“Do it, Petra,” he ordered, the gentleness in his voice hardening into a hammer.
Her heart beat so fast, she had the fleeting hope that it might simply pop, freeing her from the nightmare she found herself in. Maybe she’d pass out. Maybe she’d throw up all over him and he’d be so disgusted he’d leave her alone.
But those were childish, cowardly hopes. Petra knew there was no easy escape from the situation she’d put herself in.
She’ddone this. She was the one who couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. She couldn’t let Max’s murder go unanswered. She had to scheme and plan and dig up the truth, knowing it was a fool’s errand. Coming to Antonin’s attention was an inevitability, something she’d known would have to happen when all other avenues failed to provide the proof she needed.
Petra tried to summon some violent will. It’d been there when she was trapped in the closet, but now that fiery surge of determination was nowhere to be found. Even when she’d considered having Antonin killed, Petra never imaginedherselfdoing it. She’d always assumed she wouldn’t have the opportunity, since he always had so many guards around, and even if she did, she didn’t have the stomach for murder. Just like when her parents were killed, just like whenever something horrific happened in the children’s home, shefroze.
No matter how vehemently she attempted to talk herself into it, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t summon an upswell of fiery magic to end him.
Antonin pulled back just far enough to give her a stern look. “My dear, you’re going to learn I’m not a very patient man, and I suspect I’ll be a rather demanding husband. Let’s not start this off on the wrong?—”
A dull, metallicthwumpechoed up the short staircase. Antonin dropped his hand from her cheek and half-turned to look at the dark shape of the opening in the floor.
Petra’s heart leapt into her throat. That sound, the temporary reprieve from the Protector’s penetrating gaze flipped a switch inside her. She sucked in a huge breath of cool air as a stinging rush of adrenaline scoured her veins.
One hand holding her upper arm, Antonin barked, “Sean, Val— What’s happening down there?”
When a moment passed and still no response came, the line of Antonin’s shoulders stiffened. His fingers gripped her arm a little harder, digging into her flesh, as he used his other hand to reach under his suit jacket.
His head swiveled to give her a narrow-eyed look. “What’s going on?”
“I have no idea,” she answered, eyes flicking down to where he still had his hand under his jacket. She’d once been the daughter of a prolific, if not particularly skilled, criminal. As a child, she’d been used to run cons and make deals more times than she could count.
Petra knew what it looked like when a man held a gun.
Antonin took a step closer. All the sultry warmth, the false gentleness, it vanished. The glow of the candles barely reached them this far away from the table, but tiny orange flickers danced in his dark eyes. When he spoke, it was in the patient cadence of an adult who already knew they’d have to discipline a child. “Petra, what have you done?”
An incredulous laugh tried its damnedest to bubble up her throat. “Nothing,” she gasped, twisting her arm hard enough to break his grasp. A crackle of heat came to life in her belly. “I don’t know what’s going on, butthis—I’m not doing this. I’mneverdoing this.”
She backed up until she could almost feel the wide open archway of the one tower window behind her. A flash of white-hot heat rushed over her skin. Her fingertips tingled. Rage, an all-consuming fire, burned her fear to ash.
Now that she’d said it, Petra couldn’t stop the words from falling out of her mouth, each one a rolling boulder picking up speed as it careened away from her. “I’m not going to bond with you. I’m not going to have yourchildren.Are you insane? You killed my uncle. You— you took the only family I had left.”
Antonin didn’t approach her right away. Instead, he slowly drew his gun out from under his suit jacket. He didn’t point it at her. He simply held it, the barrel aimed at the floor, and pressed the switch to turn off the safety. The low hum of the battery pack warming up was barely audible, but it was burned into her mind from so many secret trips to the firing range with Max that she would know it anywhere.
Speaking in a devastatingly calm voice, Antonin said, “I understand getting cold feet. This is a major life change for you. However, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension — mainly that you can say no.”
The wind tugged her hair back, out towards the glittering night sky and the San Francisco skyline. Petra braced her palms on the cold, gritty surface of the window’s ledge and leaned forward. “I’d rather die.”
If that meant that she joined her parents — and probably Max, too — in dying at the end of a gun, then so be it. Anything was better than being Antonin’s perfect little bride.
He made a sucking sound with his teeth and tongue. “That isverydisappointing, my dear.” His expensive leather shoes whispered across the floor as he approached her, gun aimed at her chest. His smile was small, sharp, and icy cold. “I wanted this to be a partnership, but if you can’t grasp that yet, then I have other ways of making you see reason. I don’t have time forthis right now, not when everything is finally coming together. Looks like we’ll be making a trip to see a friend of mine in United Washington. I’d hoped to avoid it, but?—”
The sound of hinges squealing made her jump. Antonin spun around and, in one agile movement, was next to her by the window, the too-hot barrel of his gun pressed against her temple.
“Stop! Name and rank before you come up the stairs,” he barked.
There was no sound. No movement. For several terrible seconds, time seemed suspended, stretched into an eternity around her. Even the wind stopped blowing, leaving them in a suffocating stillness there at the top of the belltower.
And then the candles went out.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Silas was alwaysaware of what he was. He’d known he was different from his parents, his cousins, his uncles, aunts, and neighbors. He didn’t feel the same things, he didn’t see people the same way as them, and he spoke to beings who didn’t exist. In his adult life, he happily existed on the fringe and reveled in the freedom of criminal life.
But never, not in all the years he’d wrung money out of blood and joy out of other people’s misfortune, did Silas feel more like a monster than when he saw a gun pointed at his witch’s head.
