He smiles, serene and insane, a man who knows death is coming and welcomes it. “The Guardian is the shadow under the crown,” he says, breath wet in his throat. “The thing your King forgot. The thing that remembers. You just don’t want to believe it. Secrets don’t stay hidden in Forsyth. This one is about to rise.”
He chokes, trying to laugh through blood. I stare at him for one long second, wondering if I should just leave him here and let him die, slow and painful.
But no.No.
I drag him closer and spike my thumb deep into the nerve bundle at his groin, grinding until the muscle locks. His body convulses hardin my hold–scream tearing loose and rolling through the tunnels. It still isn’t enough.
Nothing will ever be enough. My vision whites out. There is no tunnel. No city. No King. No past. No future. There is only the image of her bound and fighting and alone in the dark while these monsters touched her.Used her. Something inside me tears free. I shift my grip, grabbing the gun from inside my coat. The barrel presses cold into the center of his forehead. His smile doesn’t falter.
Neither do I.
“No one touches the Baroness and gets away with it.” I cock the trigger. “Memento Mori, you fucking piece of shit.”
I pull the trigger.
The shot cracks like thunder in the narrow tunnel. His body jerks once, then slackens. I keep hold of him a beat longer, watching life leave his eyes, before I let go.
He hits the ground hard, dead weight. Blood spreads fast beneath his head. His ponytail has come loose; hair fanning across the floor like spilled ink. My ears ring. My hand trembles before I lock it still, then I step back and look down at what’s left of him.
I don’t feel triumph. I don’t feel relief or remorse.
I feel clarity.
Nothing in this world matters more than the woman at the center of all of it—the girl they tried to claim. And I will burn Forsyth to its foundations before I let anyone but us ever touch her again.
45
Damon
Hospitals are louderthan people think.
Not the machines. Not the overhead calls. Not the squeak of rubber soles on waxed floors.
It’s the waiting.
It fills the halls like pressure in a sealed pipe–everyone holding something in, something breaking, something about to rupture if one more second passes without news.
This time it’s the King in the ICU. He lies on the other side of the glass, tubed and monitored, cut open and stitched back together by men who have no idea what will happen to this city if his heart stops beating.
Ever since I carried Arianette out of the tunnel, muddy and soaked in blood–hers, but mostly his–she hasn’t willingly left his side. She sat by him in the ambulance, hands hovering over him like she could keep him tethered here by sheer will. Therewas no fucking way I was letting her out of my sight, not in the yard, not in the ambulance, not when we walked through the emergency room doors and they tried to take the King away.
I thought they were going to have to sedate her, but Graves rushed in, hair disheveled like he just rolled out of bed, and handled it with a look.
They made her shower off the blood and grime and gave her a set of pale blue scrubs that swallow her small frame. She’s in the room now, curled into the chair beside his bed, her hand wrapped around his forearm where the IV lines thread into him. Her head rests against the mattress like she’s listening for something under the skin.
Waiting for him to come back.
Graves is with her, sitting stiffly in a chair in the corner, while I’m outside the glass trying to figure out our next moves. Hunter finds me in that spot, unsure of how much time has passed. He’s clean, technically. The blood from whatever transpired after he ran into the tunnel washed away. Clothes changed. But it doesn’t hide what’s underneath. His face is swollen along the cheekbone. Lip split. Knuckles abraded and taped. The look in his eyes–caught somewhere between there and here.
“Billy?” I ask quietly.
His gaze lingers on the ICU bed. On the King for a brief second, then on our girl holding onto him. “Taken care of.”
I nod once.
I don’t tell him Liam is down the hall in neuro with a skull fracture courtesy of Killian’s restraint finally snapping. Or that Mateo never made it to a hospital at all, that he’s already on his way to the darkest of places reserved for men who sell out Forsyth.
The kind of prison you enter breathing and leave in pieces.
