The ring settled against my finger, heavy in a way that felt as if it had always belonged there. Like an invisible tether ran from her ring to mine, uniting us as one despite the way the fates had tried to intervene, driving us apart over the years with thousands of miles between us.
I felt the red strand of destiny connecting us, and the way it wrapped around my finger and stretched inside of me, consuming me, as Thalia stared up at me. Our love was written in blood, our dream of vengeance born in the death of nearly everyone Thalia knew. She would rise from the wreckage like a spirit that the underworld couldn’t contain, and learn to stand by my side as Persephone did with Hades.
I reached up, cupping her face in my hand and letting my warmth sink into the chilled skin of her cheek. Her eyes fluttered shut, like the dance of a butterfly’s wings against her high cheekbones as she stripped me of that intense amber gaze. For just a moment, it felt as if she pressed into my touch, as if she could sink into the moment of affection that she’d been deprived of since they’d torn me out of her life.
I leaned down, brushing my nose against hers and willing her to give me the beauty of her eyes once more. They sprung open, a sharp gasp filling her lungs as she froze solid. With her eyes so close to mine, the streaks of brown that radiated out from her pupil were that much more noticeable.
She’d been an oddly pretty child, standing out among the girls who all fit the same mold, but as a woman, Thalia stood out in ways they could never hope to achieve. She’d grown into her features,
“Breathe, Little One,” I murmured, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. Her gaze fell to the motion, snagging on it with a nervousness I didn’t like seeing on her face. She didn’t need to doubt me or fear me in the same way she would the others. I resolved to show her just that, leaning forward to gently touch my lips to hers. “I won’t bite you…just yet.” My words made my lips move over hers, the moment feeling incredibly intimate as the scent of blood and death around us faded into the background. Her father didn’t lurk just behind her, watching and picking his daughter apart for every weakness she exhibited; her brother’s body didn’t lie just a few feet away with the blood of her previous fiancé staining my shoes.
There was only Thalia, only the taste of her in my lungs as her breath finally returned. It felt like the first breath of fresh air I’d had since she’d snuck out of my hotel room. It felt like living in a world dominated by the dead and all that they demanded from me.
“You have thus consented in holy matrimony and have witnessed the same before God, family and friends; by virtue of the authority vested in me as an Officiant and the laws of this state, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate. You may kiss the bride!” the priest said, his dismay echoing in his voice as he slammed the Bible shut and stepped away from us.
I slid my hand farther, gliding it over the skin of her cheek and jaw to cup the side of her neck until my fingertips wrapped around the back. The blood of our enemies covered her skin, painting her in the retribution she’d been owed since she was a child. Pulling her closer, the breath stalled in my lungs the moment her chest collided with mine.
Curving my body over hers, keeping our mouths only just separated from one another, I shared breath with the girl who had always been my destiny. With the woman become.
With my fucking wife.
My lips danced over hers, moving slowly and teasing her to try to bring out the mischievous woman who’d met a stranger in a hotel for one night of pleasure. Those distrusting eyes stared up at me with defiance, refusing to concede what we both knew.
I would be in charge of the how. I would control the when. And when I so much as gave a hint of what I wanted, Thalia would bend. She would never break, never shatter to a thousand pieces and cover the earth with what remained of her, but for me, she’d learn to submit, and it would mean more because of the uniqueness.
I smiled into her mouth, a chuckle rising in my throat as I took her hand in mine. The cool metal of her ring touched my skin, a placating icy brand that reminded me how far I’d already come. I laced our fingers, raising our hands to my neck so that the back of hers touched my skin.
“Do you intend to kiss your husband, λουλούδι μου? Or should we stand here all day surrounded by the carnage of your past life and stare at one another?” I murmured, my lips tipping into a smile that she couldn’t see but must have felt against the plump flesh of her mouth.
“I’d prefer not to have your mouth or hands anywhere on my body,” she said, her voice breathless as her eyes fluttered shut.
“That isn’t what you said the last night we met,” I murmured, lifting a brow at her in challenge. Her stepmother gasped behind us, but the reveal of Thalia’s lack of virginity hardly mattered. She’d given it to the very man who should have owned the right to it in the first place, walked right into my waiting arms in her desperation to escape what she knew to be wrong.
Somewhere deep down, even without the knowledge of our betrothal, she knew as well as I did that her virginity belonged to me. Even if she didn’t have the faintest understanding of it and there had been a time when it seemed unfathomable, the adult Thalia was mine in every way.
“What have you done?” her stepmother asked, making Thalia squeeze her eyes shut. Shame heated her cheeks, the archaic system she’d been raised in making her believe that she truly had something to feel guilty for. I wanted to say it should have been her choice all along, but that wasn’t true, or wouldn’t have been if it was me she’d tried to skip out on before our wedding day.
I pressed my lips to hers with gentle force, molding the seam of my lips to hers. My tongue darted out to touch her mouth, coaxing her to open for me. Somewhere beneath all that resistance, the woman who needed me as badly as I needed her waited. Her lashes fluttered for a moment before she sighed, her complete and utter starvation for a touch that wasn’t cruel overriding her sense as her lips parted slightly. I used the moment to my advantage, angling her head and taking what I wanted. My mouth opened and we shared our breath in truth, as the air in my lungs made its way inside and became a part of her.
There was nothing to stop me from taking and claiming every part of her, from filling her with my very essence. I kissed her as if she was the air I needed to breathe, trying to give her the reassurance that I couldn’t say until I trusted her.
She’d be safe so long as she was mine.
When I pulled back from her mouth, Thalia’s body leaned forward into my chest as if she wanted to follow. As if she needed more as much as I did.
I touched my mouth to her forehead as she tried to remember how to breathe and reminded herself why the feeling coursing through her was wrong after everything she’d learned about me. She rebuilt the walls surrounding her heart up brick by brick as I waited, giving her the moment to compose herself before I asked more of her.
“Do you love your wife?” I asked, combing my fingers through Thalia’s dark hair as I looked over her shoulder at where her father lay bleeding. “Would it hurt you to see her in pain?” I ghosted my fingertips over the scars on Thalia’s back, caressing them lightly with heavy meaning. She twitched away from the touch, the movement so slight I doubted anyone but me could detect it.
“Of course it would hurt him!” Lydia protested, her face twisting as she stared up at me. Rafael Ibarra, my ally who had given me shelter after I was banished from Philadelphia, stepped up beside me, Lydia’s favored cane from the Karras house held in his grip. Thalia twitched as if to run from the sight of it, swallowing as she forced herself to be still. “I have been a good wife to him.”
“You always did think you were more important than you were,” Thalia said, her voice soft but her body as rigid as stone. Rafe placed the cane in my outstretched hand, the wood feeling worn and heavy as I wrapped my fingers around it.
“Perhaps Lydia should know just how little she means to you before I slit her throat,” I said, raising a brow as I nodded to Rafael. He moved slowly, with the deft, confident movements of a man who did not hurry for anyone’s schedule but his own. Despite the carnage around us, the Spanish man from Ibiza was the epitome of composure. There wasn’t a wrinkle on his suit, not a single hair out of place, as his multicolored blue and green gaze fell on Lydia with a coldness that made grown men cower.
“Up,” he grunted, glaring down at the woman who huddled into her husband’s side. She looked to Origen as if he might save her from the fate she thought Thalia deserved. Lydia didn’t move, her mouth dropping open and brow furrowing when Origen didn’t so much as twitch to protect her. “You can either take your punishment with dignity, or you can be a pathetic, sniveling woman who is capable of causing unimaginable pain to a child without ever being strong enough to handle it herself. The choice is yours, but the end result will be you bent over that altar, even if I have to force you there.”
Thalia’s bottom lip trembled as she turned a questioning stare up at me. The emotions danced clearly on her features as she wondered if I could do what had been done to her without any stain on my conscience.
I could, because I didn’t have one, but that didn’t mean I would.
I held my unwavering attention on my wife, keeping my touch gentle as I brought her hand down to the cane in my grip. Wrapping her fingers around the wood that had torn open her skin more times than I wanted to think about, I let her feel the weight of it in her palm.
“What are you doing?” she asked, the harsh whisper hanging between us. Behind her, Rafael tore Lydia from Origen’s side, forcing her to the altar beside us as the priest backed away with a swallow and a hand covering his mouth.
“Did you cry when she struck you?” I asked, covering Thalia’s trembling hand with mine and offering silent support as tears pooled in her eyes and her face showed strain while she tried to understand what I was offering. Rafael tore the dress down Lydia’s spine, leaving her with only enough fabric to stay covered.
He muttered something to her as Lydia’s body wracked with sobs, her fingers clenching around the edge of the altar as she hung her head forward.
“At first,” Thalia whispered, her eyes darting over to her stepmother’s bare skin. It was unblemished by the abuse her father had always shown to Thalia and her birth mother.
“Did she care?” I asked, clenching my jaw to keep the rage I felt from showing in my voice. Thalia needed guidance in taking what she deserved and claiming the vengeance that was rightfully hers for all she’d suffered, but she was as skittish as a frightened animal, threatening to bolt at the first sign of aggression from me.
“She told me I wasn’t allowed to cry anymore.” Thalia hung her head forward, raising the cane in her grip. “This isn’t me. I can’t strike her.”
I smiled softly, knowing the day would come where that would change. “I know, but you deserved to make that choice for yourself,” I said, taking the cane back as she handed it to me. Lydia heaved a sigh of relief, clearly believing that if Thalia wouldn’t be the one to wield it, she would be safe from the pain coming her way. I turned to her husband, my smile broadening. “We both know that you won’t walk out of here alive. I have a proposition for you, my dearest father-in-law. You can beat your wife as you instructed her to beat your daughter, or I can beat you for the command.”
“I wonder which he’ll choose,” Rafael muttered with a dark laugh. Origen didn’t hesitate to force himself to his feet, holding out a hand for the cane. I placed it in his, keeping Thalia sheltered behind me with his threats regarding our marriage hanging between us.
Thalia didn’t watch as her father made his way to Lydia. She didn’t look as the cane cut through the air and filled the church with a whistle. She flinched the moment it cracked against Lydia’s spine, the force of it tearing her step-mother’s skin open as her screams flooded the air.
“Origen!” she screamed, and I watched as blood dripped down her back from the wound he’d given her. I stepped back in front of Thalia and pulled her into my chest, offering her the comfort she should have always had after her father’s abuse, trying to stem the trauma that was necessary for Lydia to get what she deserved.
For her to understand that she had never meant anything to Origen Karras, a man who cared only for himself.
“Why?” Thalia rasped, the tears that had gathered in her eyes dripping down to wet the front of my suit. She sniffled, turning her gaze up to me as I looked down at her. I balanced on the precipice, wanting to memorize the way Lydia’s blood dripped to the floor and wishing I could convince Thalia to draw it for me one day.
“Because you deserve nothing less than to know that, even for just a few moments, she understood what she did to you. Now she knows what that pain feels like, what it is to have a man who should love you abuse you. She has lived as nothing, and now she will die knowing that.”
