I fish out my bird and return to nursing my hand. “You’ll have to do it.”
But when I look up again, he hasn’t moved toward Aila.
He’s standing next to Matilda.
She smiles the sweetest smile and starts to say something I can’t hear, but he doesn’t let her finish. He plunges the needle into the side of her neck and empties it.
Something inside of me simultaneously withers and explodes when he pulls the syringe back to fill the vial with her Peace. It isn’t the thin brown of Laurette or the mottled yellow Larkin described from the addicts. Matilda’s Peace is so pink it’s almost golden. I’m woozy. Blood is streaming down my arm.
Aila’s cry is smothered when she strains against the chair, and tears slip down her cheeks.
“Aila, don’t cry,” Miles begs, his own voice wavering, and seeing him is like looking back through the years at myself.
I wasn’t expecting him to look so much like me.
I take a staggering step. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. I was going to love Matilda, not destroy her, even though she destroyed me, and Juliet was supposed to send the Stone, and Phineas was supposed to live.
My beautiful Matilda, my little red bird, lying on the ground.
“What have you done?” I snarl at Larkin.
“Don’t worry, Stefen,” Larkin says. He sets the first vial in the grass and reaches for another. “I’ll find you a good doctor.”
I’ve only ever loved three people in my entire life.
Now two of them are dead.
And Larkin just made the last one disappear forever. Her Peace swirls like galaxies from the vial in his hand.
“Matilda,” I say, my voice breaking. “If only you’d chosen me, this all could have been so different.”
Then I turn and shoot Victor Larkin in the heart.
Chapter Fifty-Five
As soon as the bullet enters Victor Larkin’s body, Stefen drops the gun.
I can hardly breathe around the handkerchief, Larkin tied it so tight. Stefen shot him. Victor Larkin, who just did something to Mrs. Cliffton, and now . . . I squeeze my eyes shut and then force them open.
Stefen is going to kill us all.
But instead he abandons the gun and crawls toward Mrs. Cliffton.
My Star glitters in the grass, tinged with red. Stefen had turned and intercepted it before it hit him in the neck. I might have killed him. For my brother.
Suddenly Miles is next to me, working on my bindings, his hands shaking, and when he frees my mouth, I whisper to him, “Don’t look over there.” A bloodstain is soaking into the grass around Larkin’s body.
“What do we do?” Miles whispers, his eyes wide pools of terror. He works at the last knots around my hands. I look at Dr. Cliffton and Will. See a twitch of muscle in Dr. Cliffton’s forehead. Will blinks rapidly. Stefen’s hold on the Hypnosis appears to be dissolving.
“As soon as you untie me,” I whisper. “You run.”
Dr. Cliffton’s eyes dilate first, then Will’s. They come awake, their muscles twitching. Then Dr. Cliffton sees Matilda.
He cries out.
Dr. Cliffton shouts at Stefen, “Stay away from her!” and Will yells something else. He takes one jerking step forward.
Mrs. Cliffton opens her eyes. Blinks at the sight of Stefen. He hovers over her, and she gives one wild, hollow laugh.
