After a while, I don’t feel Cali’s punches. I stare up into her eyes and I see myself reflected there. I see my broken reflection as I gaze in horror at my mother’s body, the window splattered with blood. The splatters bloom and grow, pulsing as they join together, as the entire world is soaked in crimson. I see generations of carnage and rage coalesced into this moment, this never-ending quest for blood.
A face breaks through the red veil.Gabriel.The shadows behind him look like a pair of dark wings unfurling from his body. His perfect lips move, and even though there’s no way I can hear his words, they echo inside my head.
I’m unleashing war.
I swing my arm up. I mean only to touch Cali’s cheek, to tell her that it’s an honor to die by her hand. But I don’t realize that somehow the sword is in my hand. The tip of the spiked pommel digs into her neck. Blood spurts from the wound. Cali’s eyes pop open. She collapses, her hands clasping the wound.
Gabriel’s face breaks into a smile. His wings glow with a shimmering light. And then he’s gone. In his place is Noah, tall and dark andquakingwith wrath. He’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear the words. I can’t—
“Get up, Claws. You got her. Get up!”
I roll over. I’m moving through molasses. My arms are weighed down by all my guilt, all my regret.They’re better off without me. Cali will recover, she’ll hit me, and I’ll be done.
But Cali doesn’t hit me. She swings out at me with her foot as she scrambles for my discarded blade. Her ankle catches, knocking me off-balance. I spin as I fall, landing on top of her with all my weight. Instinct takes over. I jam my knee into her throat, the other pinning her left arm, the one that now has no hope of reaching a knife.
Thank you Antony for teaching me this move.
Cali can’t move without my weight crushing her windpipe. Her eyes regard me with a serene calm as blood bubbles from the wound in her neck. She’s not afraid of death. She’s always known the reaper peers over her shoulder, and this is exactly how she wanted to go – in the hands of an enemy who bested her.
I press the tip of my sword against her throat. The crowd roars at me to spill her blood. I gaze down on my enemy one last time—
I see them.
The scars.
I remember the stories I heard about her, how she’d been a street kid abandoned by her parents, living on scraps and whatever she managed to steal for cash. How every person she turned to for help used her and abused her and left her broken. How she tried to jack Brutus’ car one day and he caught her, and something of the fight in her eyes spoke to him. How he loved her as only the brutal know how to love, as onlyIcan love. How he turned her brokenness into strength, nursed that flame of hate inside her until it burned bright and clear. HemadeCali who she is. We weren’t so different, her and I.
“What are you waiting for?” Blood dribbles from the corner of Cali’s mouth. “You won, Barbie Bitch. Finish me off.”
“I’m not killing a sister for the sport of men.” I drop the sword. Gasps echo. I hear Noah yelling, but I ignore him. I slide my knee off Cali’s throat and hold out my hand to her. “We’re more alike than you realize. Join me, Cali. Join August in an alliance against Lucian, against the whole fucking world. We’ll make a new empire, re-forged in our blood. Join me, and kill my enemies, and I will give you everything Brutus denied you.”
Her smile is cruel, gleeful, her teeth dripping with blood.Did she bite me?“I imagine you have a lot of enemies, Barbie Bitch.”
“Oh, countless.”
“I’ll enjoy spilling their blood for you, Imperator.” Cali grins a wild, blood-soaked grin. “Especially your sister’s.”
“My sister?” Is she bluffing? How the fuck does she know about my sister?
Cali spits blood on the ground and lunges forward. I jerk my arm back, thinking she’s trying to drive herself onto my sword, to give herself the honorable death she so craves. But she grabs my hand and shakes it so hard she nearly wrenches my arm from its socket.
“Mackenzie Malloy is closer than you think,” she whispers. “You think no one can find her, but I can.”
She grabs my hand and kisses my ring. I take her arm and raise it above my head.
“You wanted blood?” I roar at the crowd. “You shall have it. I am your Imperator, and Cali is your Imperator, and also with Nero, our rule over this empire is absolute. And if you find yourself wishing for the days of Brutus, or asking yourself if you want to take orders from a woman, you will wake in the night to the blade of Cali against your throat.”
The crowd roars their approval. Nero steps up beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and waving to the adoring crowd. Anyone in the audience will see their three Imperators united. The promise of a new era of prosperity for the Triumvirate.
But they cannot feel Nero’s fingers digging into my shoulder, or the way his voice drips with malice as he whispers, “If I were you, Imperator, I would sleep with one eye open.”
33
Claudia
“Of all the ways I saw that fight ending, this was not one of them,” Noah remarks as he enters the ballroom a week later.
I look up from the sofa, where Cali has just painted my toenails a perfect shade of ice blue. She’s a little sloppy – we’re both still a bit raw from our injuries – but she has killer style. Behind her, George and Yara are flipping through fashion magazines, and Madeline Drysdale is trying on various dresses she nicked from Ainsley Malloy’s closet for her date with Tiberius tonight.
