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Prologue
“Again. Harder. Fuckingmeanit.”
I strike the boxing pad with everything I’ve got, pouring all of the hatred and pain synched tight around my heart into the blow. As always, my aim is true; the impact of the hit rattles up my arm and through my shoulder, so hard that it makes my teeth crack together, but from the look on Ruth’s face, my efforts this morning aren’t even close to meeting her standards.
“This is the problem, Sorrell.” She grabs hold of my braid—my hair is so thick and long that Ihaveto tie it back to work out—and gives it a vicious tug. “If you’d spent more time training instead of sneaking out to parties, Rachel wouldn’t be dead right now. She’d be here, where she belonged. You both would have been safe. Focused. Dedicated.” The look in Ruth’s distant blue eyes is even colder than usual. It isn’t every day that the head of Falcon House deigns to come and train her wards. Usually, we train as a group, led by Sarai or even Gaynor, but ever since my best friend’s death, ageless Ruth, with her dark brown hair tied back into a severe bun, and her calloused hands, ramrod-straight posture and her ever-present air of disapproval, has been working with me personally, one-on-one. That is to say, she’s been making my life a living hell. As if it hasn’t been hell enough.
Rachel was more than my best friend; she was everything. I wouldn’t have survived the past four years without her. Now that she’s gone, I’m honestly not sure I’ll make it through the rest of this week. Not with Ruth so intent on breaking me.
I bite the tip of my tongue, knowing that my mentor is right. On paper, Falcon House is a foster home—a verylargefoster home. In reality, it’s so much more than that. This place is a sanctuary. We train our asses off here. Learn to fight. Learn to protect ourselves. Plenty of resources were available to Rachel and I. We should have spent more time running drills and practicing the floorwork, but Rachel was never one to conform to Ruth’s rules. And then she’d left to study at that fancy private school on a scholarship, anyway, and that had been that. No more training sessions together. I’d barely seen her at all. Months had slipped by with only text messages to keep our friendship alive. When she’d returned to Los Angeles last month, all keyed up and ready to party, I hadn’t had the heart to deny her.
“What’s one night?” she’d said. Six hours away from the house, without our fellow sisters watching our every move? It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at the time. Ruth makes it sound like we were tiptoeing out of the house every weekend to get fucked up, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The house party Rachel insisted we go to was literally thefirstparty we’d ever been to.
I should have known better, though. It was my duty to tell my friend no, err on the side of caution, and insist that we stay on House grounds. It had never been easy to say no to Rachel. I’d relented to her ceaseless badgering in the end. We’d drunk too much. Gotten high. Gotten into a car with a group of guys we hadn’t known. And now Rachel is dead.
It’s that simple.
I hit the pad again, a right jab, left hook, uppercut combination, trying to throw Ruth off with a set we haven’t practiced today, but the woman who picked me up off the streets and saved my life is no fool. She sees my maneuvers coming a mile off and positions the pads strapped to her hands accordingly, once again disappointed. She shakes her head, and the weight of her disapproval is an unbearable yoke around my neck.
“You can forget about going to the funeral,” she says.
I drop my fighter’s stance, straightening. “Ruth! You’re not serious. Ihaveto go to the funeral!”
“You’re too distracted. There are only four days left until you leave, and I will not send you out into the world unprepared. It’s already reckless to send you to that school in this state. I still think it would be better to send Margo—”
I set my jaw, hands clenched into even tighter fists, my body locking up. “I’m going to Toussaint.I’mgoing to be the one. You’re not sending Margo.”
Rachel hated Margo. Everyone hates Margo. The girl’s a grade A bitch with a chip on her shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. I won’t have her or anyone else leaving Falcon House to avengemybest friend. I’ll slip away in the night if I have to. Ruth’s right; I should have protected Rachel, and I didn’t. She’s dead because I didn’t stop her from getting into that car. I’ll be damned all the way to hell and back if I fail her in this now, too.
Ruth flares her nostrils, eyes roving over the determined features of my face. “You can stay here and train until your hands bleed, so that you’re ready for what comes next, or you can go to the funeral. No, wait. Let me phrase it another way. You can make things right for Rachel, or you can go and stand by a grave site, and sulk and cry like it’ll change anything. Your call. But I know whatmydecision would be.”
Rachel’s already been dead a month. The coroner refused to release her body for weeks; the squat old man in charge of determining Rachel’s cause of death dragged his feet and then some. I’m not the only one who’s been waiting to attend Rach’s funeral in order to bid her a proper goodbye, but I am the only girl at Falcon House who loved her the way I did. Most sisters aren’t as close as I was with Rachel. It feels like a betrayal not to attend the service now, to see her pale face at peace, witness her lying there in her open casket, to watch them close the lid and seal it shut. To see her safely lowered into the ground, where she’ll decay and rot and never grow old, while I am left behind to navigate this waking nightmare of a life without her.
But avenging her is more important.
I adopt the fighting stance that’s been hammered into me since the first day I arrived at Falcon House and launch myself at Ruth and her pads. She staggers back a step with my first strike. The second unbalances her less, but she still needs to right her own stance to compensate for my fury. I rain down blow after blow, throwing all of my hurt, and guilt, and pain behind my fists until I finally do something I’ve never done before: I catch her off guard.
My left fist connects with Ruth’s jaw—a sweeping backhand that takes her by surprise. Her eyes widen, her head whipping to one side, and a small spark of satisfaction blooms to life inside me, when a pearl of bright red blood swells from my mentor’s bottom lip and trickles down her chin.
I’ve split my knuckles open with the hit, but the bright flash of pain I feel is nothing compared to the roaring chasm of hurt within me that tears open a little further every time I remember that my friend is gone.
I will gladly shed my own blood if it enables me to avenge Rachel.
I’ll shed Ruth’s.
I’ll shed Gaynor’s blood, and Sarai’s, and the blood of anyone else who stands in my way.
I make this promise to the universe as I charge again at Ruth.
Even if it means that I can’t go and be with Rachel when she’s interred into the ground. Even if I have to stay on my feet, locked in this training room for four solid days, until Ruth is satisfied with my progress and I put her on her ass. I’ll do whatever it takes…
Because the guy who killed Rachel is still out there, walking around, free as a goddamn bird, and I will not tolerate that injustice. Theo Merchant is going to bleed, too, and I won’t stop bleeding him until there isn’t a drop of blood left in his body.
Ruth smiles, sharper than the edge of a blade. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
1
SORRELL
