PRINCE OF SIN

Chapter 6

JULIAN POV;

I could taste the blood on my lip, and it was the most intoxicating thing I had ever known.

I stepped back from her, my chest heaving, my pupils blown wide. Penelope stood against the wall, her hair a chaotic halo around her face, her lips swollen and red from my mouth. She looked shattered, terrified, and yet—for the first time—there was a spark of genuine hatred in her eyes.

It was beautiful.

I watched her tremble, her breath coming in jagged gasps, and I felt a surge of possessiveness so violent it nearly brought me to my knees. For months, I had played the ghost. I had mapped the rhythm of her life in Florence, lurking in the damp corners of her world, watching her exist in a state of fragile, untouched purity. I had savored the way she looked when she didn't know I was there—the softness, the innocence, the utter lack of darkness.

But purity is a boring thing. Purity is a blank canvas.

I remembered the confessional. I remembered the scent of cedar and the way her voice had trembled through the wooden grate. I had felt a sadistic thrill in intercepting her prayers, in letting her believe she was speaking to God while she was actually speaking to the devil. I had called her my little bird then, a creature to be caged and plucked.

But now, as I looked at the way she glared at me—the raw, visceral anger fighting through the fear—I realized I didn't want a bird. I wanted a hawk. I wanted a predator.

"You're shaking, Penelope," I murmured, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, thick with a hunger that bordered on insanity.

I walked toward the Alabaster Blade, the white stone shimmering under the dim lights of the room. My own blood—the blood of Valerius—was a curse of immortality and stagnation. I had spent centuries in a world where nothing could hurt me, where every enemy was a footnote and every desire was granted before I even had to ask. I was a god in a kingdom of ash, and I was dying of boredom.

Then I found her. The last Thorne.

The only thing in the universe that could actually make me bleed. The only person who could look at me and see not a prince, but a target.

I reached out and touched the glass of the display case, my gloved fingers tracing the outline of the blade. I imagined that white stone sliding between my ribs, slicing through the stagnant ice of my heart. I imagined the look on Penelope's face in that moment—the realization of her own power, the surrender to the darkness I was cultivating within her.

I didn't just want her to kill me. I wanted her to want to.

"Do you know what the most exquisite part of the hunt is, Penelope?" I asked, not turning to look at her. "It isn't the capture. It isn't the kill."

I turned then, my gaze locking onto hers, my expression cold and absolute.

"It's the moment the prey realizes that the predator is actually the one in the trap."

I saw her flinch, the confusion crossing her face, and it filled me with a dark, twisted satisfaction. She thought she was the victim here. She thought she was the prize being claimed to pay a debt. She didn't understand that I had orchestrated every moment of her "discovery." I had leaked the clues to her father. I had pushed her toward the archives. I had led her straight into my arms.

I had built this labyrinth specifically for her, and I was more than happy to be the monster waiting at the center.

"Go to bed, Penelope," I commanded, my voice returning to its velvet authority. "Sleep. Dream of the blade. Dream of the way my blood would feel on your hands."

I walked toward the door, but as I reached the threshold, I paused, looking back over my shoulder.

"And remember... the doors are locked. Not to keep you in, but to make sure that when you finally decide to come for me, you have to do it with intention."

As I closed the door, I leaned my head against the cold wood and closed my eyes. My heart, that frozen, dead thing in my chest, gave a single, violent thud.

For the first time in an eternity, I was terrified. And I had never felt more alive.