God of Malice

After dropping Glyndon back off at her dorm, Killian contemplates how much she’s beginning to mean to him. However, on the way home, he’s run off the road by several cars, and after he crashes he sees Landon at his window. He wakes up later in a basement, strapped to a chair, and Landon, Eli, and Creighton King are threatening him. They blast him with a fire hose before Landon commands him to break up with Glyndon. Killian sees his life flash before his eyes, but it’s just the image of Glyndon smiling. The hose suddenly stops, and Brandon and Glyndon enter and berate their brother. Glyndon refuses to leave and threatens to tell their family about Landon’s cruel antisocial behavior if he doesn’t stop meddling in her life. Though Killian knew he could have escaped without her help, he wanted Landon to get him because it would help get Glyndon fully on his side.

Glyndon and Brandon take Killian back to his mansion, where Gareth calls the family doctor. Glyndon realizes that she has become addicted to Killian and the fear he instills in her, reflecting on how she genuinely worried for him when she found him in the basement. While he sleeps, she talks with Gareth about him, contrasting how differently they’ve turned out despite having antisocial brothers. Glyndon thinks Gareth let himself become cruel by not trying to empathize with Killian, whereas Gareth thinks Glyndon is still being naive about what Killian is capable of. Despite having a fever, Killian has sex with Glyndon when he wakes up, this time threatening to get her pregnant so that she can’t leave him.

Glyndon goes to a pub with her friends and gets drunk to avoid thinking about Killian. However, Killian and Nikolai appear, and the latter terrifies her friends. During an awkward game of “Never Have I Ever,” Killian admits that he has never been in love. When he takes Glyndon home early, they fight about this, Glyndon accusing him of not having a heart and not being able to love her, something that scares her as she admits she’s beginning to have feelings for him. She falls asleep in the car on the way to her dorm, but when she wakes up, she’s surprised to see that they’re parked in front of a plane, and Killian is telling her that it’s time to go “home.”

Glyndon drunkenly panics as Killian and Gareth take Nikolai’s private jet to go back to their home in the US. They arrive at the Carson home on the outskirts of New York City, where their mother, Reina, happily greets them. Their father, Asher, hugs Gareth but is cold toward Killian. Asher voices his concern that Glyndon is only with Killian under threat of violence, but Glyndon tells the family that is not the case, earning more of Killian’s respect.

Family meals with the Carsons are a bit awkward, though Glyndon loves Killian’s mother, Reina. When Killian’s parents go to bed that night, he forces Glyndon to his bedroom, where they have sex, but he torments her until she admits one of two things: either that she belongs to him or that she wanted him to assault her the night they first met. She eventually admits that she did want him that night, though she doesn’t understand why. She feels free as she surrenders herself to him both sexually and emotionally.

The perspective switches to that of Astrid King, Glyndon’s mother, as she wakes up from a nightmare. She fears for her three children and texts them to ask how they are doing and if they know whether their siblings are okay. Landon mentions that Brandon has been acting secretive lately and Glyndon is seeing a dangerous man, though in the picture of Killian and Glyndon that Landon sends her, Astrid can see that Glyndon seems happy for the first time since Devlin’s death. Astrid warns Landon not to get involved in his sister’s relationship before receiving a call from Glyndon in New York. Astrid has known about Killian for weeks but didn’t want to invade Glyndon’s privacy, especially as the mother and daughter have grown distant. Suddenly, Glyndon apologizes to Astrid for being the least talented of her children and letting her inferiority complex get in the way of things. She admits that she has contemplated death by suicide but thanks her mother for still trying to be there for her regardless of her mental state or artistic talent. When Glyndon asks her mother how she and her father fell in love, Astrid tells her, “Love can’t be forced or explained, it just happens” (374).