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He hadn’t restrained me.
And I’m still holding the dagger.
Beyond me, the fight is still going on. Somewhere in the room, I hear a gunshot go off, the sound echoing painfully in the chamber. I don’t let myself register it though, don’t let myself pay attention to Philip’s hand returning to my throat to pin me to the wall or his fingers creeping into my shorts, sliding along my flesh.
I have one chance. One chance for all the revenge I need, in one moment.
He’s so focused on what he’s doing, so eager, that he doesn’t even notice my hand start to come up. He doesn’t feel me shift my weight, preparing to do what Jaxon taught me, remembering how to get someone bigger and stronger than me off of me and turn the tables on them.
He doesn’t have time to react when my knee comes up, slamming into his groin. A guttural noise spills from his lips as he doubles forward, and I take my chance, throwing my weight into him as I wrap my left arm around his neck, using every bit of leverage I have to wrench him around before he can recover, shoving him back into the wall.
“You bitch!” he screams, and I slam my right hand forward, driving the dagger as hard as I can into his gut.
For a moment, I think I won’t be able to wrench it free again. His body convulses with the sudden pain, and it takes all of my weight to hold him against the wall as he struggles, a scream of pain bubbling from his lips. But I’m not done. I stab him again, wrenching the dagger free with every ounce of effort left in me, and as I move away from him, Philip staggers, sinking to his knees, his undone robe falling open as blood soaks the white shirt beneath it.
He looks up at me, shock in his eyes. “You fucking bitch—” he hisses, his hand going to his stomach. “I’m going to fucking kill you—”
“No.” I bend down, grabbing his hair with my left hand and yanking his head back, looking down into the eyes of the man who for as long as I’ve lived here and before that, has commanded this town. The man who ordered so many deaths, so many horrors. The man who, with the help of others, has taken so much from me and tried to take so much more. “No.”
My hand tightens in his hair, and I raise the dagger to his throat, pressing the blade to his skin as the jeweled hilt digs into my palm.
“This is for Natalie,” I whisper. “For my mother. For myself.” I swallow hard, steeling myself for what I’m about to do.
“This is for all of them.”
And then in one hard, sharp motion, I jerk the dagger across his flesh, opening his throat.
It’s so much like Pixie it should horrify me. But it doesn’t. All I feel is cold satisfaction as I watch the realization surface in his face, his hand coming up to clutch at his throat as fear fills his eyes, and he realizes what I’ve done, the fatal error that he made.
“You—you—cunt—” he chokes out, and I smile cruelly down at him, my fist still clenched in his hair.
“My name,” I say quietly, looking down into his dying eyes, “is Athena Saint.”
And then I shove him backwards, his body falling heavily to the floor.
I turn in a daze, taking in the rest of the room. Jaxon is finishing off two of the Sons, one of them falling heavily to the floor as I turn. His father’s body is crumpled near two others, a gunshot wound visible in his forehead. Dean’s father is very still too, on the stones near the altar, and Dean is sagging against the pillar where Cayde is tied, trying to undo his ropes.
I stagger towards Dean, the bloody dagger in my fist, and when Dean looks up and meets my eyes, I just nod.
“It’s over,” I whisper as I cut Cayde free, and Cayde slumps into Dean’s arms, swallowing hard as he looks past me to where his father is lying still.
“I killed him.” I look at Cayde, wondering if he’ll hate me for it, if he’ll ever be able to look at me the same. “He tried to—” I start to justify it, but I stop, closing my eyes.
It doesn’t matter what Philip tried to do to me here, tonight. He’d done enough before to justify his death a dozen times over.
“I killed him,” I say simply. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Cayde shakes his head, his words thick and difficult. “No, you did what you should have.” His gaze rests on his father’s body for a moment, and I can see him remembering all the things he told me, the years that he suffered at Philip St. Vincent’s hands. “No,” he says again. “He deserved to die.”
“Your father?” I look at Dean, and then past him to Mark’s still body, and Dean shakes his head.
“He’s gone,” he says softly. “Jaxon’s too. They all—”
“They all sealed their own fates,” Cayde says. “And now, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I nod, taking his other arm as Dean and I help him towards Jaxon, who is gathering Mia up from where she’s huddled by the altar. All around us are bodies, and I look at Winter’s as we walk past her, her hair tangled around her face, as red as the blood congealed on the stones by her mouth, her body sprawled on the stones.
She’s dead, too. They’re all dead. And try as I might, I can’t feel anything but relief.
