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“Callie,” I whisper.
She looks up, her dark eyes moving slowly from me to Bishop and back again. “Ivy?” She doesn’t sound all that surprised. Her time in this cell, the knowledge of her impending death, hasn’t taken anything from her. She is as fierce as ever.
“It’s me,” I say. I step forward and grasp the cell bars. “You have to hurry. We’re getting you out of here.”
Callie doesn’t waste time asking questions. She shoves herself upright with no hesitation. I unlock her cell door and push it open. Callie pauses for a moment on the threshold, looks at Bishop. “I’m surprised you went along with this.”
Bishop’s eyes are calm, but his face is stiff when he answers. “Thank your sister. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t be here.”
That’s the first time Bishop has said flat out that he doesn’t agree with what we’re doing. Or at least that he would never have done it had the decision been solely his. Instead of making me angry, his words make me grateful that despite not agreeing with me, he was willing to do this, put aside his anger at my sister in order to help me.
Bishop turns and I follow him, Callie bringing up the rear. “We’re going out the back door,” I tell her over my shoulder. “Follow me.”
“Okay,” she says. “Just go.”
I have a million questions I want to ask her, about our father and what’s happening to Westfall, but they’ll have to wait. Bishop is almost at the door leading back into the hallway when I sense sudden movement behind me. Before I can react, I’m flying forward, crashing into Bishop. It takes me only a second to register that Callie shoved me, but it’s all she needs, her hand closing around the gun at my waist and pulling it free.
Chapter Eighteen
Bishop and I turn, his hand on my upper arm, where he’s clutched me to keep us both from falling over. “Callie,” I breathe, the air in my lungs icy with fear. And understanding. “What are you doing?”
She’s pointing the gun at Bishop. Her hands don’t shake. Her eyes don’t move. “Put your hands behind your head,” she says, voice hard.
“Callie.” I take a step toward her, and her gaze doesn’t leave Bishop as she says, “Don’t move, Ivy. Or I’ll kill him right now.” I freeze. It feels like even my heart stops beating.
Bishop raises his hands slowly, laces them behind his head.
“Get on your knees,” Callie says.
“No,” I say and the word sounds more like a moan. “No.” My hand falls to the knife at my waist and I yank it free, grip the hilt with sweaty fingers. Callie registers the movement but doesn’t comment. She isn’t close enough for me to lunge at her, so she doesn’t see me as a threat. Even if I were right next to her, she still probably wouldn’t fear me. Fear is a learned response, and I’ve never given Callie a reason to feel it.
Bishop sinks to his knees, his eyes on Callie. His face is unreadable, but I can see the tension in his shoulders, know he’s waiting for a chance to act.
“What are you doing?” I ask her again. “We came here to help you.”
For the first time since she took the gun, Callie looks at me. “I’m doing what you couldn’t. What you wouldn’t. Did you think you could just make it all stop, Ivy? Did you really think you could change the outcome? This is the way it was always going to end. He’s going to die, one way or another.”
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell her. “We don’t have to do everything Dad wants us to. Not anymore. You can make a different choice, Callie. You can be someone different.” I repeat the words Bishop said to me once. “No one controls who we turn into but us.”
She shakes her head, eyes back on Bishop. “This has nothing to do with Dad. This is what I want to do.”
I don’t know if what she’s saying is true or if a lifetime of my father’s lessons has shifted something inside her that can never
be shifted back. But I do know I won’t stand here and watch Bishop die. “I’m not going to let you murder him, Callie.” The knife in my hand feels like it weighs three hundred pounds, like it’s already carrying the weight of what using it will mean.
“Yes, you are,” she says. “Because you don’t have any way to stop me.” She looks me over, head to toe, something close to hate in her eyes. “I still don’t understand why you care. Did he tell you he loves you? That the two of you are meant to be? Is that all it took? God, Ivy, you’re so predictable.” She barks out a laugh. “Did you honestly think we’d all walk out of here and go live happily ever after somewhere?”
“No,” I say. “I never thought that.”
Callie’s hand tightens on the gun and my arm tenses, fingers coiled around the knife hilt. “Please, Callie,” I say. “Please, please, don’t do this.”
“I can’t believe you’re actually begging for his life,” she says, mouth a sneer.
“I’m not begging for his life,” I tell her. “I’m begging for yours.”
For a single moment I see uncertainty flash through Callie’s eyes, the tiniest shred of doubt, and I hope it’s enough for her to reconsider, to make her lower the gun. But her gaze flickers back to Bishop and her eyes ice over again. “Isn’t this where you jump in and make the noble sacrifice? Tell her not to kill me to save you? Isn’t that the way it works in fairy tales? The prince falling on his sword?”
Bishop doesn’t answer her, just shifts his eyes to mine. We stare at each other and I know Callie is wrong. He won’t say those words to me. We are beyond that point with each other. He knows, in a way no one else will ever understand, how far we are willing to go for each other. And he knows that no matter what words are, or aren’t, spoken, if I have to kill my sister to keep him alive, then that’s what I will do.
