Page 38 of Godless Saints

Misha’s chair scraped. “Lesha—”

“No.” His gaze remained fixed on me. “A Blood Writ is not decoration. It is not courtship. It is not a toy for you to play with. You accepted it under Thorn’s name. Collect cleanly. Or become the next name crossed off.”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.

Aleksei continued. “If Thorn fails this Writ, we lose real Favor. The kind that doesn’t come back just because Cillian Ashbourne got his dick twisted over Aster’s prince.”

I stood. The chair scraped back. Misha moved, but I was already walking around the table. I grabbed the front of his jacket and slammed him back against the table hard enough to make the wood groan.

Misha swore and stepped between us. “Cillian.”

“Stay out of it.”

Aleksei kept his hands at his sides, voice steady. “You are proving my point.”

“No.” I leaned in closer, voice low. “I’m making mine.”

My grip twisted tighter in his jacket.

“If Declan so much as looks at him wrong,” I said quietly, “I’ll put him in the harbor with the rest of the trash. If you give him that file, I’ll touch you. No one else gets to touch Moon.”

Aleksei looked at my fist in his jacket, then back at my face.

“That sounded territorial.”

“It was.”

Misha stepped closer, voice tight. “Lesha. Don’t give it to Declan.”

Aleksei’s eyes never left mine. “No.”

“We can get the points back another way.”

“Can we?” Aleksei kept going, calm and unrelenting. “Moon needs to go.”

Something in me snapped.

Misha moved.

My fist crashed into Aleksei’s mouth. The impact was ugly, a wet crack of knuckles against teeth. His head snapped sideways, blood spraying.

Aleksei didn’t fall. He swung back hard. Misha stepped between us at the exact wrong second. His fist clipped his brother’s jaw instead. The sound was sickening.

Misha staggered one step, hand flying to his face. Blood already welled at the corner of his mouth.

Both Aleksei and I froze.

Misha touched the split on his lip, looked at the blood on his fingers, then exhaled through his nose.

“Leave, Cil,” he said quietly. No anger. Just exhaustion. “Now.”

I stared at Misha’s split lip, the damage I’d caused indirectly. Aleksei’s too. Hurting Misha felt wrong in a way nothing else did. The fight drained out of me. I stepped back slowly, jaw tight, breathing through my teeth. Aleksei wiped his own bleeding mouth with the back of his hand, eyes locked on his twin for a long second.

Misha didn’t look at either of us.

“Both of you,” he said. “Enough.”

I grabbed the folder off the table without another word and walked out. The door shut behind me. The folder dug into my ribs like a loaded gun. Seamus Carrick. Sawyer Whitlock. Moon Hyun-seo.