Page 76 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Spilling

Rayze

Chains. I’m in chains.

I rip against hard steel, my skin tearing open at my wrists where iron manacles are secured. I grit my teeth and crane my head back, my arms forced up and out by the bolted clips against a basement ceiling.

I blink through the dark, adjusting my sight to the flickering light of a single torch in a damp, cold cellar.

I’m beneath Fang’s Edge. I must be. The telltale sound of a band pumping out music above, rattles the glass jugs of ale lined up on the back wall.

My knees scrape against dingy, wet tile, a drain rusted over with blood in the center of the room, the floor sloping gently toward it.

It reminds me of the slaughterhouse, and I become really fucking aware of what these chains are used for.

I struggle to my feet, my shoulders and armpits practically singing in relief as I take some of the strain away from hanging. I still have limited mobility, only able to move a few steps in any direction, but a few steps has been more than enough to kill someone before.

My magic crackles awake, white veins of lightning pulsing beneath my skin and up my arms to the manacles encasing my wrists. I slip beyond Fate’s veil, the threads around the cuffs deeply tangled but not impossible to release.

“Unlock,” I murmur the command.

The cuffs tighten . Blue bolts of power erupt through the air, a kinetic web of energy sprouting through the cellar and highlighting smoke that hangs dense in the small space.

Volt.

My fingers spasm, the cuffs slowly closing in around my wrists. I open my mouth to reverse the command, but an exhausted shiver runs through my body. Dark spots cloud the edges of my vision, and I blink down at the wet glazing the floor.

I thought it was water. Maybe run-off from the leaking, cracked ceiling.

It’s blood. My blood.

I close my eyes. Between the stab wounds in my thigh and back from Warrick and fighting The Rigged, I can’t risk using all of my magic to get out of these cuffs. I wasn’t bleeding out like this after the Blood Betrayal. I don’t know what this means if I don’t patch these wounds.

This could be…it. The end.

I inhale deeply. I can make my peace with that. I can make my peace with him —I hope.

“It’s fun watching you think, vicious,” the low voice of my snake rumbles from a dark corner.

My eyes pin on him, his muscled silhouette shifting among the shadows near the reserves of ale. He lights up in pieces, the source of the Volt clear as smoke spills from his sparking mouth.

“I called you that when we were kids, didn’t I?” he continues, eyes glowing faintly with the drug. “When you were Hallie.”

I roll my lips together. “Smoking Volt will only make your mind worse, Ivor, especially if you still have some of my magic inside you.”

“I know,” he says simply, “but it will also weaken you.”

I limit my breaths, taking in as little of the smoke as I can. It burns through my nose and down my throat, my power curling into a fetal position, burrowing further from my reach.

“What do you want?” I bite out.

“What do I want?” he repeats, dragging out the syllables and taking a long drag. Volt snaps and pops across his lips. It tangles with his lip piercing, then branches to the piercings in his dimples and brow. “Where do I fucking start?”

He presses his pipe down against my trench coat and weaponry, everything thrown in the corner. The silver of my bow glints under the electrical haze of Volt and the licking flame of a torch.

He’s left me in my muddied, torn tank and leather pants, and I curse the fabric hiding my body. I can do a lot more convincing naked.

“You make me ache,” he says, prowling toward me, “mentally, physically—there isn’t an ounce of me that doesn’t want to touch you.” He dips closer, my chains clanking as I strain to stand tall and unafraid. “To destroy you,” he murmurs.

His brow pinches, and he presses his forehead to mine, our glares locked. “You’ve fucking ruined me.” The soft static of lightning dances from his lips and stings against mine. “I’ve half a mind left, and every thought is you .”

He slants his body against mine, my cuffs scraping deeper into my wrists. Then his arms are around me, his fingers digging into my sides, and he’s—he’s holding me.

“Don’t you understand?” His hands drag into my hair, around my neck, grasp my waist. He claws and scrapes and tears, every inch of me tipping him toward the edge of madness.

He sinks to his knees and wrenches at my thighs, desperate to drag them apart, to taste and sate the pulsing throb of want in my veins, but he doesn’t make a move to release me from my pants.

He drops his hands to his thighs, fists curling as he holds himself back. He grabs at his head, his teeth gnashed as he looks up at me. “No. Why would you understand? You never felt what I felt, never wanted in the way I have, never—”

“Loved you?” I finish for him.

My head swims, my body veering toward passing the fuck out, but I force myself to hold on.

“You think I don’t love you, my snake?” Gods, save me.

“Warrick,” I say, tearing the words away from the place I’d buried them.

“Everything I’ve done— everything —was to know that I could love you.

There’s so much you don’t know about how I was raised and the time I spent before the Shard Daughters. ”

I take a breath, steadying myself. Blood seeps from my stab wounds, causing the cellar to warp. I blink back exhaustion, hanging on if only to finally say what I should’ve told him sooner.

“I was held captive by your father for two years after Squallspire,” I tell him, my heart aching with the words.

“I escaped, the Daughters took me in, but I was gone. It took years to gain some semblance of myself back, and the only thing that held me together was my mission to dismantle The Serpent Bossdom and claim it for Fate.”

He drives up from the ground to tower over me, yanking me by the hips until we’re nose-to-nose, his nails carving up my back before they latch into the ends of my hair. He cages me in, and his breath tangles with mine.

“Don’t fucking lie to me about this,” he breathes.

“I’m not.” My throat works. “I’ve worked my entire life to give myself a fighting chance at something as normal as love.

I stole it from myself when I chained us.

I hadn’t known it at the time, but I did, and in doing so, I stole that chance from you, too.

Russell took even more, and the rest—” I look away, teeth clenched.

“The rest I gave to Rayze Angeline: Angel of Sin, Shard Daughter to Fate, protective and loyal to her sisters, and unstoppable , especially in the presence of snakes.”

Warrick

“Chained us?” I murmur, my brows pinching.

“The Bond.” She wets her lips. “It wasn’t Fate given—or maybe it was, I don’t know—but I forced it that day. I knotted us together like I do with my commands.”

My fingers tighten around her waist but my arms hold her at bay. Her nose keeps crinkling, the wince across her face evident of the pain I wanted her to feel, but I don’t feel relief over it or any fucking better. I just feel worse, and I—Volt is fucking me up more than I thought it would.

“You’re lying,” I spit. “Why wouldn’t you tell me any of that when I was on your side, serving you? I asked so many times about after Squallspire.”

“Because you can’t see it like I can,” she says softly, her voice hoarse and her eyes dark.

“The way you look at me—it just changed. The second the words came out of my mouth, you don’t look at me like a survivor anymore.

You just see another one of your father’s victims, and I’ve worked too long and too hard to be seen that way by anyone, Warrick.

Even the Daughters don’t know everything.

Even I don’t know everything. My mind suppresses things, knots the worst of the memories away. ”

Her name is Rayze. She hurt you. You deserve to hurt her . I repeat the words through my mind like a war song, but something in me is cracking open.

“I don’t think I could look at you and see anything besides strength, devil,” I admit, her lips wobbling. “If my expression changed, it’s because I was already angry with you, but this is worse. I was so rough with you when were together. Our hunts, tying each other up, I never would’ve—”

“No,” she interrupts, her chains rattling as she pulls toward me, desperate.

“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. I needed your love, Warrick, and I needed it dark.

You gave me control in situations where I never was with him, and it healed pieces of myself.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly enjoy sex until you.

When we were together, I didn’t even think of Russell.

That’s the kind of power you gave back to me, and even if you kill me, thank you. ”

I squeeze my eyes shut as Volt stings through my mind, distorting the conversation. Pieces of what she told me are already melting away, and I hate that, because this is important. What she told me—I can’t forget this.

But I will. As always.

What’s worse is I think I may have known this already. We might’ve talked about it, or maybe I guessed it, but some part of me knew. I can feel it like an itch at the back of my mind, remembering a night with two women, the three of us drinking and talking about Rayze.

I grunt in frustration and rake my hands through my hair, tugging at the ends as I try to sort through us . Us and how we bleed for each other.

“Oh, my snake.” Rayze shakes her head with a soft exhale. “Look how we’ve broken each other.”

“Don’t make this out to be mutual destruction,” I grit out.

She leans her body into mine, defeated. “I’m sorry.” Her voice is soft, distant. “I do love you, Warrick. It just took me a long time to not feel numb to it.”

I rip back. I know her tactics. If she thinks she can get in my fucking pants, then she’ll escape, but her body falls limp.

Her head hangs down and her legs give out.

“Rayze?” I shoot forward before her knees can crack against the tile, catching her around the hips, my hand bracing against her spine.

Warm, wet fabric meets my palm, and I pull my hand away with a curse.

You stabbed her, you fucking asshole, and you forgot.

“Damn it.” I grasp her face and pat her cheek a few times. “Wake up, devil.”

Her lashes flutter, nothing but a pained moan escaping her lips.

“Dying isn’t going to get you out of this,” I growl, tearing the keys to her cuffs from my belt and unlocking her wrists.

I catch her against me, her head lolling to my chest. “I mean it, angel. Don’t you fucking dare.

If you think I’m angry now, you don’t want to know my rage if you leave me in this shithole situation by myself. ”

Green peers through her lashes, like she’s trying to listen, trying to hold on, but her tank and pants are soaked through. Not with mud or rain.

With her blood.

What have I done? I rush us up the basement staircase, shouldering open the door and crushing through the packed heat of Fang’s Edge, the club spilling over with everyone who evacuated the Underground.

“ Rayze ,” I shake her in panic, weaving through the crowd of drunken fools, people partying away their worries. Her arm dangles limp, her chest— No .

“Get out of my fucking way!” I roar into the crowd, and Serpents signal to the band on stage. The crash of their instruments halts, stumbling drunks teetering out of my path as I barrel toward the floor.

I lie Rayze down, shoving two fingers against her pulse. It flutters faintly. Too fucking faintly. I shuck off my Serpent vest and roll her to her stomach, thrusting up her shirt and cursing at the sight of her stab wound. Her back is soaked, the angry, bleeding gash spilling and spilling .

I shove my vest against it, then my knee to hold it in place, and rip free my Serpent blade, cutting the back legs of her pants open. I find her second wound on her thigh, bleeding just as badly.

Fuck.

Dacre crouches beside me, his dark brows knitted as he studies the wounds. “You need to seal those.”

I’ll kill him.

“You want help Boss?” he asks.