Page 56 of Terror Tuesday

Another quick flip on the screen shows a different room… Naomi screaming, terrified. She rushes through the door of the altar room and shoves against the wall, making herself small. There isn’t any sound on the footage, but her chest heaves as her mouth opens wide in a silent scream.

I lurch away from the screen, hand over my throat. Horror settles in every nerve ending until I want to dig them all out.

But I can’t look away. I owe her that much.

The camera flashes to me in the first room, working the clues, blissfully unaware I’m only a few cottages away from horrific slaughter. It’s difficult to swallow past my tightened throat. I was so close to the danger… If only I were quicker. Could I have saved them?

By the time the camera cuts to Naomi again, the large man stands over her dead body with a butcher’s knife, carefullycarving his message into her before binding her floppy arms and legs in a showcase. And then he circles back to get me…

Only he couldn’t.

Because Vanq saved me.

I’m shaking by the time the masked man materializes from the eclipse of the crypts. Heavy boots thud a littletoosoftly for his frame. He’s built, but not big. The scent of candle wax and smoke lingers around him like an oath. Tall and foreboding, he stands a few feet away from me as I jab my blade toward his chest.

But even while doing the motion, I’m not sure I even need to anymore…

Is he like my dark guardian angel?

My tight fist trembles, but not from fear any longer. Something stranger. Something hotter. Thighs tense like I’m preparing to run, but the heat there says otherwise. Just his presence has already primed me formore…

“Do you know what you just watched?” he asks, voice low and intimate as he creeps one step forward.

I nod. “The truth.”

“No,” he corrects gently. “Just the beginning of it.”

As my lips part to ask what he means, he moves closer. I can smell cold iron on his dark hoodie. I know there’s dried blood on his gloves—the same from that night I met him. But something about it makes my pulse beat between my legs.

“Youwatchedme,” I whisper, gaze flicking to the shadow where his face should be. “On the surveillance cameras. You could’ve let that monster take me too.”

Rapidly, he shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t letanyonetouch you,” he says. “Not when I’ve read every page of your pain. When I’ve stitched every need you have into my soul. Just so I can be the one to give them to you.”

I exhale shakily, my knees going weak. “You shouldn’t have… You shouldn’tknowwhat I need.”

He shrugs. “But I do.” With his full height at least a foot taller than me, he leans over to whisper in my ear. “You don’t want to be rescued. You want release—from the cage they called a future.”

Tears fill my eyes. Some part of me should hate that he understands me so much better than I know myself. The other…is comforted that he’s sharing the truth in a world of confusion and lies.

When he straightens, his foreboding figure looms over me. “Only the strongest submit by choice. And you, myMonarch, are stronger than you know.”

Despite my heart pounding against my ribs, I close the knife and slip it in my pocket. Straightening my shoulders, I say, “You helped me.”

His voice is deep, calm, and smooth. “I did.”

“Why?”

“The answer to that question can only be given once you kneel before me.” He waves his gloved palms at the stones in front of him.

With a glance around at the demented wedding ceremony he’s set up, I scan his frame once more. Considering him. The warped sense of safety that he provides. Does he have the answers I’m looking for?

Why did he bring me here?

Why was Naomi killed?

And why… Why has this man taken such an interest inme?

If I lower myself to my stalker, I might never be free again. But maybe freedom was never the point.