Wynter straightens with a jolt as two knives suddenly dart across the path in front of us, skimming along the sand like pebbles on the surface of a lake. I just eye the weapon, recognizing what they’re asking of us.
“How many spots are available?” I call out.
Chittering starts up behind me like millions of cockroaches chasing and crawling over one another.
“You will have to find that out for yourselves. Dispose of a traitor, reseal the sanctity of our brotherhood, protect its secrecy from the open maw of a man not worthy to hold our faith, and earn your place among us.”
More blood.
More death.
More sins on my soul…
I think about the group’s power.
How they can make my sins disappear.
And I know that the only reason this monster is here, weeping on the floor, is because I snitched and told the Veronians I’d seen Dyers's branding. Otherwise, he’d probably have been punished behind closed doors.
I crouch low, snagging the knife in my hand. Wynter, her limbs wooden and her movements jerky, copies me.
Almost in sync, we approach Dyers.
With every step, it’s easier to see his heaving shoulders and to recognizethat he’s only not weeping audibly because his mouth is sealed shut.
But the light’s so bright that I mistake what’s sealing it?—
Wynter gasps first, whereas I freeze. Internally, externally, and everything in between. Large stitches, overlapping into X’s, seal his mouth and his eyes shut.
Forever.
Blood gurgles between the holes and his mumbling… God, did they cut out his tongue?
I think about my intentions. About the game plan Wynter and I cooked up. I think about Shay in the White House and him bringing down the Veronians from the outside. And I think that this is a fate that potentially awaits me.
If I’m not smart enough. Ifwe’renot smart enough.
“Victoria?” Wynter flashes me a panicked look when I don’t answer and, inwardly, I curse, well aware that we need to do this.
That from this moment forth, we’re in this together.We have to be. We have to WIN.
In the back of my mind, I hear Maxim again.
Yesterday, when he hoarsely invoked, “Always get first blood,katyonok,” I felt the echoes of that in my soul.
Releasing a jittery breath, I discard my knife, letting it clatter to the sandy floor.
Dyers jolts in surprise, his bound hands flexing, revealing the?—
“Fuck,” Wynter moans.
Where once there was a brand, there’s an openly weeping patch of skin.
“They cut it out.”
She gulps. “A pound of flesh.”
And as much as I instigated this, I shudder alongside her. It’s one thing that Maxim, a known criminal, commits these types of acts, but the members of the Veronians are supposed to be businessmen. Politicians.Our government.
