Page 77 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Die A Happy Man

Rayze

Rope. Around my wrists. My chest. My waist. My legs forced wide with my ankles tied to chair legs. Firelight pools in orange splotches through my lashes. I suck in sharply when Warrick’s apartment of Serpent wealth tilts and blurs, my mouth stale.

Everything in me is sore . My body is drenched in fatigue, days of keeping myself going and invigorated with Brass now drained away. My heart hurts in more ways than one. I needed to say what I said, but I don’t know if I can do it again, and the way he’s watching me now—I don’t think he remembers.

Warrick sits opposite me in his large, emerald green chair. He’s without his Serpent vest, one ankle propped against his knee and his head pressed into his palm. He straightens when he notices I’m awake, his hands dropping to the armrests and gripping them tight.

“Good, you’re awake.” He stands and moves to his fireplace, turning his back to me. “Now we can finish this.”

The hearth’s mouth yawns across an accent wall of black marble. Fire crackles and pops within, and my eyes fasten to the multiple iron objects left propped against the floor, their sharp ends in the fire and a blazing white.

He saved me. That’s the only sign that maybe he remembers enough to know I’m surrendering.

My pantleg over my injured thigh and the back of my tank have been cut open.

Bandages wrap around my thigh and torso, the wounds stitched while I was out.

I crane my chin over my shoulder and find my trench coat atop his bed.

All of my daggers, my arrows, and my bow rest with it. Everything is laid neatly.

With care .

My thighs twitch, a far deeper ache awakening inside me, but I let my magic rest. I can’t waste it on our game, not now.

The Kraken will come to Fang’s Edge. I can tell by the noise outside Warrick’s apartment doors that Henson must’ve evacuated the Underground to here.

What remains of Synlon now camps in a club isolated on the outskirts of the city.

We’re easy to surround and even easier to kill, but Warrick is too wrapped up in me to notice the risks he’s taken.

I’m a lot of things, but I’m always a Shard Daughter, and we don’t let innocents die if we can stop it.

“Angel so pretty,” he sings to fire, “but even angels bleed.”

Brilliant. He’s singing again. I tilt my head back and release a slow exhale.

Warrick picks up one the branding irons, studying the glowing Serpent crest. Then he sets it back into the fire and unsheathes his Serpent blade, heating its steel.

“This is hardly an honorable fight. Let me free. We can talk.” I pull against my bindings, loosening them.

He glances over his shoulder and cocks a brow. “I don’t remember you fucking me for my honor, angel.”

I look over the room again. No Volt . I study his back muscles and broad shoulders, searching for the blue crackle of the drug, but none appear. If he’s not smoking it, then there’s a chance he’s more coherent.

“How long was I unconscious?” I ask.

“A night or two.” He hums softly.

Two days? I yank against my rope harder. We’ve less time than I thought. The Kraken won’t wait long to take advantage of such a weakened position.

“Warrick.” My jaw hardens. “Did The Rigged take the Underground?”

He glances over his shoulder. Confusion crosses his features as if he’s no idea what I’m talking about. Then he nods a few times.

“Messy,” he grits out and wiggles his fingers around his head. “Tangled. Sometimes words—” His knuckles whiten against the hilt of his blade before a vicious shudder wracks his entire body. “So jumbled,” he murmurs and turns his attention back to the fire.

Remorse thickens my tongue.

“Admire your handiwork,” he continues after a beat.

Then his body snaps toward mine, his Serpent blade white hot in his grip.

“But you—you always come back some way. Pretty green eyes and wicked lies.” He closes the distance. He circles my chair, grabs its back, and leans to my ear.

“First, your scent,” he says and drifts his nose through my hair. “Leather and rain.”

I stiffen when he lifts my wet hair with the hot steel of his blade. The strands steam against the iron.

“Betrayal. Sweat.” He sinks the blade to my shoulder, and my flesh melts. “Determination. Temptation.”

My tongue bleeds with the effort to hold my scream at bay, my teeth slicing in. My pussy clenches.

“Next,” he whispers and rips the blade from my skin, “your taste. Sweet as a lethal trap.”

He rounds the chair and lowers into a slow crouch before me. The tip of his blade thunks into the wood between my spread thighs. Its heat penetrates the leather of my pants, and I close my eyes with a heavy breath.

“You’ve been an essence. An invisible, taunting thing. Couldn’t keep you.” He drags the blade toward my inner thigh, and his eyes brighten with his craze. “But I can now, and it’s so impossibly clear, Rayze Angeline.”

“What is?” I whisper.

“I exist to be your enemy or your love,” he says softly, thoughtfully, trailing the burning tip of his blade just below my bandaged thigh.

“But I’ll never be your nothing. Until you’ve learned that lesson—” Our gazes lock with matched lust as the smell of burning leather drifts between us—“Our war remains.”

“My angel of sin,” he breathes, and the energy between us shifts, his smile—sadder, darker. “My greatest ache,” he whispers.

I don’t dare break his gaze. Even as the iron blade sinks past leather and stings against my inner thigh.

“Some Bonds,” I say carefully, “are woven with the singular purpose to be severed. Ours was in more ways than one. Maybe you were made to find me, Warrick, but we were bound by nothing more than fear.” I swallow.

“I tied you to me as a girl. It was nothing more than an accident, but it defined us. I couldn’t take it back.

” My chin trembles and I look away from the pain in his eyes. “But I could break it.”

He tosses the blade to the floor. Its clatter rings through the room, and he strides to the fire, his back to me.

Another wiggle of my fingers and the knot loosens.

“Warrick,” and I say his name the way I used to.

Soft. Wanting. The shape of it slips with ease from my tongue, always desperate to be spoken.

“What we had—I don’t know if it was ever real with the Bond.

But now? This? What you’re feeling is true and it’s yours.

It’s not mine or a piece of me pushing you to feel anything.

I’m sorry it cost so much to be free, but I hope you can at least see that—”

“Stop,” he croaks and clutches the mantel.

The muscles down his tatted back bunch and tighten as he hangs his head.

“Pretty girl from pretty mirrors,” he whispers, “but neither are pretty up close, are they? Broken. Sharp, sharp, sharp.”

“Warrick.” Even softer this time. Delicate as a bowstring. Pluck it . “You’ve caught me. You’ve won. Don’t you want your prize?”

His fist slams against the mantel. Then he spins to me and crosses the room in three large strides.

His hands grasp my face. His nails dig into the back of my skull. His eyes search mine, his hate falling victim to his desperation.

Softly, he hovers his lips over mine, breathes between them as if sharing each ragged exhale will allow him to steal back his mind.

Warrick

I wrap her hair in my fist and jerk her head back. Her jaw tenses, but her glare shifts toward a needy desire. I lick my lips, and her gaze zeroes in on my mouth.

She smirks .

Salacious little villain.

Her tongue flicks over my lips—

And I cave. I can’t help it. This was always real. The Bond. Our games. Cannon fodder . Little extras to pass the time. But kissing her?

I sink my mouth against hers.

Kissing her is a war. An endless battle of gasps and tongues and hunger—a fight made right only with another touch, scrape, or press. I’m shattered but remade in the fire of her gaze and the heat between her thighs.

My fingers curl and tug through her hair. My teeth drag from swollen lips to the tip of her chin and the pulse of her throat.

I hate this woman.

I hate what she’s done to my mind, to my heart, to my fucking soul.

But I’m starved for her.

And she knows it.

This is dangerous. To give in. To take. I’ve learned this lesson. Was broken by it.

But I’ll bend for her truth. I always will.

Her head kicks back with a soft gasp, and I groan at the sight of my teeth marks against her shoulder. Mine .