His brows playfully rise, but he still snatches the pen from my hands and scribbles it down. “Promises are promises.” And he stuffs the note inside the box and locks it away.
“There. Now you can remind me whenever I mess up,” he says.
“But it’s just a piece of paper,” I say, snorting because all of this was just a silly little girl’s way of storing her most private thoughts.
“It can be more,” Liam says. He opens the box and takes out all the notes he just wrote. Then he fishes his knife from his pocket.
My eyes widen when he stabs his own thumb. “What are you doing?”
“Making it real,” he says, and he smears the drop of blood all over his thumb before pressing it down onto the paper. “There.”
“But that …” My skin erupts into goose bumps.
I’ve seen that before.
On one of my father’s deals he made with the De Vos family.
Blood for blood.
“You can’t do that,” I say.
“Yes, I can, and I have,” he replies, pressing his thumb down on all the notes, one by one, until no more promises are left.
“But that’s a blood—”
“Debt,” he interjects.
A blood debt.
A promise that can’t ever be broken.
Because the signer must die if they do.
He grabs my hand and holds out the knife. “Now it’s your turn.”
That’s right … the blood debt must always come with two signers.
Oh, God.
Can I really do this?
The knife feels so heavy in my hands, just like our fate when I make these promises actual vows.
“Do you want to turn your secrets into something better, something worth living for?” he asks.
I nod as he covers his hand with mine and inches closer with the knife to my own thumb.
“Then make them a reality.”
Before I know it, the pointy end has punctured my skin and a drop of blood forms on the tip. Pressing my thumb and index finger together, I spread the blood until my thumb is red.
My eyes flick to the papers on the desk, and I swallow away the lump in my throat before I press my thumb down on each and every single one of them.
I look down at our creation … the paper mingling with our blood … the vow I just made to end not just his life but mine if either of us breaks these promises.
But the feel of his warm hands on my shoulders breaks the trance. “We’ll add a new promise every year.”
Every year. Wow. “But what if we can’t keep them? I don’t want to die.” I glance at him over my shoulder, the courage in his eyes impossible to ignore.