And Honor . . . Holly couldn’t yell at Honor. Ever. Her heart wouldn’t permit it; she wanted never to cause the hunter any hurt. Honor had conquered her demons, but as far as Holly was concerned, the woman who’d taught her that she could trounce grown men if she used her body right had already suffered more than her quota of pain.
“Uram,” she began, “changed me in a way that goes bone-deep.” It was no use fighting that truth. “But there’s a part that’s foreign, and always will be.”
The whispering madness had never integrated with her psyche.
Holly had worried it was a sign of severe mental illness, a total breakdown of her sense of self, but mental illness didn’t make serrated wings blaze on a woman’s chest that other people could see. “It feels too big for this body, too powerful.”
“Did the changes accelerate only after Daisy?” Dmitri asked, while Illium put his back to the glass wall and just listened, the extraordinary beauty of his wings shot through with the cutting sunlight of a New York that had shrugged off yesterday’s rain with the nonchalance of a catwalk model switching outfits.
“No. The . . . intruder inside me has been increasing in strength for a while,” she admitted, her feet set apart and her arms folded. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be put down like a rabid dog.”
Dmitri’s dark eyes glittered with anger. “I see.”
But Holly wasn’t backing down. Not this time. Tears threatened to burn her eyes, but she refused to be that broken girl anymore. “I have no place,” she bit out. “I have no stability. My right to exist is conditional.” She wanted to throw something, to scream and shout, but that was partly why no one took her seriously. Because she was young and scared and sometimes, she panicked.
No more. “Who are you to hold my life in your hands?” she said to this man who’d made her feel so safe—and who might yet order her execution. “What gives you that right?” Her voice trembled from the sheer force of her determination. “Just because I don’t fit your perceptions of what life should be permitted to exist?”
A slow whistle. “Looks like the kitten has grown up, Dmitri.” Illium’s voice.
Dmitri didn’t look away from Holly. “Come here.” It was an order.
She almost glanced at Venom for backup. Strange as it was, she had the feeling she might even get it . . . but this was her fight. Joining Dmitri as he stepped out from behind his desk, she didn’t hesitate to follow him when he walked out to the sunlit balcony beyond. The wind was lazy today, but it was by no means dead calm, the danger of the fall beyond the railingless edge as perilous as it was on any other day.
Holly promised herself that regardless of what he said, what decision he made, the one thing she would not do was reveal how much it hurt that he continued to view her as a threat, one he was ready to eliminate at any time. Dmitri had become important to her. Not a father. She had a father whom she loved. But someone as significant.
Because she loved Dmitri, too.
“Why are you standing there?” he asked in a grim tone when she stayed safely in the middle of the balcony, while he’d stalked to nearer the edge. “I thought you enjoyed flirting with danger.”
“I’m trying to be more mature and sensible.”
To her shock, he laughed, throwing back his head. The indolent wind took full advantage to riffle its fingers through his hair. When he held out a hand, though anger and hurt yet choked her throat, Holly stepped forward to take it. She’d never have accepted the silent command had it been Venom who’d given it.
Her and Venom . . . they were equals. Not in power, but in other, vitally more important ways. Their relationship had never been and never would be like the one she had with Dmitri, where the power dynamic was so skewed, the imbalance was permanent. “Do you feel this way with Raphael?” she asked when she stood face-to-face with the vampire who had seen her at her pitiful lowest and darkest. “Like he’s your senior.”
A shake of his head, his hand protective on hers. “Raphael and I were friends when he and I were both pups in our own ways. We’ve grown up together.”
As I’m growing up with Venom.
How strange to think that, when Venom had lived an eon in comparison to her butterfly existence, but it felt right. He’d told her she hadn’t accepted the changes that marked her, but Holly didn’t think he was at peace with himself, either. “So,” she said, her hurt spilling over. “Do you plan to throw me over the side and rid yourself of the pesky problem of Holly once and for all?”
His face brutally hard, Dmitri dropped her hand only to grip her jaw while New York glimmered a patchwork quilt of streets far below. His eyes were chips of granite, his hold unforgiving. “If I’d wanted to rid myself of the problem of Holly,” he said very, very quietly and very, very dangerously, “I’d have snapped your neck years ago.”
It was a callous statement, but Holly wasn’t scared. Because this was Dmitri. Who’d been harsh, but who’d always kept her safe—even from herself.
That was when she understood.
Dropping her eyes, she released a shaky breath. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know you wouldn’t put me down like a rabid dog.”
“Would you want to live if you became that way? A mindless, mad creature who hungered only for blood and death?”
Holly didn’t need to think of her answer. “No. I will never be Uram’s legacy.” Lifting her head again, she said, “You told me once that you’d end me if necessary, that I’d never see you coming. Promise me you’ll do that if I become a monster.”
Fingers dropping off her jaw, Dmitri turned to stare out at the water far in the distance. It glittered and sparkled, as if there was no darkness in the world. As if monsters didn’t exist.
Holly turned the same way and, when vertigo threatened, she gripped the back of Dmitri’s black T-shirt. “Why do I always feel like a child with you?” she muttered.
A rough chuckle before his arm came around her and he tucked her close. “Yet you’re asking me to execute you. A father should never have to execute a child under his care.”
Holly heard so much pain in those words, so much dark history, knew she was asking a horrible thing . . . but she couldn’t ask Venom. The why of her reluctance wasn’t something she was ready to face. “When did I become safe?” she whispered. “When did I cross the line from being a possible threat to a person you’d protect?”
He didn’t deny that she had begun as an unknown danger it was his task to watch and perhaps eliminate. “I don’t know,” he said, his body strong and warm against her. “Probably at some point between wanting to strangle you and feeling pride when you successfully fought your way out of hell.”