She didn’t even blink.
The needle pressed against my skin—just a sharp sting, and then warmth spreading too fast, too thick, like my blood had turned to syrup.
My limbs went heavy.
My knees buckled.
The last thing I saw was her face—my sister’s face—blurred by tears she refused to let fall.
“This is the only way to save you,” she whispered.
And then everything went black.
Chapter 28
Hades
My heart slammed against my ribs as dread knotted in my gut, cold and deep like a blade sliding between bones. The house echoed with every step I took—hollow, mocking. I tore through each room, calling her name like it might pull her back from wherever the fuck she was.
But the silence?
It just laughed at me.
She was gone.
Not missing. Taken.
I stormed into her room—the room that smelled like her. Vanilla and warmth and something sweeter than I’d ever deserved. I stopped cold. Her phone sat on the nightstand, glowing with soft light. Innocent. Harmless.
Wrong.
She never left her phone behind.
I snatched it up, swiping past the passcode I had watched her put into her phone thousands of times before she trusted me. Trusted me. That memory felt like a blade dragging across my throat now.
The messages lit up, and I scrolled with hands that shook with too much restraint. Too much fury. Until?—
Callista.
Messages.
Come alone.
A detonation.
That’s what it felt like. A fucking bomb going off in my chest.
Red blurred the edges of my vision. My grip tightened around the phone, plastic groaning under the weight of my fury. I was going to kill her. Callista. Slowly. Painfully. She didn’t just cross a line—she set the line on fire and laughed.
I turned from the bed like it had betrayed me. My boots crushed glass from a frame I didn’t even remember knocking over. My pulse thundered in my ears. I could taste metal in my mouth from how hard I was grinding my fucking teeth.
She’d left.
Because of her.
Because someone poisoned her against me.
Someone thought they could take what was mine.
