Page 188 of Wicked Believer

“If you think I’m going to allow you to steal her from me easily, think again,lover.” I sneer the final word with all the derision I feel for him, a mocking gesture of what he used to be to me.

“That was never my intention,” he growls back.

I release him quickly as one of the museum staff comes trudging by.

EvenIcannot strangle out of him whatever semblance of life somehow animates the Angel of Death, though right now I wish to, quite frankly.

Whatever this bloody onslaught of temptation is that he’s thrust uponmyfuture wife, I will never forgive him for it.

Yet another reason he’ll have to hate me.

It’s hardly my fault I couldn’t love him in the way he deserved.

We were both abundantly clear from the start what we could and couldn’t be to one another. And though neither of us knew it at the time, I was bloody destined for someone else, obviously.

What I once felt for Azrael could never hold a candle to my devotion to Charlotte. Even if I do sometimes question what might have been different if my blasted Mother hadn’t molded Charlotte with the sole purpose of her being my future queen.

“Then why?” I hold Azrael’s cold, infinite gaze as if I can will the almighty Death to bow to my command. There once was a time I could, I’m afraid.

“I think you know,” Azrael says.

My eyes darken. “Enlighten me.”

And then he kisses me until I’m certain my lungs are no longer capable of consuming air.

Until I am reminded of all I wasbeforeCharlotte’s love ruined me.

Her love has made me soft in ways that could be life-threatening for us both.

“What the fuck was that?” I snarl as his lips leave mine, my surprise sounding more like anger than what I actually feel.

The doubt he’s created in me.

But neither of us are given a reprieve to answer that as Imani, Mia, and one of the stage managers come barreling up behind us.

“Where’s Charlotte?” Mia demands, before Imani can get a word in edgewise, though if either of them saw what just happened between Azrael and me, they give no indication of it.

Imani lifts a brow, and I scowl at her. I have half a mind to fire Mia right then and there for using that kind of tone at me, along with whatever petty human jab caused her to sow a seed of doubt about my loyalty to Charlotte.

The same kind Death has just now sown inside me.

The insolent little fuck.

“I thought she was with you.” I cast a surreptitious glance toward Azrael.

“She told us she was looking foryou.” Imani’s eyes go wide. She exchanges worried looks with Mia and the museum’s stage manager. The museum employee mutters a few words into her headset, and chaos erupts in the gallery room that’s currently serving as backstage.

I know where Charlotte’s gone off to before we’ve even fully begun to search for her.

I close my eyes, sighing long and low. Her friend.

That’s what her quaint internal speech was all about.

She intends for her first true act of independence to be a heroic one.

I snarl. Bloody fuck.

I round upon Azrael. “Find her. Bring her back to me,” I growl as if he is stillmineto command. For the first time since my brother stripped my abilities from me, I feel what it means to be well and truly powerless.