Page 126 of Pucked Around and Found Out

And I chose my baby over my brother.

I will live with that every day for the rest of my life. I understand that already, sitting on this cold marble floor with blood drying on my hands. Not the dramatic understanding of a person who has just done something terrible and is narrating their own guilt in real time. It is the quiet, settling understanding of someone who has looked at the full weight of a thing and accepted that she is going to have to carry it. That there is no putting it down. That she will carry it the way she carries KennaDee, the way she carries the year at Walter House, the way she carries every scar this family carved into her, not as punishment but as the specific gravity of a life that was never going to be simple.

I survived.

My baby survived.

I press my forehead to my knees and breathe.

In. Out.

The gas hiss has been building the whole time I was sitting here. I registered it somewhere underneath everything else, the smell of it, the specific domestic wrongness of it in a kitchen with no burners lit and I understand what it means and what I am about to do and I understand that I have made a decision I haven't finished making yet.

I lift my head.

I look at my brother one last time.

“I forgive you,” I say. The words come out rough and certain. Not because I have arrived at forgiveness naturally, not because the grief has burned clean and left something peaceful behind but because I refuse to carry his sins as well as the weight of ending him. Because KennaDee would want me to say it. Because the girl I used to be, the one who loved him past all reason, deserves to have someone speak for her. “I forgive you. And I'm sorry I couldn't save you from who you became.”

He doesn't answer.

He's not going to answer.

I push myself to my feet.

I have to move.

“Well, well, well.”

The voice comes from the doorway.

I spin around, and my blood turns to ice.

Deputy Director Fiona Williams.

She stands there, gun drawn, perfectly calm.

“I have to say, I'm impressed,” she continues, stepping into the kitchen. “I didn't think you had it in you to kill your own brother. But then again, you Kellars always were good at destroying each other.”

“What are you doing here?” I demand, my voice shaking. My whole body is trembling and I can’t control it, my adrenaline is dissipating and the second the last ounce of it leaves my body I know I’ll crumble into a heap on the floor but I can’t allow that to happen, if I do… I’m dead.

“Cleaning up loose ends,” Fiona says simply. “Masen was useful for a time, but he was becoming a liability. Too emotional. Too focused on revenge against Xaden instead of the bigger picture.” She is the most vile woman, she uses people like pawns and treats them like they are expendable. This whole fucking war is over a woman scorned.

She steps over Masen's body without even looking at it.

Without an ounce of care of the life lost. A life taken too soon, well before it’s time.

“But you—you're the real prize. Alex Denver's protected little project. The girl who brought the Denver Kings back to town. You brought The Butcher to me on a silver platter without even knowing it. You’re the pregnant girl everyone's trying to save.”

She raises her gun, pointing it at me.

I’m so fucking sick of having guns pointed at me!

“Killing you will hurt so many people. Xaden. Carnage. Caspian and even Alex. He’ll be pained by your loss because it’ll hurt his little brother and one of his best friends. All of them will know they failed to protect you.”

“You're fucking insane,” I breathe.

“I'm practical,” she corrects. “And you're a threat. So you have to die.”