We climb in single file. Dust lifts behind us and settles without care.
At the last bend before the active wings, Talon bumps my shoulder.
“You good?” he asks.
“No,” I answer honestly. “But I’m decided.”
“Well, that’s good enough.”
We turn toward the main hall, toward the generator wing and the scream I pretended was weather. Nathaniel will be ahead somewhere with his sleeves rolled, mouth set, and his eyesbright and full of a certain cruelty. I guess I’m the one about to stop that.
Cassian’s hand finds the small of my back and rubs once.
“So what’s the command, Skye?” he asks.
I look into his eyes. There is only one answer, and it is going to sound dramatic as hell. It’s also the only way out. Anything else won’t hold.
I straighten, let the words come like I’m not afraid of them at all.
“I’m going to kill Mark,” I say.
And for the first time in forty-eight hours, the decision is clean.
The arc of my ex-husband’s life is over.
I’ll be the one to finish it.
Believe it or not, I haven’t gone down to the basement once in the last two days. That one time I tormented Mark, in a very clever, verypervertedway involving me, my men, and a chain, was enough to keep me satisfied for a while.
I just wanted to ride that happy wave as long as it lasted, perfectly content with his screams echoing up the stairs without needing the visuals.
Well… now that I’m here again, standing at the bottom of the steps and looking into the room, I can honestly say I’m glad I didn’t come sooner.
It’s pathetic down here.
Mark’s slumped against the far wall, sitting in a folding chair like a ghost of himself. His arms are still bound at the elbows, his legs strapped so tightly the edges bite into his skin. But he’s not struggling anymore. He’s given up.
And damn… he looks smaller than I remembered. Even smaller than last time. He seems broken. Just like I was, once.
When he sees me, his head lifts. His face softens, almost lights up, like I’m some kind of angel he’s been waiting for instead of the woman he buried.
Nathaniel stands at a steel table to my left, his back half-turned. He’s working on something, and it takes me a second to realize he’s holding a neatly folded piece of dark cloth in one hand, polishing a small steel instrument with the other. The movement is precise. Up the shaft, down the blade. Wipe, turn. Wipe, turn.
A crazy, sadistic doctor if I’ve ever seen one.
And normally, that kind of thing wouldn’t turn me on…
But the way he’s doing it… It’s so slow and threatening…
Yeah. It’s kind of hot.
It also makes me pity Mark more.
That churning feeling in my gut, the one that mixes the need to make him hurt with something I can’t quite name, only gets stronger.
I glance at the table beside Nathaniel. The little lineup there says more about the last forty-eight hours than any scream could:
a shallow bowl with half-melted ice, water beading around its rim;
