Page 35
Click.
The wood creaked.
Click.
Click.
The door creaked.
But I couldn’t look away from my dolls. The crimson rain held me in a trance.
Fixated on the life pouring out of my terrible dolls’ bodies.
A hand landed on my shoulder, startling me.
“Xeniya,” Neeve breathed. “Are you okay?”
I tilted my chin up to look at her. “Are you?”
She smiled softly and shook her head. “Of course not.”
Neeve didn't pull her hand away, and I found myself strangely grateful for the contact. Her love for me wasn't grand. It lived in quiet moments like these. Simple, grounding, human connection.
“I wanted my dolls dead.”
“I know.” She squeezed my shoulder again. “I did too.”
Her focus shifted to my scarlet painting, my masterpiece of eunuchs.
“I don’t have enough time to keep torturing them and search for the girl.”
Neeve tilted her head, her red hair spilling over her shoulders, almost perfectly matching the blood. “Are you going to kill Aleksandr?”
“Yes.” I stood and approached my ex-boyfriend’s father. “I would like to end him more slowly, but then, maybe he’s not even important enough for that.”
Yanking down his gag was a mistake. Of course, the first thing he did was threaten me.
“Killing me won’t keep you safe, little whore.”
“Oh?” I smiled mischievously. “Do you think your son will avenge you?”
“Severin is a pathetic boy. No, my man, the one who failed to kill you in the Gauntlet, is still coming for you,” he snarled, the words crawling out of his mouth like a corpse from a grave. “You survived him once, but you won’t survive him again.”
The blood drained from my face as I met Aleksandr’s cold, harsh eyes. Pressure closed around my throat, and my hand flew to my neck, my vision blurring as the memory hit me.
Age 17
Eighteen Years Ago
It was the war games, and I was going to win!
I was running through the forest, someone hot on my heels. I’d just stolen a flag from Severin’s team. The Gauntlet was essentially an amplified, dangerous version of capture the flag, and his team was pissed I’d managed to sneak past their defenses. Maybe pissed enough to attack me brutally.
And from the sound of the boy pursuing me, I knew they’d try.
Technically, we weren’t supposed to kill each other and could only use BB guns and paintballs, but we were very much allowed to hurt each other.
My pursuer’s footfalls grew louder—closer. Too close. Whoever it was, his stride was longer and his pace faster. Technically, that description matched most of the boys I trained with. So I still wasn’t sure what I was up against.
