Page 142 of Kill for a Kiss

Elle

Light slices across the floor in narrow, trembling beams when I open my eyes. Everything feels distant as if I’m floating inside a dream that doesn’t want to let me go. My body doesn’t quite feel like mine.

I register the ropes biting into my wrists, but even that pain feels dulled, filtered through a fog I don’t remember walking into.

The scent of wax, dust, and a sickly sweetness clings to the air, thick enough to coat my tongue.

Footsteps echo across the room, slow and measured. I know them without looking. Some things stick even through the fog of Kys.

When I blink, Clo appears in front of me with a smile too smooth to be genuine. She glides as if the floor is as silken as her flowing gown. She must’ve spun the silk herself, since all she’s been is a spider stalking through her own web. And unfortunately, I’m trapped in it again.

“Why, hi there, dear thing,” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm as if it was sweet syrup.

I used to miss such subtlety, but I know now that she never meant to express her words kindly to me. They’ve always been condescending and manipulative. Not concerned or motherly, like I had believed.Like I was brainwashed to believe.

I blink against the weight pressing down on my lashes. My ear feels strangely empty. They took away the comms, my earpiece, my only way to reach the others for help.

Clo circles me with quiet satisfaction. “Still sensitive to Kys, aren’t you, you poor thing?” she coos mockingly. “Always were so delicate.”

Her eyes trace the burn scars running down my legs.

“Of course, it was obvious it was you,” she murmurs with a scowl.

The shame tries to reach me, tries to curl inside my ribs. But it drifts by like smoke. I don’t let it settle. She moves her gaze past me after. There’s a flash in her eyes, and I know who she’s looking at without having to turn.

Sterling. Even through the haze clinging to my mind, I feel him like a second heartbeat, steady and always somewhere close to me.

Clo shakes her head. “And that silver hair,” she says with a condescending sigh. “The most obvious part of it all.”

The anger stirs deep inside me, molten and heavy. I meet her eyes when she leans closer, her voice a breath against my skin.

“Sterling’s first failure,” she whispers, “was not saving you.”

Then she straightens, smoothing out her gown.

“My greatest accomplishment,” she says, wistful, “was saving you.”

My fingers twitch against the ropes, nails scraping against rough wood. Clo circles me again as though she’s admiring her handiwork.

“How ungrateful of you to slap me in the face by fighting me back, after everything I’ve done for you.”

She leans low in front of me, tilting her head as if she’s offering a secret meant only for me.

“Don’t you ever wonder,” she asks, “why no one came to save you?”

Her words sink into the fog hanging over my thoughts.

“Your darling boy killed them. Every last one.”

A deep sadness tugs at me. But it doesn’t take me under. I shakemy head, the movement slow, dragging against the gravity of Kys.

“I know you’re lying,” I say despite my dry throat. “I remember some of it. Sterling and Lix filled in the rest.”

The sharpness of her smile dulls. “The only reason you’re alive,” she says, “is becauseIprotectedyou. I gave you a life free of suffering. You should be grateful, little girl. I made everything easier for you.”

The anger in me rises higher and hotter. I shake my head again. “That wasn’t living,” I say. “That wasn’t ease. That wasn’t protection.”

I glare at her, not blinking, barely breathing.