Protecting Evelyn was never in the cards for Xavier.
Tobias and Gabriel are out of breath in my periphery. Their eyes are wide as they watch us both, gasping for air, but all my focus is centred on Xavier.
“Did you tell Reuben about this?”
“Reuben gave me full autonomy,” he repeats it like a broken record. As though it’ll save him.
Silence settles between us again as we each stare down the other—another stalemate… but not at all one I wanted.
“I threw my body over you, Xavier.” The words fall out of my fractures. From all the pieces of me that are now slipping through my fingers.
I still feel the echoes of my bones shattering. The glass splintering through my skin. The suffering ebbing from my torn and broken carcass as I pieced mybonesback together at the bottom of a damaged car.
“My fucking—” my voice cracks without my consent. This isn’t the time forweakness. “My fucking body.”
But there isn't anything in his eyes that remotely resembles gratitude.
“You really should stop doing things like that,” he says calmly, with a steeled expression.
I lunge for him. He can put a bullet through my chest right now and I still wouldn’t stop.
I’ll kill him just like I killed Everett.
Gabriel grabs me before I can reach him, tugging me back violently and Tobias pulls Xavier’s barrel away from me—his shot is fired into the sky.
I’m screaming because I’ll kill him today.
“You were going to kill her anyway!” He shouts at me, rallying behind Tobias. “Then we accomplish nothing! Then it’ll just be more and more kids like Evie!”
“And she just happens to be the one youabandonfor the sake of everyone else?!” I spit venomously, charging toward him with all my strength, but Gabriel is immovable between us.
I never knew he was so fucking tall.
“Yes!” Xavier’s words are a scream in my ears. A scream that saps all my fight. That makes the world so hatefully quiet as my arms fall to my sides, weightlessly.
“Yes, she is,” he says softly. “The Harvester took my sister from me. Five years ago. His head—his backers—hisdeath—hisfuture—” his eyes are shining with a wild light, “it’s mine. Mine to destroy.”
I don’t care that he’s breaking too, beneath the mask—don’t care that I see his weakness even if I was to stare into it for all eternity.
You sacrificed an innocent, for a woman who’s been dead for five years.
I won’t ever accept that.
In one swift motion, I've pulled Gabriel’s gun from his holster, ducking beneath him to aim for that spot right between Xavier’s eyes. My last two shots—the shots I should’ve used to save Evelyn and kill Philip—they burrow into the earth as Gabriel knocks the gun downward.
He tries to tell me something but I can’t hear beyond that familiar madness.
The one that reminds me so much of Reuben.
I grab Gabriel by the collar of his shirt, stepping forward to unbalance him and drag him to the ground.
I don't spare him a glance as I pivot around him, grabbing one of his daggers from a compartment in his pants—where I know he keeps them. I put all my weight and focus into hurling it at Xavier.
Tobias deflects it with his own knife, but he staggers back from the force of it, biting a command behind him.
Xavier scowls as he staggers back, preparing to run.
But I won't give you the courtesy of running.
