Page 26 of Cracked Doll

"Shh," he murmurs, low, steady, entirely unbothered by the sound tearing out of me. "You won't always feel like this, you know. Soon enough you won't even notice your own reflection sliding back into view — it'll simply be there, the way it should have been all along. Trust me, love. I told you I'd fix you. This is fixing."

I try to calm myself, I do, but every direction I turn, I find my own face waiting — flushed, undone, everywhere at once — so I do the only thing left to me and bury my face against his chest instead. The chest of a stalker. The chest of the one place in this entire nightmare that somehow, sickeningly, feels safest. The screaming finally stops. The shaking doesn't. My fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt and hold on like it's the only solid thing left in the world.

A knock sounds at the door before it opens without waiting for permission. A woman's voice follows — low, rich, dripping with a kind of practiced, effortless allure, the sort of voice built to be listened to.

"Mr Castellan. There's been an incident requiring your attention."

I don't look up to see her. I can't.

"Speak freely," he says, not loosening his hold on me an inch.

"Antoinette Smith has been found dead in her home." A pause, deliberate. "I'm beginning to think this one may be connected to you in rather more ways than you've accounted for."

Something low and dangerous rumbles out of his chest — not quite a growl, not quite a word — and I feel it more than hear it, vibrating against my ear.

"Take Ophelia home," he says finally.

"Yes, Mr Castellan."

He lifts me into his arms without asking whether I can walk, and carries me out of the room. I hear the woman's heels clicking behind us, unhurried, following at a precise, practiced distance. Tucked against his chest, eyes still half-shut, I catch a glimpse of a door as we pass — dark wood, silver script above the frame reading The Six Who Speak As One. The coven's door, then.

Castellan. Rhys Castellan. I turn the name over in my mind. Is that really him — the man Amara described, the owner of all this? Should I say it aloud, test whether he answers to it?

"Who's Antoinette?" I ask instead, my voice thin. "Dead — connected to you — what does that mean?"

He doesn't answer. He simply carries me out into the cold night air, toward a long, sleek car, entirely black — bodywork, windows, even the leather seats inside gleaming like wet ink under the carnival lights.

He sets me gently onto the back seat, and before he steps away, his mouth finds my neck once more, lips grazing the mark already blooming there. "My succubus will take you home," he murmurs against my skin. "Keep you safe the whole way. I'll be back before sunrise, to watch you sleep."

I don't answer. There's a driver up front, silent, and the woman — succubus, apparently — slides in beside me a moment later, arranging herself with the kind of unhurried grace that makes even sitting look like performance.

He shuts the door himself. "I'll see you soon," he says, and it lands less like a farewell and more like a promise wearing a threat's clothing.

The car pulls away.

I keep my eyes low, careful, deliberately not looking at the woman beside me — though even sideways, half-seen, she's impossible not to notice. Dressed entirely in black — a fitted gown that clings like water, a slit cut high along one thigh, a choker of dark stones at her throat — she sits with the kind of ease that suggests she's never once in her life worried about how she looks doing it. Her hair falls dead straight and black past her waist. Even seated, her body carries itself like something built to be watched.

Why does she smell so good?

She laughs, low and warm. "Afraid of me, are you?"

I look away instantly, unsure what to say.

"You can speak your mind, sweetheart," she says. "I'm here to serve you tonight, not judge you for it."

"Are you," I manage, "the succubus?"

"I am." Something amused threads through her voice. "Name comes from the skill, love, not from being some mythological bloody creature. Though I won't pretend I don't enjoy the confusion."

I try to laugh. It doesn't quite land.

"Is Mr. Castellan your boss?" I ask instead.

"He is." A pause, and I can hear the smile in it. "Though you, darling, ought to be calling him Rhys."

There it is. Confirmation, plain and simple. Rhys Castellan. The walking sin Amara described. The owner of it all.

"He seems rather taken with you," Succubus goes on, conversational, as though we're discussing the weather rather than a man who put a knife to my throat twice tonight. "Never seen him like that before, if I'm honest. He's never once had me babysit a woman he was fucking."