Page 73 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Run, Angel, Run

Warrick

My boots slip across slick shingles. Her coat flaps between gray sheets of rain. My angel of sin . My fucking reckoning. I lift a hand to grasp my head.

Flashes. Answers. They’re there. So close.

She likes the hunt. Took magic scissors to our Bond with bright, beautiful eyes. It was our foreplay. These streets were our playground.

But this time, it feels different. She’s different. Throwing herself into the middle of battles just to be some kind of decoy or distraction. It’s almost like her goal is to create as much chaos between Synlon and Rathem as possible.

Like she doesn’t give a damn if she dies in the process. Jumping out of buildings. Pushing her power to the brink.

All of this, it’s starting to feel like an homage. A farewell.

Over my dead fucking body will I say goodbye.

“Angel,” I spit and spot her dart ahead before my breath seizes in my chest.

She whips her bow off her back and shiny steel slices through the storm.

Rayze

My arrow nails him in the stomach.

He doesn’t flinch. Just rips it from his skin and stalks across the roof to where I teeter on the edge. Dark crimson slides down his abdomen before it washes away. Fuck me .

“More,” he yells and spreads his arms. His smile slips into a deadly calm. “I fucking dare you.” He shakes out his hair and slicks it back with a hand, his eyes piercing through my fucking soul.

The exact words he spoke during one of our first hunts. Some part of him, no matter how corrupted, remembers. I’d given up hope that maybe he truly would remember anything, but I can see it in his eyes. Pieces of us are alive in his mind.

Maybe more remains.

My chest blooms with desire. Thrill pricks against my cheeks, and thunder shakes the city. I secure my bow, the distance between us closing.

Then I spread my arms and tip backward off the roof.

“Ease,” I command.

City lights soar past me before my free fall slows into something manageable.

But my magic cracks with tension, my limbs exhausted, and my power—it gives out.

I curse and fall the final twelve feet, crumpling to the ground with a shout of pain. Tendons and ligaments snap up the backs of my ankles. My knees crack against gravel. Splintering pain radiates from my feet to my spine.

Then sharp steel nails me in the back.

I gasp, snapping my head up and catching sight of Warrick disappearing from his perch on the roof’s ledge. He fucking stabbed me. I wrench the blade out of my back in awe.

Finally. A real hunt.

The building’s fire escape whines as he jumps down between platforms, ignoring ladders and stairs, his eyes locked on me.

I limp in a half-sprint toward a trench.

“ Rayyyyyzzzeeee Angeeeeliiiiine .” His singing carries through the alleyway.

Pain ruptures in the back of my thigh.

I hiss and bite down on my tongue, my hand reaching around to find the shaft of another Godsdamn dagger. I tear it free, letting it clang to asphalt as I hurry forward.

The heavy rattle of armor rings out behind me, and I glance over my shoulder.

Warrick prowls after me, a hulking mass of muscle, rage, and lust. His face is stretched wild with a crazed smile.

Irresistible.

My chest squeezes. Some part of me is healing in his presence. The part I banished to the depth of myself, crippled and left fetal. The part that loves as strong as I hate. It resurrects with every step he takes closer to me.

My snake. My mess. My beautiful, heartbreaking destruction. He’s going to eat me alive, and I so wish I could let him enjoy it.

A group of soldiers file behind him. Dacre Henson hands Warrick a set of Serpent chains and a syringe of Volt.

“Stay back,” Warrick orders. “She’s mine.”

I force myself faster, stumbling down the ramp into the trench.

But he’s faster, stronger—Volt crackling over his skin as he sprints past me on the lip of the trench and jumps down, chains rattling in the rain.

Warrick

I want to put her at my mercy. Thighs shaking. Cum on my palm, on her lips, in our mouths. Oh, how will she unravel? Screaming? Moaning? Bleeding—a certainty. Mine mine mine mine mine mine—

“You caught me,” she breathes, her eyes gleaming, “my pretty, pretty plaything.”

Lightning crackles over my lips with a sharp smile. “Beg.” Memories surge and I lean over her, studying her determined features.

Gods, she’s so perfect.

“You remember enough to know I would never beg,” she says, an uncertain shake to her voice despite her mask of strength.

I fist her hair and wrench her against me, locking an arm around her when she thrashes forward.

“You look confused,” I breathe against the back of her ear. “So let me make it clear: I win. You running away? Not gonna happen, vicious. Not until you tell me what in the fuck you’re planning with Torren and give me back every memory you stole.”

Nothing but a sharp intake of breath.

“The first night was the hardest,” I bite out. “My city in chaos. No angel. No me. All my good- leeched .”

My jaw ticks, lightning blistering my tongue. Shadows become sharper. Among them, I don’t just see her. I see other women. Red and Fangs . I clutch her hair tighter.

Sparks prick through my skull, and with them—more.

Her legs spread.

Her mouth on mine.

Her voice popping off in a hundred various conversations. Yelling, whispering, aching. Pieces of my mind returned. Memories that drip and pulse with yearning.

I fasten her closer. Even the things I seemed to claw back with Brass, they’re smeared at the edges. Not quite gone, but not quite there.

Toying with me. Always. Fucking. Toying.

Above, a shadow moves in, closer and closer, but I don’t care. I’m too close to the truth, to everything I lost.

“I want my mind back . Give. It. Back,” I growl and shake her.

Rayze opens her mouth. I can see it in her eyes, her desire to make me whole, to have me back, to have us back—

But everything erupts into blinding white, our bodies driven apart, as Brass detonates, capsules slamming down into the mud.