Henry’s mask of composure shattered. He cursed and shoved Kate aside. She hit the wall, unable to catch herself with her wrists bound behind her back. Henry laughed and tossed his pistol aside. It slid across the floorboards, coming to rest in the shadows beneath a covered table.
Every instinct dragged James toward Kate before he forced himself back. She was moving. Shaken, but moving. Relief nearly buckled him.
“Let us see how long the title protects you now.” Henry advanced.
They circled each other. Henry lunged, arms outstretched. His leg hitched when he pivoted, but he compensated with a vicious twist of his body. James dodged, turned, and drove a blow into Henry’s jaw.
Every strike felt wrong. Henry had once laughed with him, trusted him, fought at his side. Now every familiar movement had turned against him.
Henry stumbled but did not slow, his face contorted with rage. James lunged backward. His foot slid on the edge of a holland cover. Kate let out a muffled gasp. He risked a glance and saw her working at the gag, her bound wrists twisting and straining against the rope. If he lost, Henry would turn on her next.
A brutal punch cut through the air, but James slipped aside. With a snarl, Henry seized a porcelain vase from a nearby table and hurled it. James ducked, and the vase shattered against the wall. Plaster dust exploded from the impact, mingling with broken shards across the floor.
Henry came at him again. His fist cracked against James’s jaw, sending him to the floor. White light burst behind his vision before everything turned black, and he thought the darkness might take him after all.
Something small and silver slipped from James’s coat and skittered across the floorboards.
Henry grinned.
“You kept my token? I wondered what became of it in the confusion. A relic from a dead friend. How sentimental.”
James rolled out of reach, caught the leg of a chair, and dragged it into Henry’s path. The obstacle stopped his stride long enough for James to force himself upright.
“You should have stayed blind,” Henry snarled, shoving the chair aside and lunging at James.
James ducked, aiming his fist into Henry’s gut. “And you should have stayed buried.”
Henry’s breath left him in a rush. He stumbled into a table, one hand clamped to his side.
“Had enough?” James asked, lungs burning.
“Not until you regret mourning me,” Henry growled.
“Believe me,” James said quietly. “I already have.”
Henry lunged again, driving James backward into a chair shrouded in a holland cover. James’s heel struck metal. His pistol. Dust rose in a choking cloud. He caught the edge of the cloth and yanked. The fabric tore free, tangling around Henry’s legs. Henry staggered, and James saw his chance. He drove a fist into Henry’s ribs, then slammed another across his jaw. Henry hit the floor, stunned.
James dropped to one knee, snatched up the pistol, and trained it on Henry, who struggled to rise, breathing hard. After all these months, he was finally facing the man he had hunted. Not Henry’s killer, but Henry himself.
Every grief-stricken night, every reckless chase, every guilty breath seemed to draw itself into the pistol in James’s hand. Henry had betrayed him, haunted him, and dared to lay hands on Kate, stealing her away in the dark. One pull, and Henry would be gone. It would not be justice, but it would be an ending. The token gleamed on the floor between them, stripped of every meaning James had given it.
He cocked the pistol.
Kate’s voice tore across the room.
“No!”
James froze.
“James,” Kate said, her voice trembling but clear. “Do not let him make you less than you are.”
His finger tightened. Vengeance felt almost like justice. Once, that would have been enough. But Kate had given him a life beyond revenge, and he would not let Henry drag him back into the dark. The pistol shook once in his grip, then steadied.
“There he is,” Henry said, his mouth twisting. “The noble fool.”
“Better a noble fool than a traitorous coward.”
James eased the pistol down by a fraction, enough to choose restraint without lowering his guard as he stood. “Stand up.”
