Black Night

I saw what he intended and I felt cold sweat break out all over my skin. I began to thrash, to scream, but he pressed his lips against mine and swallowed my cry. I couldn’t move my arms but I could clamp down on his lower lip, and I did until he cried out and bled.

“You little bitch,” he said, and he backhanded me across the face with all his strength.

My ears rang and I saw stars. I think I blacked out for a minute because the next thing I knew he was on top of me, pulling at my bloody clothes.

“No,” I said, squirming underneath him, trying to find purchase to punch him, to kick. He had my limbs locked down. “No.”

I felt air on my exposed br**sts, tasted his blood in my mouth when he pressed another brutal kiss on me. This could not happen.

“No,” I yelled this time and with that my sleeping magic awoke.

Just as when I’d been attacked by Samiel in the alley, I let the magic push up and out and through me. Nathaniel was flung from my body and crashed into a dresser on the other side of the room. The mirror shattered into a million pieces and the shards flew off with enough force to embed in his arms and back. I could see the twinkling edges of glass protruding from his neck.

I leapt off the bed, drawing nightfire, and hit him full on in the chest with it before he could think. He cried out in pain and I saw the blast burn through his shirt and through the skin of his chest. Scorched muscle showed underneath. He didn’t move.

I stalked toward him, full of fury. He couldn’t be dead yet. I wasn’t done killing him.

He opened his eyes, and they were bleary. I raised another ball of nightfire on my palm and made to throw.

“Wait,” he said, his voice croaky and hoarse.

“Now I know what you are,” I said, and my voice did not sound like my own.

I knew that my eyes must be alight with starshine. I could feel the magic inside me burning in a new way and was filled with not only a desire to take revenge, but a desire to hurt. I wanted him to crawl, to be humiliated. I wanted him to feel the helplessness I had felt. And that feeling was so alien, so monstrous, that it made me pause. I dialed it back a little, just enough so that I felt like myself again.

“Now I know what you are,” I repeated, and my magic covered me like a cloak, pulsing and angry. “You are a monster. I will never marry you.”

He held his hand in front of him as he struggled to his feet, trying to ward off another attack. “Madeline, I don’t know what came over me. It wasn’t me. You must believe me. It wasn’t me. I’m . . .”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. You’re not sorry. You’re sorry you didn’t succeed.”

“No, I did not mean . . .”

“I know what you meant,” I said through my teeth. “And what do you think Lord Azazel will say when he discovers that you tried to defile his only daughter?”

Nathaniel went pale as the moon. I saw him tremble all over. “You must not . . . you must . . .”

“I must do what I feel is right,” I said. “Your wishes are hardly relevant.”

He fell to his knees again, held his hands out in supplication. “You must not tell Lord Azazel. He will kill me.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, hating him with every cell in my body. “What makes you think that I won’t kill you?”

His hands fell to his sides. “You are right. I have behaved unforgivably. You are well within your rights to end my life.”

I had never seen him like this—his will broken, his body injured. Despite what he had done to me, what he had meant to do to me, I felt a stirring of pity. I knew that I shouldn’t. I was sure now that Nathaniel would never value anything above his own pride, his own advancement. I knew I didn’t want to marry him before—now I knew that I never could. I could never be of so little value to my husband.

“Go,” I said. “Our engagement is over. I will break it to Azazel.”

“Will you tell him what has occurred here?”

“I will if I have to,” I said.

His face shifted and he looked suddenly crafty for a moment—and I again had the sensation that another person was looking through his eyes. “It would be my word against yours, in any case.”

I felt my magic rise up again, my anger peaking once more. “Do not attempt to threaten me.”

He cowered back, the crafty light in his eyes winking out, and dropped his head. “You are right. I am sorry. You are right.”

“And it wouldn’t be her word against yours anyway,” Beezle said from the doorway. “I am a witness, and Azazel knows that I must speak the truth. So you’d be f**ked for sure if she decided Azazel needed to know.”

I hadn’t heard Beezle reenter. He hovered near the door, his small face full of thunder.

“Get out of here and do not even breathe in my direction for the next three days,” I said.

Nathaniel stood unsteadily, his right hand covering the exposed muscle in his chest. He staggered to the connecting door without a word and stumbled through.

I watched him, my body full of tension and magic, until the door closed. Then I looked at Beezle.

“When did you get here?” I asked.

“Right after you blasted that thrice-bedamned bastard into the mirror,” he said.

Beezle hardly ever swore. Neither did I, for that matter. That, more than anything, told me how upset he was. We looked at each other in silence.

“I shouldn’t have left,” he said. “I didn’t think he would try something like that.”