“After all I’ve done for this Nest,thisis what I get?” I screamed.
“Calm down?—”
“Calm? You want me to becalm? Tell me—do you want Luka around the girls? Do you want Silas watching our every move? Luka doesn’t even use venom. It is cruel to ask anyone to feed him.”
“Alina! Quiet down!” Phoebe shouted and rubbed her head. “Let us think about this.”
“I have done nothingbutthink about this!”
“We won’t let anything happen to you. I won’t allow it,” she said sternly, gripping my shoulders tightly. “At this point, it’s two against many. They are outnumbered, outpowered. Just think about it. We have everything.”
I shook my head, but she jolted me in her grip.
Even in the dark, I could see her glassy eyes. “This is the only way. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“You could have told them.”
“It is not for me to tell.” She raised her voice before choking out, “It is the only option we have yet to exhaust. It will be fine as long as we watch each other’s backs. You have our loyalty; we won’t let anything happen to you. Those men would sooner have bullets in them before they even think of insisting on moving a single hair out of place.”
I nodded and took a deep breath, wiping my clammy hands on my skirt before sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“Next issue—Luka.” Phoebe sat next to me. “Just starve him. There is no faster way to get a rowdy Vipera to cooperate. Father used to do it?—”
“Right.” I cut her off.
“As for your marriage to Silas...” Phoebe continued, grimacing at the thought. “If his accounts are as good as he says, he is a wallet at best. At worst, we can remove his knees and keep him as a pet.”
I laughed, but my heart was heavy.
“Besides,” Phoebe tried to make light with a joke, “we will be sisters-in-law for real this time.” She laughed, but it was laced with some sense of loss.
I rubbed my face with my hands. I had never been so defeated; nothing was going like I wanted it to.
Where I thought I had a choice before, it was now a demand.
I rose from my seat and collected my coat from the chair.
“Do you want me to telephone him?” She threw me a concerned look.
“No, I have terms to negotiate.”
29
THE CREATURE
Something disturbed my slumber, some low vibration I could feel deep in my bones. The instinctual crawl of the skin... I was not alone.
I sat up, peering at the figure sitting in the chair against the wall, directly in front of my bed.
Tilting my head, I smirked at the delightful surprise. This brought back such fond memories of watching my sweet Alina sleep, and now she was doing the same for me. She really knew how to melt my cold, dead heart.
“Have you come for some witching-hour fun? Here to cast a spell on me, you vile thing?” I bantered. Her figure was still covered in the dark.
A sharp click sounded from where she sat.
My smile faltered slightly. “Is that a gun?”
“Just insurance.” There was a sweetness to Alina’s tone.
