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“Think about it, Alcide.” Anteros distanced himself from me and the fireplace, getting closer to Crazy A. “When did all of this start happening?” Crazy A looked from Nikolai to me, gaze frigid and emotionless. That stare used to send shivers down my spine. It used to make me turn away in fear. Now the only reason I turned away was so Crazy A didn’t get suspicious.
I focused on the rug, remembered the night Anteros had taken me on the floor. If I died in this room, it wouldn’t be so terrible. This had been the first place my heart bled for him, I could accept it being the place my body bled for him as well.
“What the fuck is going on?” Nikolai stepped between Anteros and Crazy A, head swiveling between them. Clearly whatever had happened had gone down within the tiny space of time Nikolai went to get me. Crazy A ignored him, shiny black shoes walking closer to me.
“I’m done playing your game,” Crazy A said, still talking to Anteros. “I’d like you to play mine.” Slowly, I looked back up, inhaling sharply. I knew our hope would run out eventually, and now it had, just inches shy of the barrel of his gun.
“Nikolai is the one you have issues with,” Anteros said easily.
“Wait what?” Nikolai looked from Anteros to Crazy A, putting it all together. “Are you fucking kidding me? Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s turning us against each other, trying to save his fucking princess. This is all bullshit.”
Anteros laughed, folding his arms. “Nikolai is not your ally, Alcide, he’s the leak. He has been working with Lucia and wants to take over—”
“You were a slave just like me,” Nikolai interrupted. “You took the throne, just like me.”
“He’s poisoned us against each other,” Anteros continued, ignoring Nikolai. “He helped her escape and orchestrated this entire ordeal. He made you believe I love this…” Anteros finally turned to me, but it was only to scowl. “This thing. He made me believe you were the leak.”
What the fuck? I tried to get Anteros’s attention. What was he doing? Was it some kind of plan? We hadn’t discussed it beforehand and he wasn’t giving me any signals.
Trust him. I had to trust him. There was screaming in my head and the oxygen was thin, but after everything we’d gone through, I had to trust him. Whatever he was doing, it had to be for a reason. Even though the words he spoke felt like knives, I had to trust him.
“That’s not fucking true,” Nikolai said, looking from Crazy A to Anteros. With the gun still on me, eyes dark and frigid on Anteros, Crazy A didn’t acknowledge Nikolai as he reached into the holster at his waistband and grabbed a knife.
The knife—the one confiscated from Anteros’s boot when we’d turned ourselves in. The one I’d used kill Big O, carve Anteros, and then Anteros had used carve me. Seeing Crazy A hold it filled me with irrational rage.
Crazy A tossed Anteros the knife. “Prove it.”
Anteros caught the knife with ease. He turned it in his hand, steel catching the light. I was still trying to wrap my head around everything, disbelieving that so much had happened since I’d been gone—but then, in the minutes I’d been gone, I’d become a murderer. No doubt about that. It wasn’t an accident like with Big O and Gabby. It wasn’t self-defense like at the gas station. I was a murderer.
Anteros continued to study the blade, and I thought he might be second-guessing what Crazy A had told him to do. After all, he wouldn’t stab me, right? Seconds later, Crazy A echoed my thoughts.
“Change your mind?” he laughed, a sound like antifreeze for the soul. Anteros looked at me. It was only a split second, barely even a glance, and I couldn’t decipher anything from it.
I wanted to let him know it didn’t have to be this way anymore. I had a weapon. We had leverage now. I was covered in blood—my mother’s blood. I’d cut the ties to my family once and for all, and I wanted to stand with Anteros.
My chest pounded as he got closer. I opened and closed my palms, focusing on the way the beads from my dress dug into my knees. Whatever Anteros was doing, I had to trust it.
“Are you serious?” Nikolai’s incredulous whine cut in, but I wasn’t focusing on him. I was locked on the way Anteros took slow, even steps, as if counting each one. “You’re really going to forget everything he’s done for her? You’re going to forget that he tried to kill y—” Crazy A turned and shot the ground where Nikolai was standing, only millimeters from his foot, cutting him off. Nikolai jumped back and yelled, “You’re fucking crazy.”
“You’re just figuring that out?” Crazy A didn’t spare him a glance, voice even and steady as he put the gun back to my temple. I wanted to scream that I had a gun, I just didn’t know how without drawing attention and getting us both killed right away.
After what felt like an eternity, Anteros reached me and roughly pulled me off the rug. I wasn’t brought into an embrace; he didn’t even make eye contact with me. He appeared every bit the callous, calculating monster I’d met at the beginning.
What was he going to do? He couldn’t stab me, but Crazy A was going to shoot me. If I could just tell him about the gun… Filled with madness, I reached for him.
“Anteros I—”
Crazy A shot the ceiling above us one, two, three times. Plaster rained down on our heads. I flinched like a coward. The time had come—I was going to die. After everything, after killing Lucia and finally getting together with Anteros, it would all be for nothing.
I just wanted Anteros to look at me, so I could share this last moment with him.
“I don’t give a shit about her,” he said. Gruff, hoarse—razed was how I would have described Anteros’s voice. Nothing would grow there.
And then he stabbed me.
Pain. Blinding pain as the blade cut through my flesh and dove into my side. My hands reached out, overlapping with his as he plunged into me. It wasn’t to stop him, but to desperately reach for any kind of connection, something to let me know this was just part of the plan. At last Anteros looked at me—no, in my direction, giving me nothing to tether myself to in my final moments.
He pulled the knife out and I fell to the ground.
