Nikolai

The scent of her fear clung to me, a bitter perfume that soured the air in my lungs. It was the smell of a cornered animal, of shattered defiance, and it should have been satisfying. Instead, it was a low, persistent hum of wrongness under my skin. I

stood for a moment in the attic’s gloom, the image of her burned onto the back of my eyelids—naked, shivering, a canvas of bruises, her eyes hollowed out by a terror so complete it had extinguished her very spirit.

Ugly wench. The ...