Page 54 of On Edge

Instead, my thumb brushes over her pulse point. It’s racing.

“Hold on a moment. I’m not done yet.”

My words feel awkward in my mouth. I drag out the ring from my inside jacket pocket. It’s the one I swore I’d never give to anyone. But then I took it out of the safe this morning after breakfast, once I’d made my mind up that this marriage could have its uses.

I press it into her hand. Then I drop her wrist like her touch scorches me.

“Put that on. We’ll draw up terms in the morning.”

She stares at it. “This is?—”

“My m-mother’s.” The admission costs me more than I’m expecting. I don’t stammer anymore. I got rid of that in prison. But once in a while, it slips out. Hell knows why. “Don’t read into it. It’s just a ring.”

Sage stares at it, looking as if it’s about to bite her. Slowly, cautiously, she slips it onto her ring finger, and the tightness in my shoulders, the weight in my heart, eases a touch. It fits perfectly. But then she keeps staring at it, trying to work out the symbol etched on it.

And that makes me irritable again.

Maybe I was a bit hasty in giving it to her. It has my mother’s Irish family crest on the emblem, but she can’t know what it is, not unless she digs deep.

“Now that you’re wearing my ring, don’t let anyone touch you like that again.” I hear myself say. “You’re mine now, understand?”

Her eyes widen.

“Ragg believed our little story. If you can keep up the act at the wedding, you might actually be useful.” The final nail in the coffin comes out before I can stop it. “Until this deal is done, at least. Don’t make me regret keeping you around.”

Her hope dies in her eyes. Good. She needs to understand what this is.

What is this?I don’t even know myself.

“I understand,” she says quietly, her lips thinning as she glances at the ring on her finger again.

“Now, go to bed,” I say it more softly this time. “It’s getting late. And that damn storm is coming.”

She stares at me for a long moment, then leaves without another word.

I’m left, standing there like an idiot, wondering when the hell I started lying to myself, and the knowledge that I just choseherover everything I’ve been working towards. Until my hand closes over the razor in my pocket.

Slicing Ragg to ribbons is going to feel like therapy.

14

SAGE

The terrace stones are slick beneath my feet, ancient and crumbling like broken teeth. I’m running, but my legs feel heavy, like I’m moving through water. Behind me, footsteps echo, heavy boots on stone, getting closer.

“Stop! There’s nowhere to run!”

In my dream-hands, I clutch something important. The weight of it burns my palms. I have to hide. I have to…

The edge appears without warning. One moment, there’s solid ground; the next, there’s nothing but black water far below, reflecting like a broken mirror. I try to stop, but momentum carries me forward. My feet slip on moss-slicked stone, and the evidence flies from my grasp, tumbling into darkness.

“No!” I reach for it, and that’s when I fall.

The world tilts and rushes past me. The water rises to meet me, dark and hungry. Just before I sink, I see him, a figure standing above, silhouetted against the moon.

Troy Severin, watching me fall.

Then his face twists into my father’s with disappointment in his eyes as the water swallows me whole.I sink slowly, flailing through layers of cold water that feel like suffocating silk, wrapping around me like death and forgetting.