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“This?” I circled a finger in the air. “Not bad. I’ll get used to it again.”
“Like old times, eh?”
I clasped my hands in front of my waist and nodded.
“Whose idea was the dress?”
“Not mine. Someone had an image of me they wanted to portray.”
He chuckled. “It wouldn’t have worked on me, regardless. I know my little sister.”
I shoved down the emotion that invoked. I’d said the same thing about him.
Maybe he hadn’t changed much at all. He’d just grown up and become his own kind of Savage. I couldn’t hate him for that.
“I did all this for you, ya know? But you didn’t need me. You’ve never needed anyone.”
That wasn’t true. While I never needed someone, it would have been nice to have anyone. My girls had become what I’d lost. Now they were gone too. I wouldn’t change anything, though. All of this led me to Luce. He was more than I could have ever asked for.
“Will Claire be okay with you?”
He lifted a shoulder, drawing my attention to how bloody his clothes were.
Was I the only one who didn’t get to play?
“She’s been a warm body since she arrived. I’m enjoying her… for now.”
My upper lip curled. There was no need to imagine what that meant.
He laughed and stepped out of the trees, his eyes looking at me from beneath his mask. “Renegade queen. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Why can’t you call me what I am?”
He threw me off kilter when he wrapped his arms around me, but hugging him back felt as natural as ever until he whispered his next words in my ear. “You’re more than any one man deserves, and when I’m done tearing their faction apart, you’ll have a place by my side.”
He stepped away as quickly as he approached, vanishing as if he were never there.
“What did he say?” Ice asked, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.
I stared even though I could no longer see any sign of him. “I think he just made himself my public enemy number one.”
We turned back towards the others, and I saw they were getting ready to light the fire. In the distance, the church was already consumed by an inferno.
Cam gestured to the Cardinal. “What do you want to do with him?”
“He’s an old man who can’t talk. Just dump him and get this over with.” I walked up to the wheelchair and pushed it forward, using my boot to help tip the thing.
The Cardinal fell right out, landing in the ditch on top of various corpses.
He began trying to drag himself back out, but he couldn’t haul his body over all the others.
An acolyte doused him with a large dose of flammable liquid. When the matches were finally dropped, he was one of the first to go up in flames. He couldn’t even scream. The sounds he made were muffled and erratic.
Luce reached over and took hold of my hand. Cam held the other one.
“What now?” I asked, staring up at the weeping angel one last time.
“We start planning your initiation.”
