Assassination disguised as natural death, and they think they can get away with it.
They think they can take Darragh Killaney, Don of the Irish Killaney family, and bury him under bureaucracy and paperwork and indifferent cops who don't give a fuck about justice.
But they're wrong, because I'm not going to let this go.
I'm going to find who did this. I'm going to find Cormac Donoghue and every single member of the Morrígan Order. I'm going to burn them to the ground and make sure everyone knows what happens when you come for a Killaney.
My hand moves from the table to my father's shoulder.
His skin is cold. So cold it almost doesn't feel real.
I lean down, close enough that if he were alive, he'd hear me.
"I'll fix this," I say, voice low. "I'll avenge you. I'll right this wrong. And I'll make our name stronger than it's ever been."
The words hang in the air, a vow spoken over a body that can't answer back.
But I feel it anyway. The responsibility.
This is on me now.
All of it.
I straighten, pull the sheet back over his face, and turn toward the door.
My father is dead.
But the war has just begun.
3
ZARIA
Get up.
If I stay down, I die.
But She always sees the ones who flee.
My hands are shaking so badly they are almost useless as I push off the ground. I stagger to my feet and keep running. The air is so cold it burns my lungs and white fog spills from my mouth into the night with each exhale.
I stumble through the woods, my bare feet slamming against frozen earth and roots that spring up like broken bones.
The ritual robe snags on another branch and jerks me backward, scraping the side of my neck. The thin fabric was never made for running through woods; it was made for kneeling, for bowing, for following the rites.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper, voice breaking, even as that damned conditioned voice inside me yells that running is betrayal, that I should’ve stayed and obeyed.
Somewhere behind me, the chanting continues. The voices rise and fall in that rhythm, the one I've heard a thousand times, the one that used to comfort me when I was younger and didn't know better.
Now it just sounds like death closing in.
I push through another cluster of trees, thorns and leafless branches scraping my arms, but I can't stop.
Because if I stop, they'll find me, and if they find me, I'm dead.
The image flashes again, her face. The sister they dragged forward during the ritual. I can still hear her screaming, can still see the way the flames swallowed her whole while everyone stood in a circle and chanted louder, louder, until her voice was nothing but smoke.
I'd seen sacrifices before. Animals. Offerings. Symbols burned in fire.
