Page 4

Chapter 4

Theo

E verything had been a blur since the burn in my chest started, and this was the first time since I’d woken up on the street that breathing didn’t feel like I was trying to inhale fire.

Something was… off. I was so groggy it took me a second to realize I was restrained, that jerking up only made my shoulders ache because my wrists were wrapped in some kind of fabric, tying me to a headboard I didn’t recognize in a room that wasn’t mine.

“Hello?” I sounded raspy when I spoke, and I waited for the pain in my chest to pick up again. When it didn’t, I tried to force myself into a sitting position so I could at least look down.

Now that my mind felt a little clearer, everything was coming back in tiny pieces.

Small fractions of thought. Broken shards that threatened to rend and sunder. My lids drifted shut as I tried to collect them into a whole.

Something catching me as I left the alley where I’d just killed the man who’d tried to jump me… That thing taking me to the ground before I stepped out of the shadows, before I’d even had a chance to stop my hands from shaking with the knowledge that I’d just killed someone and…

It was all sharp teeth and red eyes and…

There was a man with wings. A man with wings.

An arrow…

And…

My eyes shot open and searched the room. It took two tries to clear my throat enough to shout, and when I did, I wondered if I was signing my own death warrant. “Listen here, you fucking freak. Let me go .”

If I sounded angry enough, frightening enough, would it help?

It helped on the street, but I hadn’t let myself be on this end of a rope since…

I shuddered, and the sudden sensation welling up in my chest wasn’t anger. It was something raw, something clawing and violent, pinpricks of needling terror rushing just beneath my skin and threatening to kill me with a thousand tiny cuts.

I didn’t like it, and it made my chest burn . That sensation from earlier—the overwhelming anger, the fear, the frustration that turned to uncontrollable violence—it threatened to spill out and completely consume me again.

It took me a second to realize why my heart was speeding, why my next words came out in a trembling tone.

I was afraid.

“Fuck you. You can’t just tie someone up and leave .”

I hated the way I sounded. I hated that I could feel the words bleeding from my throat and into my chest, breaking me apart from the inside out.

And I hated it even more when a voice from the corner of the room spilled through the air.

“You know, for someone who was trying to kill me a few hours ago, you sound pretty… tragic.”

My head whipped in the direction of that smooth, amused tone, and my eyes narrowed then focused on the red line drawn between us.

Red line… lights so bright… an arrow, and then men, and I…

My body started thrashing of its own volition, and I didn’t recognize the growl that tore from my throat. He took four quick steps across the room and brought his hand to my shoulder, shoving me back against the bed.

I felt it again, that sweet burst of relief I’d noticed before when he touched me. The clawing panic in my chest receded, and I felt…

Content.

Like a blank slate, wiped clean of a red ledger for the first time in…

Fuck, how long had it been since I’d been innocent? Had I ever been innocent?

I tried to surge up again, and this time it was a blade pressed to my throat instead of his hand on my shoulder. It forced me to still beneath the sharpness, because I could see it in his eyes.

He would kill me if he had to.

This wasn’t some hallucination; this wasn’t some bad dream.

This was real, and I…

“Who the fuck are you?” The question spilled like venom from my lips. If a tone could cut, I would have watched him turn to ribbons, watched the little red line stretched between us fall to the ground.

But the only thing that could cut was the blade against my neck, and the sharp sting of his violet eyes.

“I’m the person who should have killed you already.” He sounded furious about it, and I wasn’t sure why. He had me tied down. He had a knife to my throat.

“So why aren’t you doing it?” Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to taunt my would-be murderer… but I didn’t understand his expression, or the way his eyes dropped to the red line shining between us.

When he lowered the knife and plucked at the edge of it with the dull side of the blade, I felt it tug somewhere deep in my chest. A gasp tore from my throat, so violent it ached, but with it came a surge of strength. The man above me wavered, swayed… and it was enough. I jerked forward and slammed my head against his full, pretty mouth and watched him reel back.

“What the—”

It was strange. The contact made my entire body feel like it was floating, but my anger surged just behind the wings of that warmth.

Then I could feel the same pain blossoming across my face. It didn’t make sense, so I jerked up again and sank my teeth into his arm. Maybe it was a childish way to fight, but I would do anything I had to in order to keep myself safe. I would do anything to get free—I didn’t let people tie me down.

I couldn’t do this again .

I—

A sear of pain tore through my arm in the exact place I’d bitten him, and another followed when his fist slammed into my jaw. My eyes went unfocused, but I didn’t miss the low groan that tore from his throat, chased by a soft curse of, “What the fuck . ”

I yanked harder on my restraints and felt blood sluice down my arm. I’d torn my skin open, but the lubrication was enough to slip free, and I dove forward while my vision was still swimming. My hands around his throat sent another shot of soothing, perfect serenity through my mind, but I still squeezed, wrenching the life from him so I could relish the sound of him struggling to breathe.

And in the same instant, I felt my lungs constrict, my chest ache and scream for air.

I felt myself trying to strangle him.

It made me throw him back, and the sound of him crashing against the wall wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the sound of him choking had been.

But… it felt like I was trying to kill myself when I did that. I was a lot of things, but I didn’t want to die.

Not right now.

Not when touching him let me feel something that I’d never felt before.

Instead of trying to rush him, I ran for the door, but he was on me in a flash of motion and a flurry of feathers, and his hands pinning me against the wall sent another shot of cool relief through my body.

I stilled under his touch and looked up into wide, violet eyes and flushed cheeks. His dark hair was tousled from our scuffle, and the red marks on his throat looked like they might bruise in the shape of my fingerprints.

Good.

“Stop,” he snarled, but the demand in his tone only made me struggle harder. We didn’t know one another, but he was going to learn quickly that trying to tell me what to do was the easiest way to find yourself dead in an alley somewhere.

The only problem was, I wasn’t sure if killing him would tear me down into that darkness with him. I pressed my wrists forward experimentally, forcing the stinging cut on my skin to ache in his hold.

I hissed, and he echoed the sound under his breath.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” he muttered, frustration clear on his face. He squeezed my wrists again, and when we both winced for a second time, I let my head fall back against the wall.

“I don’t think we’re imagining it, asshole.” If I was being honest, I’d take the echo of pain where he held me if it meant he kept touching me. I refused to admit that aloud, though. I didn’t like being touched. I hated it . Most of the time, my skin wanted to crawl when someone accidentally brushed against me. I’d spent too much of my life knowing all the ways a touch could hurt, all the ways it could shape and mold you into a broken thing.

I killed people who tried to touch me now.

But I was standing beneath the circle of his fingers like it was the most ordinary thing in the world for some feathered freak to pin me against the wall.

It didn’t make sense, and I wasn’t sure if there was any way I could wrap my mind around it to work it out.

I wasn’t sure it mattered, because he shifted his body forward and used his slender hips to pin me fully to the wall. I should have been struggling, panicking—some small part of me did. My heart hammered in my chest and a strange mixture of fear and revulsion tried to claw its way to the surface.

And… it was met with the barrier of how good it felt not to burn anymore. How good it felt to…

Fuck…

How good it felt to be touched.

How long had it been since someone had been this close to me?

“Get the fuck off me,” I snarled reflexively, but he just laughed.

“Why do you think you’re in charge here? For all I know, you’re going to change the second I take my eyes off you. I don’t know how this happened.” His stare dropped between the two of us, to the shining red line… but this one didn’t burn across my vision.

It didn’t hurt anymore.

While he was touching me, I couldn’t feel that burn at all.

But his words didn’t make sense.

“Change? Change into what ?”

He pulled back enough to look at me while still keeping me pinned to the wall, and his head tilted slowly.

“An Enmity,” he finally said, testing the word like he was waiting to see if I knew what it was. Since I had no idea what he was talking about, I arched one brow, wrinkling my nose in irritation.

“What the fuck is that?” I glanced behind him—the wings from earlier were gone, but I knew I hadn’t imagined them. “And what the fuck are you?”

“I’m…” He paused, his full lower lip catching between his perfectly white teeth for just a second before he answered. “Wren.”

“Wren.” A name. Not a what . “Are you an angel, Wren?” That would be just my luck. A god I didn’t believe in sending some kind of avenging asshole to smite me down for my misdeeds.

He scoffed.

“There are no angels. I’m a cupid.”

I blinked slowly, then started laughing before I could stop myself. Even the sensation of him squeezing my wrists and causing pain to lance through my body didn’t stop me. It took me a second to catch my breath long enough to look him up and down.

“You don’t look like some fat baby with a crossbow.”

Though he had shot me with an arrow. And he had wings. He watched the realization slowly creep across my face with a smug expression.

“Right. What’s your name?”

I thought about not telling him—I thought about telling him to fuck off—but for some reason, the words caught at the back of my throat and got mixed up with the truth.

“Theo. My name’s Theo.” I paused, then added. “What the fuck is an Enmity, Wren?”

I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. When he did, he sounded almost reluctant.

“It’s hate incarnate. If you thought I was an angel, the Enmity would be your version of a demon. They’re dark things, all teeth and claws and fury.”

Teeth and claws and…

“Red eyes,” I murmured, and he nodded.

“Did you see one?” His question was cautious, and I wondered if answering him would end up getting me killed.

I wondered if he’d kill me regardless. I tested his grip on me, but his knee just pressed harder, forcing my lower body solidly against the wall until I sagged in his hold again. It was hard to think with him so close, with my body warring between how much I hated being touched and how good his hands felt on me. How good it felt to feel peace for the first time in weeks. In years… since…

Finally, I sighed.

“One of them attacked me after I killed a man.” I watched for his reaction to my confession, but there wasn’t one. He just sighed and looked me over.

“How long ago? Days?”

“A few weeks… maybe a little longer. Things have been… hazy since it happened. Everything was burning.” How much did I want to tell him? It was obvious that something weird was going on—I didn’t trust him. I wanted to strangle the life from him.

How fucked was it that he was probably my only hope of figuring out what was going on…

Wren the cupid was the only thing that could help me.