Nalini Singh: Archangel's Blade

None of those friends had made it.

Turning to the fridge, he retrieved one of the bags of blood he had delivered on a regular basis and poured it into a glass before going to crouch down beside her. He pushed back a wing of glossy black hair currently streaked with cotton candy–colored highlights and said, “Drink.” Nothing else was necessary—Holly knew he wouldn’t leave until the glass was empty.

Strange, hate-filled eyes. “I want to kill you. Every time you walk through that door, I want to pick up a machete and hack your head off.” She gulped down the blood and slammed the empty glass on the floor so hard it cracked along one side.

Using a tissue to wipe her mouth, he threw it in the trash before standing up to lean against a cabinet opposite her. “A woman cut my face today,” he told her. “Not with a machete but a throwing blade.”

Holly’s eyes skimmed over his unmarked skin. “Bullshit.”

“I’m fairly certain she was going for the jugular but I was too fast.” And Honor had moved with far more grace than he’d have believed her capable of before that little demonstration. The woman was trained in some kind of martial art, trained at a level that meant she was no helpless victim. And yet she had been made one.

“Too bad she missed,” Holly muttered . . . before asking the question that had lingered in the air since the second he walked into the house. “Why won’t you let me die, Dmitri?” Her words were a plea.

He wasn’t certain why he hadn’t killed her the instant she began to show signs of a lethal change, and so he didn’t answer her. Instead, crouching back down, he tipped up her face with his fingers under her chin. “If it comes down to an execution, Holly,” he murmured, “you’ll never see me coming.” Quick and fast, that was how it would be—he would not have her go into the final goodnight drowning in fear.

“She died afraid, Dmitri. If only you’d given me what I asked for, she would still be alive.” A sigh, elegant fingers brushing over his cheekbone as he hung broken from iron cuffs that had worn grooves into his skin. “Do you want the same for Misha?”

“Don’t call me that.” Holly’s harsh voice fracturing the crushing memory from the painful dawn of his existence. “Holly died in that warehouse. Some thing else walked out.”

It was an attempt to erase herself, and that he would not allow—but it would do no harm to permit her to establish a line between her past and the present. Perhaps then, she would finally begin to live this new life. “What would you have me call you?”

“How about Uram?” A bitter question. “He doesn’t need the name anymore, after all.”

“No.” He wouldn’t let her harm herself in such a way, her name itself a poisonous shroud. “Choose again.”

She thumped her fisted hand against his chest, but her anger was permeated with pain and he knew she wouldn’t fight him in this. “Sorrow,” she whispered after a long silence. “Call me Sorrow.”

No joyful name that, no hopeful one, but he would give her this one choice when she’d had so many others stolen from her. “Sorrow, then.” Leaning forward he pressed his lips to her forehead, her bangs blades of silk against his lips, her bones fine, fragile, so vulnerable under his hands.

In that instant, he knew why he hadn’t killed her yet. Age notwithstanding, she was a child to him. A dangerous child, but a child nonetheless, scared and trying so hard to hide it. And the murder of a child . . . it left a scar on a man’s soul that could never, ever be erased.

Arriving back at Guild Academy after midnight, Honorput her laptop bag down on the small table tucked in beside the wardrobe in her quarters. The bed took up most of the remaining space. The room was adequate, and that was it—most hunters only used the quarters when they needed to do a short, intense session of instruction at the Academy. Honor had been here since the day they allowed her out of the hospital.

It wasn’t because she couldn’t afford anything better. Given the fees hunters commanded as a result of the high-risk nature of their work, and the fact that she hadn’t really had much downtime in which to spend that money, she’d built up a considerable nest egg before the abduction. None of it had been touched during her convalescence, as the Guild covered the medical costs of all its hunters. Truth was, she could move into a penthouse if that was what she wanted.

It just hadn’t seemed worth the effort to move out.

Except tonight, the room was suddenly a cage. How could she have been so numb that she hadn’t noticed the claustrophobic confines? The realization of the depth of her apathy was a slap, one that made her head ring—but not enough to settle her sharp response to the walls around her.

Beginning to sweat, she ripped off her sweatshirt and dropped it on the bed, but that did nothing to cool her down.

Water.

A few minutes after that thought passed through her head, she was dressed in a sleek black one-piece swimsuit, a toweling robe around her body. The night owls she ran into on her way to the Academy pool stopped only long enough to say hi before continuing on their way—and she was soon sliding into the pristine blue waters that promised peace.

Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe.

The rhythm was better than meditating. It took ten lengths, but by the end of it, she was calm. However, the feeling of suffocation struck again the instant she returned to her room—now that she’d noticed its tiny size, she couldn’t get it out of her head. And there was no way she’d be able to sleep even if she forced herself to bed. Her nightmares—malevolent, clawing things—were bad enough without adding claustrophobic panic to the mix.

Having showered at the pool, she pulled on fresh clothes and picked up her laptop.

The library was quiet at this time of night, but not deserted. There were a couple of instructors working on research papers, and a hunter who looked like she’d come in from active duty.

A single glance at that shining dark hair, those worn boots, and her lips curved in joyful surprise. “Ashwini?”

The tall, long-legged hunter put down the book she’d been examining and swiveled on her heel. Face cracking into a smile that turned her from beautiful to breathtaking, she gave a “Whoop!” and vaulted over a library table to grab Honor in a tight hug. No sign remained of the knife fight that had left her seriously injured not long ago.

Laughing, Honor hugged her back—Ash was one of the rare few people she’d never had trouble allowing close, even directly after the assault. Perhaps it was because the other hunter was her best friend . . . and perhaps it was because Ashwini was the one who’d ripped off her blindfold and shot off the chains that had held her trapped and helpless, her body a piece of meat for her captors.

“I’ve got you, Honor—the bastards won’t touch you again.”

“What are you doing here, you lunatic?” she asked, focusing on the fact that her friends had never given up on her, rather than the putrid miasma of a far more vile memory.

A smacking kiss on her cheek before Ashwini drew back. “I came to see you—you weren’t in your quarters so I came here to wait.” Glancing around when one of the instructors said “Shh” in a loud voice, she rolled her eyes. “Funny, Demarco. Didn’t they call noise control on your last party?”

The rangy hunter, his hair the streaky blond of a man who loved the sun, grinned and pointed a finger. “I knew you were there, Ms. Flaming Lying Pants.”

“This is a library, people,” said the last man in the room, scarred boots on a reading table and a leather-bound book open in front of his face.