I stepped out of Gray’s bedroom after showering, dressed in the clothes he had fetched from my room for me. I tried not to think
about the way he’d found homes for the spare sets in his drawers and his closet, hinting at the number of nights he expected me to spend here.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I walked past the dresser, prodding at the bite marks on each side of my neck. The lacy bralette I wore beneath an off-shoulder black sweater did nothing to disguise them, leaving them open to view. I had a feeling it was intentional, since Gray had chosen what to leave out and what to pack away.
He wasn’t in the bedroom, giving me a few moments to contemplate my next move. Ending up back here after running was the worst-case scenario. He would know something was wrong, and I didn’t know how much I could lie and insinuate that I’d been afraid of Susannah when she didn’t turn up after our altercation.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I moved to the door, pulling it open and stepping into the sitting area. There was no sign of Gray on the sofa, so I ducked my head low and kept my gaze fixated on the floor in front of me. Making my way to the door to the hallway, I considered my options for escape.
The woods weren’t an option, clearly.
“Where are you sneaking off to?” he asked, stopping me as I approached the door.
I dropped the hand that had started to reach for the doorknob, letting it fall to my side as I turned to face him at his desk with a sad, pathetic smile I
knew would do nothing to appease his curiosity.
“I was just going to go grab something to eat,” I said, picking at my fingers with the hand that stayed by my side. My hand rubbed against the fabric of my leggings, and I fought to still the motion. “Do you want me to bring you anything?”
“I hardly think you’re in any position to give me the only nourishment I’m interested in right now,” he said, the smirk that transformed his face playful. Something in it didn’t reach his eyes in the same way it normally would have, and I couldn’t decide if what had changed was him or just my perception of him. “Sit, please. I have something I’d like to discuss with you first.”
I smiled, pursing my lips as I took the seat in front of his desk. He stood from his seat the moment my ass touched the chair, walking around to my side and leaning against the desk. He’d stripped off his suit jacket, but his white shirt was still stained with the blood of the werewolves he’d slaughtered. He didn’t seem to mind as he undid his cufflinks, rolling his sleeves up to reveal his forearms.
“Ooo… we’re using good manners. Am I in trouble?” I asked, forcing a playful smile to my face.
He stared at me with the slightest of smirks, a tiny huff of humorless breath escaping him as he saw right through my bullshit.
“That depends. Do you want me to punish you, Witchling?” he asked, reaching down to grip the edge of his desk. His grip tightened until the wood groaned, and I shifted in my chair.
“Am I going to enjoy it?” I asked, my breath shuddering with fake laughter.
He tipped his head to the side as he watched me, releasing the desk with a single hand to pick up the knife he must have taken from the werewolf I’d thrown it at. He toyed with the blade, using it to poke the thumb of his other hand. Blood welled from the wound, and he reached forward to drag it over my lip. I swallowed, resisting the urge to lick my lips.
“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked.
I swallowed, choking on my laughter. “You’re holding a knife,” I said pointedly, my gaze dropping to the sharp, pointy thing I very much feared would be heading for my heart soon enough.
He chuckled, placing it on the desk behind him as he leaned toward me. “When have I ever hurt you? We both know I’m far more likely to bend you
over this desk and fuck you until you cannot breathe. Maybe then you will understand the fear I felt when Kairos informed me you’d gone into the woods,” he growled, his voice dropping lower as all pretense of civility dropped off his face. That guarded mask of humanity that he so carefully wore fled, revealing the brutal monster waiting beneath his skin.
“Is that the part I would enjoy?” I asked, placing my hands in my lap.
He studied the motion, the reserved action that was supposed to be how I’d behaved during the entirety of our seduction. According to my father, men preferred subservient, quiet women.
Then there was me.
Gray sighed, leaning forward with a hand on each arm of the chair I sat in. He moved fluidly, his body sliding through the space between us until he stood, leaning into my face as I sat back fully. He bent at the waist, caging me into my seat until all I could see was him.
“Would you like to find out, love?”
I swallowed, drawing my bottom lip between my teeth. I couldn’t function with him so close, with the way his gaze examined every corner of my face, as if he could see inside me.
See the doubt Susannah had planted.
“What did she say to you?” he asked when I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t find the words to answer his sexual advances, because even though it made things clench low in my stomach, my brain wasn’t quite as on board with the idea.
“She came to me with a portrait of my aunt. She knew who I was,” I said, swallowing as I gave him just enough of the truth to attempt to disguise my deception.
“And how did that lead to you making the incredibly stupid decision to go into the woods on your own?” he asked, the steel of his eyes glimmering coldly.
“She told me she would allow me to live if I left Hollow’s Grove and never came back. I didn’t want to come here in the first place. Why would I hesitate to leave?” I asked.
“If Susannah wanted you to leave the school, why wouldn’t she have arranged for someone to drive you to town?” Gray asked.
I swallowed as I tried to think of what I could say to that. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might have arranged transport for me if I hadn’t been in the process of burying her alive.
“Maybe she didn’t want me to survive, and letting those things take care of me in the woods was a way to not get her hands dirty,” I said, echoing the same thoughts I’d already had on my own. There was something so tragic about thinking the only family I had would dispose of me like that.
Tragic, but unsurprising.
“Hmmm.” Gray straightened, releasing the arms of the chair. “Kairos,” he called. The door to Gray’s office opened as if the other man had been lurking on the other side, waiting for Gray to summon him. Kairos stepped in, shoving his hands into his pockets as he observed us. “Tell me what you saw.”
Kairos glanced at me, and there was an apology in that stare as he winced, turning to hold Gray’s inquisitive look. “Susannah followed Willow into the gardens. A few moments later, Willow sprinted into the woods.”
“And what of Susannah? Where is she now?” Gray asked, settling his deep stare on me.
My thoughts raced, my palms sweating as I picked at my fingers in my
lap.
“Why were you watching me?” I asked, turning to look at Kairos over
my shoulder more fully.
“Because I asked him to. I protect what is mine, even if it means preventing you from making stupid fucking decisions that threaten your own safety,” Gray snapped, leveling me with a glare that I swore could have made anyone wither on the spot.
“Bring Susannah to me. I want to know exactly what she said to Willow in that garden. Clearly, I am not going to get the truth from my witchling,” he said, ordering Kairos to do his bidding.
The other man shifted on his feet, and my eyes drifted closed. I knew what was coming next.
“That’s the problem, though. Nobody can find Susannah. She never left the gardens from what I saw,” Kairos said.
The weight of his gaze on the side of my face made me want to shrink back inside myself. There was a moment of silence, a beat and a pause where nobody dared to speak or move.
Gray’s stunned laughter broke it, and he reached down to run the back of his knuckles over my cheek. “Devious little witch,” he muttered, finally
grasping me by my chin and forcing my gaze up to his. “You really are so fucking beautiful, even when you lie through your teeth.”
“I haven’t lied,” I argued, jerking back from his touch. “Susannah told me to leave Hollow’s Grove. I left because I was afraid of what she would do to me if I did not.”
“And you didn’t once consider coming to me for help. I wonder why that might be,” Gray murmured, dropping his hand away from my face. “Search in the dirt of the garden beds.” The order went to Kairos, who nodded with wide eyes and retreated from the room.
The moment the door closed behind him, Gray released a slow, steady sigh. The air tinged with something dark, my skin crawling as he stepped around the edge of his desk.
“It really is a shame. I’d hoped to hold on to these until everything was ready so it would be less traumatic for you.”
He approached the portrait of Lucifer Morningstar, slipping his fingers beneath the edge to pull it away from the wall. It swung out on hinges, revealing the metal of a safe behind it. Everything in me sat up straighter, my swallow getting stuck in my throat. Gray touched his hand to the safe, allowing the biometric technology to recognize all his fingerprints. The lock clicked open, and Gray didn’t so much as glance back at me as the runes carved into the metal glowed. He grasped the handle, swinging the door open.
I couldn’t breathe.
My lungs filled with raw, unfiltered power the moment the safe opened, and I could barely see through the haze of black as he reached into the safe and pulled something free. I gasped for breath, curling over myself as pain tore my insides in two, as my stomach cramped, and things felt like they shifted within me to make room for the new magic.
For what I’d never been able to touch.
Gray turned away from the safe, holding the unsuspecting velvet bag in his hand. It was the deepest black, the fabric smooth as he ran his finger over the surface of it.
The bones woke up. They rose to answer his call as my back bowed and then straightened.
“You’ve had them all this time,” I gasped, running my hand over my arm as he stepped around the desk. I’d wanted the bones; thought they were the key to completing my destiny.
Now I couldn’t wait to get away from them.
I pushed to my feet, swaying beneath the power trying to draw me in and consume me. I stepped around the arm of the chair as Gray’s voice lashed out like a whip.
“Sit down, Willow,” he ordered, the compulsion in his voice forcing me back to my chair.
He held out the bones for me, watching and waiting for me to take them in my grip. Despite a lifetime of training for this moment, I didn’t want them.
I didn’t want to aid in whatever he had planned, and with the way his blue eyes bore down on me, there was no doubt that it was something.
Something bad.
“Take the bones, Witchling,” he said.
My hand rose as if it would take them in spite of my desires, but I forced my fingers to curl into my palm. Refusing to touch them, to take them on his terms.
“No,” I said, gasping as I fought his compulsion and shook my head. It took everything in me to fight it, to keep my hand away from the bag. “I want no part in this.”
“Your entire life has been a part of this,” he murmured softly, reaching out with his free hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. It was wet, and it was only then that I realized I was sweating with the effort of denying the bones.
Of refusing to allow them to make their home with me.
“Then I guess it’s time I make a new one for myself,” I grunted.
Gray smiled, a humorless, twisted thing filled with pity. “I have waited a very long time for you, and my patience grows thin. You will accept the bones one way or another.”
“I don’t want them anymore. Not until you tell me the truth,” I said, laying my hands atop the arms of the chair. I grabbed onto the wood, digging my nails into it with the force of resisting the call.
“What you want does not matter. They’ve chosen you,” he said, opening the top of the bag and staring into it. The soft, pulsing light of faint purple that illuminated his face would live in my nightmares for an eternity.
He snapped out with his free hand, grabbing me by the hair and tugging my head back. My neck arched back, my arms flailing as I tried to find a part of him to scratch.
“Gray!” I protested, struggling as he shoved the weight of something eternal into my chest.
I rasped, power flooding my chest as the bones rose from the bag. He held the soft velvet against my skin, allowing the bones to shift and mold themselves as they climbed around my neck. I squeezed my eyes closed, fighting the burning pain that they brought. It was like nothing I’d ever known before, like being remade and reborn as they snapped and tumbled, the click-clack of bones bumping against one another as they settled into the shape of a necklace and stayed.
I reached up, tugging at the bones and trying to remove them. My aunt hadn’t worn them as a necklace when I’d seen her, and my mother had never mentioned anything of the sort when she spoke of the bag the Hecate witches had been known to carry.
“Why?” I wheezed when the bones wouldn’t budge. I didn’t understand. Gray leaned forward, touching his mouth to the corner of my lips gently. “Because you will be the last of the Hecate line and the magic in
those bones will die with you, my love.”
