Page 145 of Anathema
Not a chance.
He turned away, but I managed to catch a glimpse of the dimple in his cheek. “Perhaps I should lock my door. I wouldn’t want you thinking I was eager to test your stalking skills.”
“Nor would I want to give you the impression my visit was anything but lethal.” I buried a smile into my mug and took another sip of my tea.
“Careful now,” he said, looking out over the dark landscape. “I consider threats to my life an invitation.”
I chuckled at that. “For what? Retaliation?”
Brow cocked, he set his drink down and, without warning, sprang up onto the balustrade, balancing himself on the stony rail with an uncanny agility, given his size.
Gasping a breath, I lurched forward, nearly dropping my mug. “What are you doing?”
Air blasted out of me when he leapt to my balcony, over the perilous drop that would’ve surely crushed the life out of him with one misstep. He landed without so much as a sound, a deadly quiet to his every move that left me wondering if his victims ever saw, or heard, him coming. If they stared into the devil’s eyes before he claimed their souls, or if the world flicked to blackness with no explanation. Neither sound, nor warning.
Eyes on me, he climbed down from the railing, and as he prowled toward me, I backed up a step. Another. Then another. The wall behind me pressed into my spine, while he drew closer and yanked a blade from its holster at his thigh. “As I said, I consider threats to my life an invitation.” The broad side of the blade scratched over the fabric of my robe when he gently dragged it across my tightly contracted stomach. “You ought to be careful how you wield them,” he warned in that rich, baritone voice.
My spine stiffened at the awareness of the blade between us and the errant splashes of tea across my hand alerted me to the tremble in my body. Not from fear, though. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
An inexplicable thrill wound through me, while his eyes, ravishingly intense, seemed captivated by my lips. Far too riveted for me to mistake his thoughts right then. The indisputable longing to devour them.
He relieved me of the mug, setting it on the railing beside us, then placed the blade into my palm, curling my fingers around the hilt. With a sweep of his fingertip, he brushed the hair from my shoulders, and warm breath, scented with smoldering spice and caramel, scattered across my skin when he angled his mouth toward my neck.
My thighs clenched and shallow breaths stuttered out of me. I was all too aware that beneath his deadly charm and mesmerizing gaze hid a skilled and clever predator. And while instinct had me tightening my grip on the blade, my skin prickled, desperate for a single brush of his lips.
Instead, he whispered, “Should you decide to carry through with your threat, I’ll leave my balcony door unlocked.”
Bitter cold filled the space between us when he pulled away from me, and with a cocky smirk, he turned for the door.
The tremble in my muscles persisted as I stared down at the ornate dagger in my palm, the pommel of it shaped like a scorpion’s tail.
Much as I fought to deny it, the man captivated me. That spellbinding, defiant nature of his roused a dark and lecherous craving that refused to be smothered.
The dagger rested on the bed, and legs crossed, I stared down at it, forcing myself to imagine the lives he may have taken with its blade. He’s a bad man, I told myself, because I needed something to pull me from the lustful thoughts he’d stirred. Thoughts that I’d long been taught were the devil’s seeds of iniquity.
He’s a killer. He has taken lives for coin.
Possibly innocent lives. A fact that I should’ve found revolting. Still, my head refused to accept the immorality, because he’d saved my life back at that prison, and as selfish a thought as that may have been, I couldn’t ignore it. Nor could I deny his impressive skills that must’ve made him exceptionally dangerous to his prey. All I could summon to mind was the visual of him leaping from his balcony to mine. The lethal grace and stealthy flexibility of his muscled body.
Sighing, I placed the blade on the table beside my bed and lay back against the pillow, where I curled onto my side, staring at it.
Shadows passed in my periphery, and I sat back up. Only the crackling fire of the hearth lit the room, but grew dim with unstoked logs. A figure in the corner caught my eye, its dark form blending into the shadows. It sat hunched over itself, the bony protrusions of its pale spine reminding me of thorny lizard scutes. Dark wisps danced in and out of its spectral form. Deimosi.
My heart thrummed a beat of terror as it turned toward me, staring back at me through black, soulless eyes. Long white hair hung in straggled sheaves about her gray, sunken face.
It was only then that it occurred to me I hadn’t seen visions of the dead since the nightmare of Aleysia I had when I’d first arrived.
“Nonei le confidezsa.” A raspy voice carried across the room, the sound of it sending a chill down my spine. “Mortiz a dae et punire.”
“I don’t understand.”
With a deep gnarl, she scrambled on all fours toward me, and I swiped up the blade, screwing my eyes shut as I held it outward with a trembling hand.
The raspy voice softened to one I’d heard before inside my head. “Do not put your trust in him. The Goddess of Death will punish.”
My eyes shot open on a gasp of breath. “Who? Do not trust who?”
The ghost had disappeared, though. All that remained were the shadows casted by the fire. Still clutching Zevander’s dagger, I sank down into the covers of the bed, breathing in through my nose to calm the shaky breaths that sawed in and out of me.