Page 116 of Shadowface

I regained control while he was kissing her. The anger that surged within me was a raw and relentless beast, as the fragment implanted itself into me like a tick.

Slicing her mark open again wasn’t Mikael’s idea; it was mine. His profession of love wasn’t Mikael’s; it was mine. In every way that matters, every action in that moment was mine.

I am Mikael, and my desire to kill her is getting stronger.

Summer clutches onto me as if she knows I’m leaving her soon. My hand goes to the small of her back as she walks a step ahead, and I admire her smooth, bare thighs. Since she has no clothes here, she’s stuck meeting everyone in my shirt. Although it fits her like a dress and certainly will make a statement, it looks amazing on her.

“Don’t be nervous,” I tell her as I slide my hand and interlace my fingers with hers. “You’re with me, and they just want to meet you.”

She bristles. “They hate me.”

“They hate the idea of you. They don’t even know you, Summer,” I remind her.

She halts just as we step under the archway at the entrance of the house. She looks around as if seeing it for the first time. The dark-stained oak stairs leading to the rooms above, the dining room and kitchen off to the left, the parlor room to the right, all the photos of our ancestors on the walls.

A draft hits her, and she pulls her hand away and wraps it around herself. She takes a couple of steps toward the dark hallway leading down to the backside of the house.

“The house is old,” I tell her, walking in behind, sliding my hands around her waist. The wood creaking beneath my feet startles her—or perhaps I startle her. She’s had a very confusing day.

“It was rebuilt in the 1900s, and many times over the years,” I explain. “But the original house on this property was built in the 1750 by a historian, of all people—one of the founders of the university.”

She walks over and runs her hand along the walls and pauses as if she can hear something. She turns and looks me dead in the eye. “He was the one who started all of this.”

I wrap my arm around her midsection, and she doesn’t move. I pull her body into me and brush my lips against her ear as she peers up at Matteo.

“He’s the one they worship. He’s the one who demands blood. Every member is related to him and technically, you are, too.”

Her eyes glaze over as she beholds him. “I thought they worshiped a god?”

I snicker. “He thought he was one.”

Her head shifts slightly. “My father lived here, too?”

I watch her carefully and nod. “Yeah, everyone lives here before they become a full member, usually while attending school. Your grandparents lived here, too.”

She swallows and processes what I am telling her. “My mother met him after this, didn’t she?” she asks me.

“Your mother wasn’t part of it. I don’t think she had a clue who she was married to, or what your father did.”

Laughter trickles in from the other side of the house, but Summer doesn’t flinch and keeps her head down and focused, her body rigid like she’s guarding herself.

“What does the Order want from me? How can I be one of them and be marked for death at the same time?”

I wasn’t planning on having this conversation with her right now, but it was inevitable. “In order to become a full member, you must offer a sacrifice to him. He demands the body and blood of the one you truly love. Every generation goes through it.”

She keeps her gaze on the wall, her blank stare zeroing in on one spot, as if she can see something rising from the ashes of the shadows of her misery.

“Every twenty years,” she whispers, as if putting the puzzle pieces together. “My father…he loved your mother? He killed her because he loved her?”

A burst of emotion threatens to swallow me whole. Mikael’s turning the taps on, and my eyes sting thinking about my mother in those final moments.

“They were together when your father was in grad school, the same age I am now. She willingly gave up her life for him.”

That crushing memory hits me. The way she saw me hiding when I followed them through the forest to the cave. She knew I was there and still let it happen. I’ll never forget the look of terror as she died. The blood that stained her cheek as she rolled to the side when her soul left her body.

“And what did he get for killing her? Was it all worth it?” she asks.

I gesture outside. “The entire fortune is passed on to generation after generation. We control everything here, Summer; we rule all of them, and they don’t even know it. Regular rules don’t apply in Kinsmen. Your father lost his mind with power and greed. He thought he was invincible.”