Page 102 of The Devil's Thorn

“Noted,” he says.

“Good.”

“So what do I give you next?”

“Something harder.”

“And if you fail?”

“I don’t.”

We stare at each other again. This time, there’s no space left between us that isn’t charged.

He lifts his glass toward me slightly. “To vitamins and daggers, then.”

“And to underestimating the wrong girl.”

His glass still hangs loosely in his fingers, but the burn in his gaze is hotter than the liquor in either of our veins.

I watch the way his throat moves when he swallows, slow and controlled.

His control is everything. But even he doesn’t realize how much of it I’ve already stolen.

“You ever killed anyone?”

The question lands between us like a blade. Casual. But it isn’t. Not whenheasks it. Not when the room feels like it’s holding its breath.

I don’t react right away. Just stare at him. And think about the way my finger curled around the trigger that night on the rooftop, Rafael’s chest in the center of my crosshairs.

I think about how steady my breath was. How calm my heart stayed. How ready I felt. Even if I never took the shot.

“No,” I say finally, slow. Honest. But notsoft.“Not yet.”

A flicker flashes in his eyes. Approval? Curiosity?

Maybe something darker.

“But that doesn’t mean I won’t,” I add quietly, meeting his gaze. “I’ll do what I have to. If someone puts themselves between me and what I want…”

“Then what?”

I smile, slow and razor-edged. “Then they made a very stupid mistake.”

Rafael leans against the edge of the desk again, but he doesn’t look away. He studies me like he’s searching for the crack in the mask. For the girl buried beneath the fire.

But she’s gone. And the woman in her place doesn’t need to pretend anymore.

“Killing changes things,” he says eventually.

“So does lying. So does betrayal. So does surviving.”

“All true.”

He sets the glass down with a soft click. The air thickens. “But the first kill—it marks you,” he continues. “There’s a before and an after. And you don’t get to go back.”

I tilt my head, unbothered. “What if there’s nothing I want to go back to?”

A beat passes. Then another. And I see it. The moment something shifts in his expression. It’s not pity. It’s not fear. It’sunderstanding.And that’s more dangerous than anything else he could feel.