The two guards who usually sleep on stools by my father’s door, lulled into carelessness by years of unchallenged authority, were summoned away by Gore. Leaving me to wander freely inside, the door creaking open just enough for me to slip in.
The room is enormous, gilded in obsidian shadows and stolen wealth. Curtains drape, heavy and suffocating, and the fire has burned low, still flickering enough to paint the walls red. Milus is asleep, lying on his back, mouth slightly open like a corpse, and the weapon in my hand feels like an extension of my heartbeat. I stand at his bedside, staring down at the man whocreated me, who terrified my Pair, who lied to my mother, who built this empire on fear and blood.
He doesn’t stir, not even when I lean down, my breath brushing his cheek. But when the muzzle of the gun knocks into the front of his forehead, he finally twitches, just slightly, not enough that most people would notice, and his eyes open.
Icy blue eyes that match mine stare up at me, unblinking, unconcerned, and it makes me want to do it now. Splatter his brains all over the pale coloured sheets covering him.
His mouth curves into a smug smile. “Hello, Son-”
“Shut the fuck up.” I smack the gun against his skull. “Don’t speak.”
My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
He tries anyway, his lips parting, and I drag the gun down the length of his nose, applying pressure to his chin, forcing his mouth to open wider, and I shove the gun between his teeth.
He watches me with a strange mixture of fury and fascination, as though seeing me clearly for the very first time.
“My Pair,” I say, each word deliberate, clean, lethal, “is off limits.”
His brow arches slightly, amused, even with a loaded gun hitting the back of his throat, I shove it in further, making him gag around the barrel.
“Penelope is back.”
Something in his face shifts, cold ruthless calculation.
“Don’t,” I huff through my nose, “even think about touching her. If you harm her, if you come near her, if you so much asbreathe her name, I will end you. Publicly. Quietly. I don’t care. I will fucking destroy the pedestal you built, shatter your throne, expose every secret you buried.”
He smiles wider, showing me his teeth biting the gun. I smile back, my face a mirror of his. It makes me feel sick; howphysically similar we are. I lean closer until my lips brush his ear.
“I know who Penelope is.”
He lifts a brow again, curving it high on his forehead, mocking me. Misinterpreting my words, thinking I’m talking about feelings.
“Mother’s dead baby.”
He freezes. The air shifts. His Adam’s apple jumps in his throat. His pulse flying in the side of his neck.
I smile wider. “Did you think that secret would stay dead, too?”
He tries to move, his hands coming up, but I push the gun into the back of his throat harder still, and his arms flop back to the bed like dead weights.
“You will leave my Pair alone,” I whisper. “You will keep your distance. You will treat her like she is a queen, not a threat. And you will punishmefor her running instead.”
His eyes narrow, his dark brows low over his bright eyes, his cheeks hollowed, spit dribbling from the corners of his overstretched mouth.
“Aww, don’t look at me like that,” I tut, still smiling. “You need to make a show of it, make an example of her, of us,” I murmur. “I’ll give you one. Lash me. Whip me. Parade me like sacrificial meat. But if you touch her, I will end you. And it won’t be a show. It won’t be a song and dance. It’ll be a straight bullet through your skull, an unmarked grave off property, somewhere far enough away even your ghost won’t find home. And I’ll make sure that when Gore takes over, we eradicate any sign you ever even existed. Give him the credit for starting this entire fuckingcult.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever used that term. Blinded, willingly, to what The Obsidian really is. Scolding Nellie for every time she said it. Called it what it is. But I’m in. It’s my life. My family. Myworld. Everything I know is this. And I won’t change it. I’m no hero. I’m the thing that goes bump in the night. The horror that hides beneath the bed.
I’m what The Obsidian made me.
A monster.
And I don’t want to change that.
I let the threat hang in the air like the delicate string of a spider’s carefully woven web.
“What’ll it be?” I cant my head, wriggling the gun around inside of his mouth, clattering it against his perfect white teeth.
