Am I ready?
The question echoes in my head, mocking me. I've been ready for years. Since the night they took my sister and best friends from me. Since the night my world burned down and left me standing in the ruins with nothing but vengeance to keep me warm.
“I've never been more ready for anything in my life,” I tell him, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.
He nods slowly. “And what about her?”
My expression hardens to stone. “What about her?”
“She's going to be collateral damage in this, Xaden. You know that, right? When we take down her father and brother?—”
“I don't give a fuck what happens to her,” I snarl. “She’s a fucking Kellar and that means she goes too.”
Cas doesn't look convinced, but he's smart enough not to push. “Alright. Ten o'clock then.”
He leaves me alone with my thoughts again, my violent, twisted, consuming thoughts that always seem to circle back to her no matter how hard I try to redirect them.
I slam my fist into the locker, savoring the sharp pain that explodes across my knuckles. Physical pain is easier to deal with than the emotional warfare raging inside me.
Saturday can't come fast enough.
The game.
The plan.
The beginning of the end.
And when it's all over, when I'm standing on top of the ruins of the Kellar empire with their blood on my hands, maybe then I'll finally be able to breathe again.
Maybe then the ghost of my sister’s memory will stop haunting me.
Maybe then I'll be able to forget the way Toren looked at me in that cemetery, like I was both her salvation and her destruction.
But deep down, in the part of me I refuse to acknowledge, I know that's a lie.
I'll never forget.
And that's what terrifies me most of all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
TOREN
The sound of Harper's voice on the phone makes my blood run cold.
I'm standing in the hallway, frozen just outside the living room door, listening to her make a call that feels like it's ripping something vital out of her chest. Her tone is completely devoid of emotion, flat, dead, hollow and it terrifies me more than anything else could.
“I need your help,” she says quietly, and the silence that follows is suffocating. “I know. I know what I said. But things have changed... No, I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for a friend.”
Friend. Me. She's doing this for me.
Guilt crashes over me in waves so violent I have to grip the doorframe to stay upright. What kind of monster am I?
What kind of friend lets someone sacrifice pieces of themselves for a war that isn't even theirs to fight?
When Harper finally ends the call and walks back into the living room, her face is a carefully constructed mask of indifference. But I see the cracks. I see the way her hands tremble slightly before she shoves them into her pockets.
“It's done,” she announces to the room. “I have men coming to help with the supply train operation. They'll be here tomorrow afternoon.”
