23. Sin

23

Sin

a recurve bow. handmade arrow

The dumbest, luckiest bastard in existence.

It’s my new title. No more Lord of Sin, no more panty dropper, prize seducer, snake charmer, no more Lothario.

Stupidly, pathetically, I’d believed Natasa had wanted me.

In her gown of hearts, smiling that little secret smile, melting across my lap like cream in the evening sun.

No, Nat wasn’t sweet. Even when she was writhing with lust. She wound around me like a ghost pepper, teeth and threats and so fucking hot and consuming, nothing else existed.

No flavor would ever taste the same.

When I finally registered the glazed look in her big brown eyes, I’d ripped her from Maxine and her goons to keep from crumpling right there in front of them.

And she’d looked at me in the darkened room as though she’d let me be hers.

I kissed her with desperation and hope, ignoring the sharp tang of lemon and sugary taste of her ichor.

Was it worth it? No. Yes .

It was agonizing.

The pain, her touch, that heavenly mouth.

Only to hear her dark, hazy laugh, mottled by the high.

Got revenge though, didn’t I?

Rutting against her. Silencing her.

I could’ve kissed her again or just blocked Varley from entering, but I’d been mad, proud, and then she’d liked it and it’d been …

Excruciating .

Inner turmoil burned within me—Nat or the thrall?

Are they one and the same, or polar opposites?

Unleashed inhibitions or uncontrollable urges?

And then, with silver streaks in her cheeks and hooded eyes shining like starlight, she’d pulled away and slammed us back to reality.

I should’ve bitten you .

Cold, dismissive.

I wish she had.

I’d rather physical destruction than cold apathy in her eyes. The complete dismissal of me.

I regret lying to her. I’d never force love upon anyone. Not again, but I craved the rush of her flinch, a single chink in her armor.

I close my eyes, exhaling my misery into the warm night air.

“If you’re just going to stand silently, I could use a target,” I say to Drake as I settle my knuckles against my cheek, the pull of my bow string tight against my fingertips.

The field stretches ahead of me, five hundred meters of dew soaked lawn dotted with round targets.

“Well?” I drawl, directing my aim with the arrowhead. “Should I get an apple or are we spreading your fingers and praying to Artemis?”

Drake shrugs, stepping out from the shop’s door.

The gun range is closed, but I’m sure he followed exactly what I did. Snapped the front lock, searched under the counter for keys, raided the bow locker and bashed his shoulder into the chain-link gate to access the private range.

I’m too keyed up to rest, and sometimes you just need to shoot something.

“Lev’s searching the bars for you, and Luke’s convinced you’ve gone out for a jog.”

“I’d rather drive this arrow into my thigh than fucking jog.” With a quiet exhale, I release, shutting my eyes as the solid chunk of the iron arrowhead strikes my target. I rotate toward the executioner, bow dangling on my fingertips. “How’d you find me?”

“Who said I was looking?” he retorts, stalking toward the concrete shooting pad, a compound bow in his grip. He dumps a quiver in the metal hoop and flicks his naked finger between the thin white feathers. “Atlas has me on Fury watch. He’s afraid she’ll murder us all.”

Anyone else, it’d be an exaggeration. A gross speculation. But Drake, the Butcher of Boston, has the ability to read people’s deepest fears with a single touch—a power Atlas fears and keeps under constant watch.

I notice Drake’s not wearing his gloves …

Swallow harshly. “Sounds like you should be with her then.”

I’m bitter.

Jealous.

Drake loads an arrow into the shoot with a steady hand, black hair tumbling into his eyes. “We were together. She told me about Nicki, and what happened after. ith you.” He tilts his chin to the field and locks on the nearest target. “Then she asked to be alone.”

A rise of messy, dirty jealousy emerges, and I release another arrow, aiming for the same spot as before, trying to distract myself from the ache in my chest. Push a fake laugh through my teeth. “There’s the key to surviving interrogation. Politely asking to be left alone. How come no one’s ever tried that before to evade torture?”

“You’ve always been a selfish ass, Sin, but I never would’ve called you purposely cruel.” No venom in his words, just truth.

He hits center on the closest target. Reloads.

I’m killing it tonight, pissing off everyone.

We shoot. Increasingly accurate as our eyes adjust to the night, as we learn our tools.

Finally Drake says, “What is it tonight? Lesenia, the Phoenix, or same as always?”

My fears.

He knows them all like cards in Zeke’s tarot deck.

I crunch my knuckles into a fist. “Now I see why you’re riding bareback. Hate to break it to you, but people aren’t only driven by fear. We’ve got other reasons to do and say things.”

“Like?”

“Like anger and hate and fucking impossible females who push and push and push and expect you to never fucking break.”

“Hmm.” He shoots and by the forceful slam, I know he’s got the next target pinned.

Fast learner.

I unleash a few more arrows, and let myself remember a time when this was it. When I’d roll out of a lover’s bed, hone arrowheads, band sticks with twine and just shoot, feel the soft warm breeze of the Anemoi watching, clapping.

How listless I’d felt, how lost and alone. How desperate I’d been for attention, for love I thought owed to me.

I grit my teeth against the bowstring. “Pride, prejudice, greed. Those are plenty motivation.”

Drake’s response is the same soothing, unjudgmental rumble. “Hmm.”

“What?” I ask, turning to him, weapon raised, fingers light. “You disagree? You can’t. I’m right about this.”

Despite the arrow trained on his heart, not a trace of fear shows on the executioner’s pale face. “I don’t disagree. I just thought you’d say love.”

The string bites into my fingers as I freeze. “I’m not a cliché. Even the Gods have agency, mortal.”

“Don’t make me feel like the outsider because I’m younger than you. I’m just as in this as you are,” he growls, anger quickly boiling in his chest. Cinnamon on my tongue. “I’m as fucking destroyed by this curse as you. I want the Phoenix too. If I could, I’d take Nat. I’d be her escort, and I wouldn’t treat her like she’s the fucking villain because whatever she’s done, we’ve done worse. For the same reasons she’s given us. For good.” He shakes his head at me, gaze slinking to the woods at the end of the range. “At least you get to touch her. Touch anyone. You can stomach it.”

He’s unraveling, and all I hear is that he wants to touch Nat.

“Did you?” I pull the bow string taut. “Did you touch her?”

“Aren’t you curious as to what Hades’s favored warrior fears? What compels a creature of pure ichor and strength to tremble?

“You touched her.”

He smirks.

Tastes like split sweet cherries.

Satisfaction .

I see red and release.

My arrow slams into his shoulder with a gory thud, shredding through flesh and muscle and bone as he staggers back. An intense hiss rips up his throat, teeth gnashing in pain.

Before I can tell him to not fucking touch what’s mine, he retaliates, releasing an arrow that comes hurtling towards me with deadly accuracy.

The distinct sound of feathers whipping through the empty night air. A fraction of a second. Then searing pain as it plunges into my hip, carving out a chunk of bone and leaving me grunting. I fall.

We both end up wounded and panting on the ground, glaring at each other.

He snarls through clenched teeth as he snaps the feathered tail from the wood and shoves the arrow through the meat of his shoulder. Runny crimson blood spurts down his shirt.

I can’t push the tip through my fucking pelvis, so I have to pull it out, ripping and yanking, like a hook on a fish, hacking through muscle. With a fierce tug, I finally get it, ramming the heel of my hand into the gaping wound left behind, slow pink blood seeping between my fingers.

By the time we’re both done, we’re sitting side by side, groaning, grass under our feet, palms braced on the concrete.

Drake stares at the nasty gash on his shoulder. “That’s not very immortal of you. A hundred years ago, you would’ve killed me for that.”

“It still hurts,” I mutter, putting pressure on my wound, spitting out the taste of his pain.

Bitter espresso.

“No it doesn’t.” Drake tips up to gaze up at the black sky where tonight’s stars fail to shine through the city lights. “Not like it would’ve when I was mortal. Now it’s so much easier. It’s hard to even remember the level of agony I would’ve been in, to understand how dull I’ve gotten to it all.”

“Are you calling immortals pussies? Cause I’d expect a bolt to the ass any second now.”

He smiles softly, removing the hand from his shoulder to rake back his hair. Red streaks over pale his skin, his fingers are soaked in crimson. “I can’t help but think that I acquired all this strength and healing and it should’ve made my life easier. But it’s just made everything harder. We charge through the pain, the horror, the nightmares, all the shit in our heads that would make mortals reconsider. Make them change their lives, do something different, but for us—”

Impatience claws at my nerves. “I need a joint if you intend to be philosophical. You fucking nihilist.”

“What happened to you Sin …” He exhales deeply, watching blood drip onto his jeans. “With Lesenia.” I suppress a wince. “It would’ve ended a male of lesser will. It would’ve taken his smile, it would’ve made him angry and mean.”

“Yeah, I’m daisies and fucking ice cream sundaes.”

He doesn’t argue.

We sit in silence before I tell him, “Nat’s going to kill her.”

“So she said.”

“There’s probably a homicidal quota she has to meet, and she’s close to bingo.”

“Hmm.”

The flavor in my mouth changes slightly, sprinkles with nutmeg. Pity .

He doesn’t move an inch or say another thing, and fear and impatience sharpen me into a panic. I chuck my bow at his calf. “Fucking tell me then.”

“What?”

“Tell me what she fears. Tell me what you learned.” His eyebrow arches, and I let my voice drop to a dark rumble. “If you touched her in a manner you wouldn’t repeat, tell me that too and I’ll give you the pain you’re searching for.”

The threat doesn’t affect him. “It changed,” he says, peeling back the collar of his shirt to check on the gouge. “It flicked back and forth, almost too quick to read.” He sighs, drags his attention to the storefront. “Lev’s likely drunk again, probably not even looking for you.”

“If he’s not in an alley beating the shit out of someone already.”

“Burning off that burst you gave us. Fucking uncool.”

Guilt cuts, but not enough for me to lose focus. “Are you enjoying the drag out? Tell me what Nat fears because I’m feeling particularly murderous tonight.”

His irises spark with mirth. “You two are more alike than you think.”

“She’d have threatened to dismember you.”

“She’d have shot me if someone touched you.”

A flare of deep, urgent satisfaction courses through me. Until Drake adds, “She won’t hurt me. We have an understanding. She fears love and, in equal magnitude, herself.”

Lacking humor, I laugh, raw and wet. Quit staunching my wound. “Then I’m fucked, yeah?”

“I don’t know much about Furies.”

“No one does, they’re Hades’s monsters—”

“But I asked her.”

I shut down the urge to permanently dismember Drake.

“She has a compulsion to kill, to cleanse the realm of threats. It’s as strong as our curse, I think, the way she describes the crippling urge, how sweet the release is when she gives in.”

I am aware of precisely how sweet it is.

He drags hazel eyes to me. “She longs to kill us.”

“If you’re suggesting we kill her first—”

“I don’t think we can, do you? I’ve seen her with a knife. She’s battled every day for centuries. Her blood—”

“Blood doesn’t mean anything.” I know better than anyone.

“Ichor does.”

“Is that why you like her? No red on your hands, just silver?”

I’ll kill him.

I’ll rip him fucking apart, brother or not, if he hurts my female.

“She’s battling her instinct to murder every second she’s with you,” he explains, not falling for my bait to fight. “Can you imagine enduring the curse every second? And beating it? She’s stronger than all of us.”

Denial punches up my throat, but I choke it back and swallow what feels like a buildup of arsenic. I know she is.

Rare and wondrous and powerful.

And she hates me. Because she knows me, sees me.

And it’s that exact rare understanding that I cherish and crave.

Rubbing blood between his fingers, Drake says, “Cut her some slack.”

It’s etched in my mind, her sinking to the shower tile, wiping water from my cheeks, hiding my shame.

I don’t want slack between us. I want us close, breathing the same air.

“Hey Drake? Next time you have a bonding moment with Natasa?” I make sure he’s looking at me. Grin in a manner that shows the possession in my heart. “I’ll shoot you in the face.”

He laughs. “Get my good side.”