Not lust, or mockery. Not even twisted joy... It’sadmiration.
“As you wish, reina,” he says.
Wraith calls me little fox. Saint calls me little lamb. Ash says Red like it’s both a warning and a prayer. Mateo calls me reina.Rook calls me my disobedience. They’re allminewhen they say it.
And now?
Now I get to show them what I do with that.
I turn back to Rook one last time. “We finish this. Today.”
He looks at me like he wants to tear London apart and lay it at my feet. Heat slides into my belly, slowly, deliciously, and it takes everything in me to stay where I am. “We finish this,” he says.
I nod once.
Then I step back, out of the warmth of his hands, out of the shadow of his desk, and toward the door, toward Mateo, toward the stairs I already know too well.
I’m done watching. Done being handled. Today, I get to end the two men who made my life a living hell.
And I’m going to make them watch while I burn it all to the ground.
Chapter 50
Ember
The rain is already inside when we bring them in.
It slips through the torn seams of the roof in thin, steady lines, tapping against the concrete in patient little heartbeats. The warehouse smells like oxidized metal and old oil and London river rot. It’s cold, and the cold lives in the walls. You can taste it.
Perfect place to die.
We’ve cleared everything but what matters. No crates. No pallets. No cover. Just two bolted-down metal chairs under a single hanging work light, flickering every so often like it’s struggling to stay awake.
Two chairs. Two men. Both destined to die.
I walk slowly toward them. I don’t rush. My boots ring out hollow on the concrete, echoing up into the exposed ribs of the ceiling. I’m wearing black, Rook’s shirt layered under my jacket, Wraith’s emerald cold against my throat. My hands don’t shake.
The boys hang back and let me go first.
Wraith is closest to the door, broad and unmovable, arms crossed over his chest. He looks like he’d break the world in half if I asked him to. Vale leans against a cracked wall with his usual lazy, hungry grin, flipping a blade between his fingers like this is theater and he’s sad the tickets weren’t more expensive. Saint stands farther off in half-shadow, head slightly bowed, rosary glinting around his wrist, looking like the last prayer you say before you do something you’ll never come back from. Ash is behind them, in what used to be the loading bay. He looks carved out of quiet. Observing. Memorizing. He’s not blinking much. That means it’s costing him to stay where he is and not move.
And Rook? Rook doesn’t take the wall—doesn’t hide in shadow. He stands just behind me and to my left, like I’m center and he’s orbit, sleeves rolled, jaw tight, hands loose at his sides. Blue eyes fixed on me.
Not on Damien. Not on Marcus.Me.
The chairs are set where the worst of the rain doesn’t reach. The edges of the puddles are lapping forward, creeping in, catching the light and throwing it back in broken strips. It means when they look down, they’ll see themselves ruined.
That wasn’t an accident.
Damien is tied down tight — wrists cuffed behind the chair and to the frame, ankles shackled to the legs. He’s older. Broader through the shoulders. Bruised. Split lip gone crusted dark. His shirt collar’s torn and there’s dried blood on the side of his throat from where Vale “helped him sit still immediately please and thank you.”
He still looks smug, but he won’t before too long. Marcus is bound beside him, Marcus looks like prey trying to remember how to make himself look like a man.
He’s got rope burn on his wrists from straining. One eye swelling. Sweat on his upper lip. He looks smaller than I remember.
That hits me like a ton of bricks. In my head, he’s always been bigger.
Funny how that works.
