"Now let's find Cormac Donoghue and put a bullet in his head."
42
OCTAVIAN
Iwatch her walk out, the door closing behind her.
For a long moment, I don't move. Silence regains the room, and even my breathing sounds different.
I stare at the spot where Keira stood seconds ago, and while the zip ties have made my skin raw and I still have wounds that need tending, I don't feel any of it. Not really.
She said she loves me.
The words loop in my head, over and over:I love you, too.
My throat closes. My vision blurs.
I drop my head back, and all I see is her face. The tears on her cheeks. The way she looked at me.
She knows everything now.
Keira knows what I've done and what I didn't do. What I've lost. What I kept secret. She knows about Nicolae's power over me, my brother, my mother, all of it.
And she still looked me in the eye and kissed me.
She still whispered that she loved me.
I exhale long and slow, something between a laugh and a shaky breath.
For the first time in my life, someone knows the whole truth. The ugliest parts. The parts I buried so deep I convinced myself they didn't exist.
And she looked at me with love and compassion, not disgust and shame.
My shoulder throbs, a dull, insistent ache radiating from the stab wound that I don't know how bad it is. My back is stiff from hours in this chair, muscles cramping, spine protesting every breath. My wrists are on fire, the plastic digging deeper with every unconscious flex of my hands.
It would be easy to collapse here, to let the exhaustion pull me under, but I don't, because I know what comes next.
The second the door opens again, the test begins, and I sure as fuck am going to rise to whatever level Keira needs me. Never again will I let my mind venture into any territory that puts her in any kind of harm, even if I think I won't let it happen or that it'll fix everything.
The door suddenly opens, and I already know who it'll be.
Callum.
He walks in and stops a few feet in front of me, studying me without speaking.
"I told you," he says, voice firm, "next time you saw me, it'd be to untie you or kill you." He pulls out a knife. "Keira made her choice. Today seems to be your lucky day."
He crouches in front of me, the knife resting on the tie around my right foot.
"Before I do this," Callum continues, his tone sharpening, "I need to know, what happens with Nicolae?"
I hold his stare, refusing to flinch.
"I'll tell him the plan went south," I say. "That I tracked Keira. That I found the Phantom King, but he escaped before I could finish him."
Callum's jaw tightens.
"I'll deliver him when we find him," I continue. "That was always the deal. But after that..." I pause, tasting blood on my tongue. "After that, I want no part of the alliance. That's your choice. Yours and Enzo's and Ares's. How you handle Nicolae is up to you."
