I won’t let it be.
Even if I’m alone.Even if my court is shattered.Even if every plan I touch turns to ashes.
Vincent took everything from me once before, including my sense of safety in my own skin.He violated me in ways that left scars deeper than any knife could cut.
And I survived.
I’ll survive this too.
And when I rise from these ashes…
When I finally,finallytwist the knife in his back, he’ll understand exactly what kind of monster he created.What happens when you break someone so completely that they rebuild themselves into something sharp and hungry and utterly without mercy.
My phone buzzes again with another text from James:Need me?I’m right outside.
I stare at the words for a long moment and soak in his devotion, then I type back:Yes.
Because I can’t do this alone, and maybe I was never supposed to.
Maybe that’s the real lesson—not that I need to be stronger, but that I need to let my monsters hunt beside me instead of trying to command them from a distance.
My court isn’t broken.
It’s just…evolving.
Chapter 12
James
Five Minutes Earlier
DetectiveEddiewalksintothe petrol station like a man carrying a door that willnae open and willnae drop.
I watch the shape of it in his shoulders.The way his hands don’t know where to live.I cannae hear him and Sera, dinnae need to.I read mouths fine from the camera’s footage on my laptop, but tonight it’s the silence that tells the tale, the way he stands too neat, the way she goes very still.
Someone fucked up.Or someone fucked us up.
He leaves, and the bell does its cheery wee lie.He doesn’t look back, but I know he knows I’m here.
Then there’s just her under the corpse lights, her face like a chapel after a fire, blackened ribs with the sky showing through.She looks broken, and something in my gut kinks sideways.
Aye, this better not be on me.Did I fuck up?Did I have something to do with the look on her face that puts a knife in my heart?
I pull out my phone and thumb out a text to her:You all right, Prayer?
A bit later, she texts back:Fine.
Aye, and I’m the pope.No lass is ever just fine.
Now she’s got her phone in hand, her thumbs hovering, her jaw set as she stares at the screen.She looked broken before; now she looks carved from the inside out.
Need me?I’m right outside,I reply.
Yes.
I kill the glow of everything up front, leave the back gear in my van humming soft, and pull the curtain.I step out and put every sharp edge I’ve got away and walk in on quiet.
She looks up at my entrance.
