My hands tremble, but my finger stays on the trigger. His words slip through me like cold water, twisting, coiling. I can almost feel the unsteady hesitation hovering in my throat.
Could I really let him go? Let him disappear into the trees, vanish into the static of a new identity, his family safe, The Order fooled?
For a moment, my mind betrays me. I see it play out like a film: Ezra running through the woods under a washed-out dawn, his wife clutching their daughter’s hand, the three of them boarding a plane under false names, breathing the first air of freedom.
But then, as quickly as it appeared, the fantasy shatters.
What would I tell Estella? That I let a traitor go because he cried hard enough? That I believed the same man who sold us out?
I could stage it—say Ezra killed Owen, that he shot at me too before fleeing. Maybe they’d buy it. But I know what that would mean.
Every step I’ve taken, every risk, every careful plan wiped clean; my name dragged through the dirt, my purpose reducedto nothing. And somewhere in the back of my mind, the question gnaws, soft but relentless.
Am I reallynotlike them?
Estella. I can already see the shades of disappointment carving across her face, a slow work of art she won’t bother to correct. She’ll refuse to meet my eyes, folding her attention inward as she spins a plan to find Ezra and finish the job herself. Cane will tilt his head the same way—wearing that small, cautious suspicion that grows teeth. Both of them will grow cold toward me. I will disappoint them.
I will disappointher.
I can’t let him go. Too many seams gape already; too many holes would yaw open if he slips away and someone else starts threading answers through them.
I level the rifle between his eyes. The shed shrinks to a narrow corridor of metal and breath as everything reduces to the cold weight in my hands and the black holes where his pupils fight to hold the light.
I press the trigger. The shot is a soft, clinical whisper, the silencer dulling the world to a distant, indifferent hum. Ezra’s body convulses, a ragged silhouette folding inward.
Blood blossoms from the center of his skull in a dark, viscous eruption that paints the air with iron and pine sap. He goes slack, and the world reasserts itself in slow motion: the sag of his jaw, the flutter of lashes, the way the light catches on the new, wet wound like a smear across a photograph.
My heart hammers so hard my ribs might split while a heavy knot settles in my throat. The decision weighs like a small boulder on my shoulders, but the feeling that follows surprises me.
Guilt does not come. Instead, a warm, sharp clarity washes through my limbs, a steadying that tastes like resolve. Heat spreads in small electric pricks under my skin, a sense ofrightness that stands in stark contrast to the cool, pine-smoke calm of the shed. A slow exhale leaves me, and the space narrows.
No more paranoia. No anxious whispers about who will talk. No widening holes that I can’t plug. The future simplifies into a single, luminous thing—the mission, uninterrupted. I can give myself to it now, whole and unfractured.
Footsteps and muffled voices bruise the quiet outside, and I glance back. The door remains shut, a thin barrier against revelation. My gaze slides over the dark pool beneath Owen, and a curse slips out of me.
Then I look at Ezra. His clothes darken as the blood spreads, the color crawling up the fabric like ivy. The floor beneath him, however, is strangely untainted beyond the pool, a clean line where the scene could be arranged, and the thought moves through me.
I can make this look like he turned on Owen. I can spin a story—a man cornered, a desperate shot, a fleeing traitor. Emmett will explode when he realizes his partner is dead, and Estella will understand the raw calculus behind a field kill. She’ll know I did what needed doing.
Forher.
I twist the rifle to my back in one smooth motion and dive toward Ezra, sliding my hands beneath his armpits. His weight is awkward, unsteady as I lift him, dragging him across the shed floor to the far wall. I ease him down into a sitting position, his back pressing against the rough timber.
From his waistband, I pull a gun and shove it into his hand, angling it just so—an illusion of culpability. It isn’t perfect, since the bullets won’t match Owen’s wound. I know that. But Emmett won’t care about minutiae. He’ll see what he needs to see and nothing more.
I step back, letting the rifle slide into my hands again, muscles coiled and alert. The door bursts open before I can take a full breath.
“What the fuck happened?” Emmett shouts, eyes locked on Owen’s lifeless body.
Estella sweeps in immediately, hands gripping her weapon, eyes scanning every shadow, every corner of the room. She pauses at Owen, lips tipping downward in a silent frown, then swings her gaze to Ezra. “Nice job,” she murmurs.
“He was aggressive,” I lie, keeping my voice steady. “I had to be quick.”
Her eyes snap to mine, amber sparks catching in the dim light. The flicker of something new flashes in them, something akin to…pride? It’s gone as quickly as it appeared, but it leaves a charge in the air between us, invisible yet palpable.
“Just sad I missed all the fun,” she whispers, a hint of a smirk brushing her lips before retreating, swallowed by control.
Around us, the world blurs, dissolving into background noise. All that exists is the space between us, thick and electric, alive with emotions we have yet to name. It thrums with a raw, uncharted energy, a current we feel in our bones, impossible to ignore and impossible to resist.
