A shadow pulls itself from the pool beside me, and I swipe out, only to find it’s Falk barking something at me, not Trevor, but I can’t hear, not while Clara still isn’t moving. I pound on her back, so hard I’m scared I’ll break something, and some water trickles from her mouth, but it’s not enough. So I layher awkwardly on her back, her arms still stuck behind her, my lips pressing to her chilled ones as I breathe for her.
Nothing happens.
I press my fingers against her neck, needing to feel the beat of her heart, water and tears mixing as my hands shake.
Her pulse is reedy, but there.
I press my lips to hers again, and on the second breath, she contracts and coughs, water and mucus and who the fuck knows what coming up, but it doesn’t matter. It can’t.
She does.
And as she doubles over, spewing on the imported Moroccan tiles, I let loose a sob of relief, sweeping out with the knife when another shadow approaches, the yelp familiar, the blood red enough to taste.
“Stay the fuck away from her,” I whisper, not turning away from her huddled lump on the tile, unable to look at the threat when she’s more important. So much more important.
“She’s mine to punish,” Trevor says, his cough and whine enough to make the carefully tamped edges of my rage break free.
Clara turns, her dark eyes hazy, but there’s anger there. I have her permission.
She wondered how badly I could hurt my brother before there were consequences.
I’ve wondered what would happen if I killed him.
Trusting her to decide if or when I need to pull back, I figure it’s time to find out.
Years of pain twisted to violence, of secrets and silence and knowing I’ll never be enough, grief for my mother, for the innocent kid I once was, one who believed in wishes andhope and laughter and other impossible things, all of it winds into something uncontrollable, unbearable, and deadly: me.
I drop the knife, not wanting distance, needing to feel him break under me. By the time I’ve rolled from my crouch to standing, Trevor sees the danger. He sees the fists Father taught me to use, scarred from years of abuse that the golden boy never experienced. He sees the inches I have on him, the dozens of pounds. And most importantly, he sees that I’m in total control—of my body, and of a mind that he’s consistently underestimated.
Three quick moves and I’ve got him in a lock that’s impossible for him to break free of, but it’s not enough. It can’t be.
He tried to kill her.
Like before, she was cold and unresponsive, flurries of white billowing down. This time, it wasn’t me, though. It was him. He was purposeful. Petty. Cruel. Action taken to control a woman who can’t be controlled, won’t be kept down.
A woman built to fight, to break free of her cage, not to feather her nest in a gilded one.
A woman meant to stand beside me, to guard my back while I guard hers.
Sure enough, one glance shows her crouched and coughing, Falk with her handcuffs in his hands, as she reaches for the discarded knife. She swings it with the grace of the dancer she should have been, still half-doubled over, but keeping the guards I hadn’t taken out yet away from the fight between me and Trevor.
I pull tighter against his joints, my not-brother’s frantic shouts echoing off the tiles. He offered her no mercy. He’llreap what he’s sown.
He yells as I wrench his shoulder from its joint, and it’s not enough, even as I see Clara wincing slightly in remembered pain. What Clara survived with barely a whimper has my brother screaming at me, but the echoes turn his hate into a haze of sound.
Coughing, Clara gets to her feet, swiping at Trevor’s pet guard when he rushes me, a thin trail of blood scattering from the blade, the ruby splotches turning black on the blue tiles.
I wrench farther, and the snap of Trevor’s elbow dislocating has a smile twitching at my lips.
With care and focus, I pop his thumb out of joint too, then his pinky.
His whimpers fade as I feel myself retreating from the moment, watching Clara slice across the front of Trevor’s guard in the beginning of a haze, the slash shallow but long, more blood landing on the tiles, mixing with the water across her hands, coating her in red.
She always looks good in red.
Then she turns to me, her gaze locked on Trevor’s limp fingers in my grip. With a move proving how sharp that guard keeps his knife, she lops off his pointer and middle fingers, her face grim. He screams, high pitched in terror and pain, but Clara leans low, her voice soft enough that only the three of us could hear it. “Now you can’t put those fingers where they don’t belong,” she hisses.
I thought I was angry before. But rage blankets my consciousness with her words, a violation I hadn’t known she’d lived through clear in her statement.
