Page 82 of Arrow

I tasted her—vodka and iron and the last burn of sleep deprivation—and let her teeth bite blood from my own. She fought, as I knew she would, choking on a sob, and digging her nails into my scalp. We tumbled against the altar rail, knocking lilies and glass and the memory of a thousand kneeling orphans to the floor.

My mouth became her final source of air, and when I finally pulled back, letting our foreheads throb together, I saw her eyes were full of light—not forgiveness, but the holy clarity that comes after a gunshot.

For a second, we just breathed—breathing each other, trembling with the chemical potential for bodies to fuse or detonate, whichever came first.

“I can’t go back with you.” She gasped, voice pressed thin by the effort of not being alive. “If you take me back, I’ll kill myself.” Her hands shook, pulling my face closer, like the edge of a knife calling blood to its mouth.

I bit her bottom lip. Hard. Enough to punish, not break. “Do it, little viper,” I said, tasting her blood mixed with mine. “If you wanted a martyr’s grave, you’d have knelt by your brother’s side the night he died. You came here because you wanted to win—to show me that you could.” I slid my thumb down the line of her jaw, holding her gaze, as I dared her to argue.

“I’m going to bury you for what you did to my brother—what your family did to my brother,” she spat, her voice unsteady. “I’ll salt the earth with the last of the Romanov trash. Finish the job my father and every man before him was too chickenshit to do themselves.”

“Then do it.” I released her long enough to seize her wrist, shoved a shard of broken glass into her fist, and locked her fingers around it with enough force to draw blood. “You want the end, Harlowe? Aim for my carotid. I’ll lean in, so that you don’t miss.”

Her face twisted—loathing, fascination, shame. I wanted the hit as much as she did, maybe even more. Virellis were always better at finishing things; Romanovs were just the last ones standing when the dust cleared.

Held high, the glass trembled in her grip. I was certain she’d go through with it—grind glass through my skin and muscle until we were both covered in blood. But she let it fall, clattering to the floor. One sob tore loose, and she recoiled from the sound like it was something contagious.

“Fuck you, Arrow. Fuck the Romanov family. Fuck all of this.”

She hissed the words so viciously, I wanted to slow clap. Instead, my hand captured her wrist, yanking her close. She cursed shrilly as I leaned in, face to face, letting her taste my breath and the flick of my tongue.

“I’m going to make you my wife, Harlowe. One way or another.”

A muscle jumped in her cheek. She tried to wrench away, but the pain in her leg pulled her off-balance. She lurched, caught herself hard, and in that heartbeat of vulnerability, I saw what monsters like my father never understood. She wanted to live. She wanted to win, and if she couldn’t have a clean victory, she’d settle for whatever bloody, cracked trophy survived the collision.

Her breath was so close to my mouth, all I’d have to do was tip my head to bite her bottom lip. I did.

She howled, even as her eyes flared wide and delighted at the pain. Every inch of her was a contradiction.

“Let go,” she snarled, but her body said otherwise, connecting with mine in a full-length shiver.

I didn’t oblige.

Walking her backward, my hands clung to her ribs, the holy hush of the cathedral-turned-sex-club echoing off our bones. The marble was cold and slick beneath her, but the fire in her skin ran over every surface it touched.

Pinning her with my bodyweight, I forced her to the altar like a prayer. I expected her to writhe and buck, to curse my name and every ancestor whose blood hummed in my arms. Instead, she lay very still, gathering the tremble in her chest into an arctic calm.

“If you ever want to kill me, don’t ever fucking hesitate. Do it right. But if you’d rather live, listen.”

She went limp, and I actually thought I’d broken her. But when I leaned in, expecting tears or a sob, she sucked in a breath and hissed, “Why should I do a single thing you want?”

“Because you’re smarter than your father.” I took her face in my hand, just enough pressure to force her to turn and see me. “Because you don’t need to die just to prove the grave is shallow.” I pulled her up until she was on her tiptoes, the ruined lilies crushed beneath her feet, my hand still tight in her hair. “Because you know what happens if you walk out that door. Next time it’s not me, it’s my father, and he doesn’t care whether you beg.”

Harlowe made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. I let her hair go, and watched her gather herself—so slow, so violently beautiful in the shudder of her recovery.

She didn’t hate me, not in the way hate is normally a distance. She hated me the way you hate the oxygen that keeps your rival alive. It was a proximity hatred—intimate, necessary for survival.

Propping her against the rail, she ground her palms into the velvet, trying to find a position that didn’t reek of surrender. I stood back, balanced on the cracked marble, and watched her invent a new kind of resilience out of spite and ruined hosiery.

Shards of glass glowed in the moonlight, or maybe it was the blood on her shin catching the city light. Either way, the effect was rendered holy by the violence beneath it.

She was the one who spoke first, choking on her own sarcasm. “Don’t tell me you’re going to propose. That’d be too civilized for a Romanov.”

I gave a thin smile. “I can do what your father never managed.”

Her chin rose a millimeter. “Make a girl say yes?”

“Make a girl want to outlive me.”