He reaches into the ledger, pulls out a stack of high-denomination bills, and stuffs them into the Priestess’s mouth until she’s gagging on the paper.
“Eat it,” he commands, his voice a cold, dead vacuum. “It’s what you traded her for. Choke on the profit.”
Hallow’s playing becomes faster, more frantic. The Magistrate’s kicks are slowing down now, the rhythmic thud against the piano becoming a faint, wet tap. She leans forward, her forehead touching the blood-slicked wood of the piano, her shoulders shaking.
“I can still feel the cold of the table,” she sobs, the music finally breaking into a mess of smashed keys. “Every time any of you touched me, I died. I’ve died a thousand times in this room.”
She stands up, the serrated blade trembling in her hand. She walks to the Priestess, who is trying to spit out the blood-soaked money. Hallow doesn’t use the knife. She leans down and wraps her arms around the woman in a mock-embrace, a terrifyingly human gesture that makes the Priestess freeze in hope.
“I forgive you,” Hallow whispers into her ear.
Then, with a sickening, wet crunch, Hallow drives the blade through the woman’s back, the serrated edge catching on the spine. She holds the woman tight, feeling the final, frantic heartbeat against her own chest, swaying slowly to the silence of the room.
“I forgive you,” Hallow repeats, her voice breaking. “But the Choir doesn’t.”
She lets the body go. It falls like a sack of wet laundry. Hallow stands over her, the grey ash from the window settling on the red mess of her hair. She looks at us—at Ryker and me—and for the first time, the fire in her eyes is gone, replaced by a devastating, soul-crushing exhaustion.
“Is it enough?” she asks, her voice a tiny, wounded thing. “Does the world feel better now?”
I look at the bodies, the hanging Magistrate, the blood-soaked money, and the burning city outside.
“No,” I say, stepping over a corpse to take her hand. “But it’s finally honest.”
Chapter
Thirty-Two
HALLOW
The silence in the ballroom is more violent than the screaming ever was. It’s a thick, suffocating blanket of ozone and cooling iron. I’m sitting on the velvet-covered piano bench, my fingers frozen over the keys, stained so deeply with the Magistrate’s blood that it’s starting to dry and crack in the creases of my knuckles.
I look at the High Priestess’s body. She looks small. Replaced. Like a prop from a play that finally ended. A drop of blood from the Magistrate’s swinging heels hits the C-sharp key with a wet tink.
“Hallow. Get up.”
Ryker’s voice is a low vibration near my ear. He’s standing over me, the ‘Record of Sales’ tucked under his arm like a holy relic. He doesn’t look like a saviour. He looks like the reaper who stayed for the afterparty.He reaches down and grips my shoulder, his fingers digging into the raw skin where the Magistrate’s blade bit in.
“We’re moving,” he says. “The Choir is securing the perimeter, but this house is a corpse. We need to get to the vault before the fire reaches the structural supports.”
I stand up, my legs feeling like they belong to someone else—someone who died an hour ago. Jex is at the double doors, his back to us, his rifle levelled at the hallway. He’s breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling in a rhythmic, jagged motion. He looks like he wants to kill the air itself.
“The vault is behind the library,” Jex growls, not turning around. “The Governor’s private line is still active. I can hear it ringing through the walls. Someone is calling him.”
“Let it ring,” Ryker snaps.
We move through the mansion like shadows in a furnace. The heat from the lower floors is rising, a shimmering wall of distorted air that makes the gold-framed mirrors look like they’re melting. We reach the library—a tomb of leather-bound books and stolen history.
Ryker walks straight to the massive oak desk. He doesn’t look for a key. He raises his boot and shatters the side panel, reaching in to pull a hidden lever. The bookshelf behind him groans, a heavy, mechanical sound that belongs in a nightmare, and slides back to reveal a sterile, white-lit hallway.
It doesn’t smell like the mansion. It smells like the Clinic.
Bleach. Formaldehyde. The sharp, stinging scent of medical-grade terror.
I stop at the threshold, my breath hitching in a waythat makes my ribs ache. “No,” I whisper. “Not down there.”
Jex turns, his eyes softening for a fraction of a second before the steel returns. He walks over and grabs my hand, his palm rough and slick with sweat. “You aren’t going in as a patient, Hallow. You’re going in as the owner. I’m right here.”
We walk down the white hallway, our blood-stained boots leaving a trail of filth on the pristine tiles. At the end is a single steel door with a digital keypad. Ryker doesn’t even hesitate—he uses the Magistrate’s severed thumb, pulled from his pocket like a loose coin, and presses it to the scanner.
