faith throws her head back, laughing at something the girl next to her says. It’s an unguarded kind of laugh, the kind that doesn’t have edges, doesn’t cut. It wraps around me like a noose anyway.

I force my feet forward, keeping to the shadows, tracking her as she and her friend weave through the crowd.

They come to a stop in front of one of the fortune teller booths, an old woman draped in layers of velvet and beads is sitting behind the table.

She barely glances up before lifting a frail, wrinkled hand, beckoning them closer.

It almost makes me laugh.

Faith hesitates, but her friend nudges her forward, and she sighs before lowering herself into the chair across from the teller.

“I’d like to know my future,” she says.

The woman reaches across the table, takes Faith’s hands in hers, and closes her eyes.

Seconds pass.

Then, her eyelids flutter open, and a slow, knowing smile stretches across her face.

“You are going to find something,” she murmurs. “Something that you will love and hate with equal passion.”

I smirk.

Isn’t that exactly what I’m going to offer her?

“Hate everything but love it? Well, that’s a new one.”

Faith’s friend snorts. “Sounds like my love-hate relationship with her love for crime documentaries.”

They laugh together. Meanwhile, the old fraud just keeps smiling, as if she actually pulled some deep cosmic truth out of the abyss.

I push off the tree, weaving through the crowd as the music pulses around me. Laughter, screams, the distant shriek of some haunted house actor jumping out at his next victim, it all blends together.

Some guy stumbles past me in a cheap-ass ghost mask, and I snatch it right off his face before he can blink. He makes a confused noise, glancing around as if it got stolen by an actual spirit, but I’m already gone.

I slide the mask on, settling it over my face as I move behind her.

Close enough to see the way the back of her neck prickles.

She doesn’t turn. Doesn’t look around. But her body knows. Some subconscious part of her starts picking up on the shift in the air.

She knows.

She steps forward, just a little too fast. The heel of her boot catches on the uneven ground, and for a split second, she’s slipping.

My hands find her waist, gripping just enough to steady her, to feel the warmth of her body against mine.

Her breath hitches.

I lean in, brushing my lips against the shell of her ear.

“Careful, good girl .”

A full-body shudder wracks through her, violent enough that I feel it in my bones.

For a second, she doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.

Then, slowly, she turns her head, just enough for me to see the way her pulse flutters at her throat.

She doesn’t know who I am.

But some part of her does.

Some part of her always will.

I step back before she can speak, before she can twist around and try to confirm what her body already knows.

Because this isn’t the moment I want.

Not yet.

And I’m nothing if not patient.