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“Wait, what about our agreement?” Konrad asks, gripping my arm, his fingers digging into my skin as he stares at me.
I look pointedly at his hand, understanding in that moment that both of my brothers are guilty of feeling more for Nothing than they should, whether they want to admit that or not. “Konrad,” I warn.
“She’s ours touse, remember?” he counters.
“It’s too late for that now. She’s aDálaigh. She’s our enemy, regardless,” I point out. “Perhaps if she wasn’t, I might have let her live. I would have kept her for us. We could’ve had our fun. But knowing this only reinforces what I already know to be true,” I shake my head.
“And what’s that?” Leon asks.
“That she’s already got beneath our skin.”
Konrad swipes his hand through his hair. “Ourskin?”
“I drugged her and chained her to the cross for a reason. It wasn’t just to teach her a lesson. I needed to be certain of how she was affecting us. Everything else that’s happened since that moment she swallowed Thirteen’s elixir has only compounded my feelings. In fact, it’s shone a fucking light on them.”
“And what do you feel?” Leon asks, his voice deathly quiet.
“Unbalanced. Unsteady. Out of control. Not myself. She’s messing with my head,” I say, tapping my finger against my temple roughly. “Just like she’s messing with both of yours. This needs to end.Tonight.”
“Fuck!” Konrad roars, his outburst unsurprising.
Picking up my mask, I fix it back into place. “Tell me you don’t feel the same, and I will call you a liar.” Konrad presses his mouth into a hard line, his silence telling me all I need to know. “I thought as much.”
“And the letter? What Nessa said…” Leon asks, swallowing hard.
Turning my attention back to my Leon, I jerk my chin at his discarded mask. “It’s bullshit. Put your mask back on, you have a job to do. It’s time to finish what you started, Leon.She. Must. Die.”
Konrad picks up his own mask and slides it over his face. “And fate?”
“We live by our own rules. We are The Masks, and The Masks bow down to no one, not even fate.”
* * *
“Master,the Baron is taking liberties with Zero,” Five says as we approach the Room of Fantasies, our masks fixed back in place, our suits straightened out and, more importantly, our emotions buried fucking deep. Later I will purge those emotions, but first we must deal with this mess.
“Is he now?” Konrad replies, unnaturally calm.
His expression gives nothing away, but I know him. I see the way his jaw is clenched tight and his back is rigid. I see his fingers curling into fists. I feel the tension rolling off him. I understand what he’s going through because I’m going through it, too. So is Leon, given the look in his eyes.
She. Is. Ours.
No one gets to touch her but us.
No one.
Five flicks her pretty golden eyes to my brother, her fingers sliding over the knife strapped against her thigh. “You wish me to send him a warning?”
Leon nods before I’m able to answer. “Yes!” he snaps, his teeth grinding.
“We need him alive. Be certain to miss all the vital organs,” I add. The Baron doesn’t deserve a swift death, Five will injure him and we will finish him off the only way we know how, violently.
“Of course,” she agrees.
The sound of Twelve singing greets us as we stand outside the room. Her voice is crisp, mournful and full of heartbreak. Another man might feel guilty for causing such harm, but I’m not like other men. Guilt, remorse, empathy, they’re not feelings I indulge in.
They were beaten out of me a long, long time ago.
At least I thought they had been.
