bride of vengeance
Instead, he reached toward the servant's torn shirt, pulling the fabric aside gently to reveal something carved into the skin of his chest, deliberate and precise, clearly done after death rather than during the struggle that had killed him.
A symbol. Curved lines intersecting at sharp angles, forming a shape that looked almost like a blooming flower if flowers could carry menace in their petals.
I froze.
I know that symbol.
My mind lurched backward through twelve years of memory, past training grounds and safehouses and every careful lesson I'd absorbed since I was old enough to hold a blade, all the way back to a night I'd spent most of my life trying to forget. The dagger. The one that ha