“Too far,” he grinds out as he sags to his knees. “Can’t get a shot.”
I peer out to the cemetery as Margot reaches the edge of the burning treeline. The tall flames devour the downpour, blazing through the fog.
Steadying my breath, I line up the sight with the back of her head. It’s a far distance for a handgun, but I was raised by a deadeye. I aim a few paces ahead of her, my finger finding the trigger and—
Dantë knocks into me, sending my killshot soaring straight past Margot’s head. She disappears through the trees, and a furious shriek bursts out of me. Tears carve lines down to my vengeful heart. I turn the gun on Dantë, ready to maim his other leg for fucking up my shot.
But his eyes are fluttering shut.
All thoughts of revenge vanish as I drop to my knees and pull him into my lap. Checking his pulse and finding it weak, I vow to him and every star watching, “Death will not claim another life tonight.”
HALLUCINATION
Brontë
ONE MONTH LATER
Poppy won’t stop shivering.
We’re sharing a loveseat in the library at Morgenstern Manor. She’s wrapped in a blanket, a steaming mug in her grip and her head resting on my shoulder as her pet panther snores in her lap.
We’re lucky Jezebel survived the shots she took. If she hadn’t, I doubt Poppy would still be herself.
There’s a blank space in my memory between shooting Margot while she’d been fifty feet away on a burning pyre and that pyre being empty of flames while Margot ran up the stairsbehindme. During that same glitch in reality, Quinn’s corpse disappeared.
Neither Nikolai nor Dantë remember those moments, either.
Worse yet, the bodies of every Leviathan member we'd laid waste to had vanished. Rain washed their blood away and doused the fire from the dynamite we'd detonated. As if none of it had even happened.
Poppy has yet to talk about what she saw. Virgil says she could at any point, but it's already been a month. She’s been having nightmares, waking up screaming. When I’m able to calm her, she says she keeps reliving that night over and over. My lullabies help her sleep, but she’s still waking with restless bruises beneath her eyes.
My gaze finds Rin’s, then Alexander’s. Shame weighs their shoulders down. They weren’t able to protect their daughter when sheneeded them most. Worse, the predator preying upon their family escaped without leaving a single lead for us to follow.
Margot has vanished. Though it’s unclear how many cult members are on what sides of Leviathan’s internal war, we’ve all been watching our backs for another attack. Emi has contacted the number belonging to the man Poppy saw at Leviathan’s masquerade—the same man who called to help us find her and her parents that night, leaving us constantly asking ourselves why.
No one has answered.
Leaving too many questions in the void.
“Filia,” Poppy murmurs into her mug, baby blues swimming with the same uncertainty she’s been carrying for weeks. “Does anyone know that word?”
Alexander blinks through a wine-induced haze. “It’s Latin for ‘daughter.’”
“Andoccidere?”
“Why are you asking,Petit Diable?” I interject before her father can reply.
“Just curious.”
My eyes taper at the blatant lie, but I don’t push her. Not while she’s still recovering from that night.
“‘Kill,’” Alexander says with the same narrowed gaze as me. “Occidereis a command to kill.”
Poppy shivers again, curling into a tighter ball beneath my arm. Her parents exchange a loaded glance that sets my teeth grinding before Rin places a hand on Poppy’s knee.
“What did you see, darling?”
Poppy hesitates, and then her shoulder hikes in a tentative shrug. When she looks at me with the memory of impossible wind and aglowing pentagram haunting her eyes, she answers, “It doesn’t matter. It wasn't real; it was just another hallucination.”
