She slashes. The blade kisses my arm, shallow but hot, a line of fire down my skin. She grins through her bloody teeth. “You’re already half-dead, Kat. Just let it happen.”
Rage carries me. I lunge, ignoring the scream of my ribs, and slam my forearm into her wrist. The knife clatters away, skittering across the floor. We crash down together, fists flying, every blow fueled by years of shared history.
I scream through it, head-butting her hard enough that she reels back, dazed. My fist drives into her stomach.
Quinn’s voice cuts sharp: “End it, Kat.”
Riot coughs, blood pooling at the corner of her mouth, still smirking through the wreckage of her face.
I raise my fist again, but Quinn steps in. Calm. Icy. Final. She presses the muzzle of her gun to Riot’s temple.
“Look at me,” Quinn orders. Riot meets her eyes, defiance still burning. “You’ll see your death coming, because that’s the price for betraying the Royal Harlots.”
The gunshot cracks, sharp and merciless. Riot’s body jerks once, then slumps, blood pooling across the concrete.
I stagger back, chest heaving, my hands sticky with her blood, my ribs screaming. Quinn holsters her gun, bends to scoop up the cut from the floor.
“She was one of us,” Quinn says, voice flat. “And she died knowing what it costs to break that.”
LC’s already at Devyn, tearing the duct tape away, cutting her ties. Devyn collapses against me, shaking, clutching my cut like I’m her anchor in a storm.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, choking on the words. “You’re safe now.”
Devyn nods against me, a quick, jerky motion. She’s trying to be tougher than all of this, but her wrists are chewed raw, left cheek purpled where a hand caught her, lip split. My stomach knots.
“You hurt anywhere else?” I ask her.
“No.” Devyn shakes her head, breath hitching.
“Good.” A sense of relief washes over the heartache that tugs at my chest.
Quinn straightens, her voice still cold. “It’s over. Now we need to clean this up.”
I bury my face in Devyn’s hair, but my eyes find Riot’s body anyway.
My stomach knots, bile climbing my throat. She was my sister once. My family. And now she’s nothing but a corpse on the floor.
19
KATANA
The Harlots snap into motion because that’s what we do when the floor drops out. We work fast and silent. No ceremony, no hesitation. We’re not fools, we don’t leave bodies with our names stamped on their foreheads.
Silk and Scarlet Rose strip the room for prints, every practiced motion a bandage over a wound that won’t stop bleeding. The cages rattle when they brush past, like ghosts are still pacing inside them.
Riot’s body is rolled in an old tarp slumped behind a bank of cages, the fabric stiff with rot. Orchid and Rogue take her shoulders, Inferna and Hydra lift her legs. Together, they haul her out back behind the kennel.
Quinn steps out last. Calm, which is always worse. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away as Orchid and Rogue drag the bundle toward the far edge of the yard where the dogs were buried before the fights got shut down. We grab the rusted shovels left behind, the handles cracked and rough with splinters. The ground is soft from last night’s rain, mud sucking at our boots as if it wants us too. Dirt spatters my jeans, clingsto the cuts on my knuckles. When we heave her in, the sound is final.
I keep my eyes off the patches of skin and hair where the tarp doesn’t quite meet. If I look too long, I’ll start thinking about every time we laughed, every time she dragged me out of a fight I shouldn’t have started. I’ll start thinking about how the world tilted off its axis and can never tilt back. I’ll start to wonder if some part of her was worth saving. That kind of thinking will split me open, so I bury it with her.
Her cut goes last. For a second, just a breath, Quinn looks down at the leather like she’s remembering every mile we rode with that patch on Riot’s back. Then the softness leaves her face, and only the President remains.
Quinn flicks her lighter and holds the flame until the leather catches. It burns slowly at first, reluctant, then flares greedy and deep orange. She tosses it into the grave as it burns. Flames claw skyward.
“She was ours once,” Quinn says, voice low and stone-hard. “But she died the moment she betrayed us.”
The smell of burning hide turns the air acrid, stinging the back of my throat. The brand on the back warps, curls, and then is nothing.
