a vast
horizon of soulless gray, the wizard waltzed and laughed.
So. Fucked. Up.
Without looking, Phury reached over to the bedside table for his bag of red smoke and his
rolling papers. He didn’t have to measure the distance. He was the rabbit who knew where its
pellets were.
While the wizard whooped it up to La Bohème, Phury rolled up two fatties so he could keep
his chain going, and he smoked while he readied his reinforcements. As he exhaled, what left
his lips smelled like coffee and chocolate, but to put a dull on the wizard, he would have used
the stuff even if it had been like burning trash in the nose.
Hell, he was getting to the point where lighting up a whole fucking Dumpster would have been
fine and dandy if it could get him some peace.
I can’t believe you don’t value our relationship more, the wizard said.
Phury focused on the drawing in his lap, the one he’d been working on for the last half hour.
After he did a quick catch-up review, he dipped the tip of his quill into the sterling silver pot
he had balanced against his hip. The pool of ink inside looked like the blood of his enemies,
with its dense, oily sheen. On the paper, though, it was a deep reddish brown, not a vile black.
He would never use black to depict someone he loved. Bad luck.
Besides, the sanguinary ink was precisely the color of the highlights in Bella’s mahogany hair.
So it fit his subject.
Phury carefully shaded the sweep of her perfect nose, the fine lashes of the quill crisscrossing
one another until the density was correct.
Ink drawing was a lot like life: One mistake and the whole thing was ruined.
Damn it. Bella’s eye wasn’t quite up to par.
Curling his forearm around so he didn’t drag his wrist through the new ink he’d laid, he tried
to fix what was wrong, shaping the lower lid so the curve of it was more angled. His strokes
marked up the sheet of Crane paper nicely enough. But the eye still wasn’t working.
Yeah, not right, and he should know, considering how much time he’d spent drawing her over
the last eight months.
The wizard paused in mid-plié and pointed out that this pen-and-ink routine was a shitty
thing to do. Drawing your twin’s pregnant shellan. Honestly.
Only a right sodding bastard would get fixated on a female who was taken by his twin. And yet
you have. You must be so proud of yourself, mate.
Yeah, the wizard had always had a British accent for some reason.
Phury took another drag and tilted his head to the side to see if a change in viewing angle
would help. Nope. Still not right. And neither was the hair, actually. For some reason he’d
drawn Bella’s long, dark hair in a chignon, with wisps tickling her cheeks. She always wore it
down.
Whatever. She was beyond lovely anyway, and the rest of her face was as he usually depicted
her: Her loving stare was to the right, her lashes silhouetted, her gaze showing a combination
of warmth and devotion.
Zsadist sat to her right at meals. So that his fighting hand was free.
Phury never drew her with her eyes looking out at him. Which made sense. In real life, he
never drew her stare, either. She was in love with his twin, and he wouldn’t have changed that,
not for all his longing for her.
The scope of his drawing ran from the top of her chignon to the top of her shoulders. He never
drew her pregnant belly. Pregnant females were never depicted from the breastbone down.
Again, bad luck. As well as a reminder of what he feared most.
Deaths on the birthing bed were common.
Phury ran his fingertips down her face, avoiding that nose, where the ink was still drying. She
was lovely, even with the eye that wasn’t right, and the hair that was different, and the lips
that were less full.
This was done. Time to start another.
Moving down to the base of the drawing, he started the curl of the ivy at the curve of her
shoulder. First one leaf, then a growing stem . . .now more leaves, curling and thickening,
covering up her neck, crowding against her jaw, lip-ping up to her mouth, unfurling over her
cheeks.
Back and forth to the ink jar. Ivy overtaking her. Ivy covering the tracks of his quill, hiding his
heart and the sin that lived in it.
It was hardest for him to cover her nose. That was always the last thing he did, and when he
could avoid it no longer, he felt his lungs burn as if it were him who would no
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