Page 132 of The Faceless Queen

My stomach twisted. The panic rising inside of me felt like it was exploding through my limbs. “I-I don’t understand.”

“You do, though,” he said, stepping toward me again. “You know better than anyone. The scum were telling the truth about what they saw—about why they took you.” He laughed again, the sound hollow and bitter as he jabbed the edge of the knife away from me, and pointed it toward my cape, wet and discarded on the bed. “Fucking ironic, isn’t it? The most dishonorable moment of their lives, the worst, lowest thing they could possibly do. And for the first time ever, they were telling the truth.”

“And you’re going to what?” I cried. “Blame me for what they did? Call me a liar?”

“I’m not blaming you.” He stepped in again, his eyes growing wild with rage and hurt and betrayal. And I was sucking it all down, devouring all of it. The Azete was rushing up and down my limbs with fervor. Eating. Feasting. Devouring.

Killing him.

“Brennan!” I ran out of space to move. My back hit the wall, and his hand slammed against it, just like that night in the moon garden when he had me pressed against the tree. Trapped between the trunk and his arm. His body heat radiating off of him, his passion unbridled.

But this time, instead of leaving me an exit, his other hand went to my neck, the blade of the knife just a whisper from my skin.

I gasped, shrinking against the stones at my back. “Brennan!”

The rain fell even harder outside, and the wind howled through the storm, blowing violently against the windowpanes. The flames flickered in the fireplace, and Brennan pressed the tip of his knife into my skin, bringing his lips just a breath away from mine.

“I know what I saw,” he said. “And I know what I’ve been seeing. It was you out there tonight. The Azete with red hair. The black pants, the shirt, the boots, the cloak.” His brows furrowed. “The exact same ones you wore at the tavern. You thought I wouldn’t remember? That I hadn’t sealed every detail of you those nights into my mind? Gods! You even had the same fighting style, the same⁠—”

“But I’m not—” I said, making one final, desperate attempt to fulfill my oath, to keep up the lie. To be Olivay.

He pressed the blade in.

“Brennan!” I screamed.

“Come on. I know you’re pretending. I know you can get out of this,” he taunted. “That my strength is nothing compared to yours. So do it! Do it! Shift! Escape. Change!”

“I can’t–I don’t⁠—”

“Yes, you can. You can shift! You’re not in any danger from me and you Godsdamned-well know it.”

And then, before I could figure out why or how it happened, our lips crashed together, his tongue licking the seam of mine, opening my mouth to his in a gasp. I kissed him, hard, my arms wrapping around his back, pulling him into me.

All of his emotions, the anger and hurt he was feeling, were suddenly channeled into a powerful, overwhelming desire and need. A lust driven by emotions and heart—and all for me.

If I thought the Azete had been feeding before, it had been nothing. Because he was pouring himself into me, kissing me with such passion and fire, I thought I’d die.

He gripped my chin with his fingers before sliding them down and down, grazing over my breast, and squeezing until I moaned.

And at that moment, he pushed the knife against my neck, with just enough pressure to draw a single bead of blood.

I cried out. The shock of it, the shock of it being Brennan, caused something inside of me to shift. No, not inside of me. Outside.

The blade had triggered some innate mechanism of Azete survival. It had forced me to shift without trying, without wanting to. Like that day in the woods with my mother.

I turned into the thing that felt safest—that seemed most likely to protect me. When I faced the chimera, it was a red, scaled beast. A demon from the fires of hell.

But for Brennan, the form I had taken had hazel eyes, brown curly hair, a curvy chest, and full hips. The toned arms and thighs of a dancer. His knife clattered to the floor, his chest heaving, his eyes red with tears.

“S-Samara?” he said and took a step back.

I could see my reflection in the mirror across the room—the face of the dancer, the body I never thought I’d wear again.

Brennan stumbled back again. Not from shock, but from the loss of energy.

I raced forward, wrapping my arms around him before he fainted and held him to me.

But he pulled back, pushing my hair over my shoulder, touching my neck, searching for the wound he would not find. The cut that I’d already healed.