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But I get there first.
As my sister pitches forward, I jam the knife into her back, twisting the blade with all my strength. Her blood splatters my face, my eyes. It’s in my mouth. I taste my sister’s life as it leaves her body.
My sister turns her face to me. She bares her teeth, and her nails dig into my flesh, and she tries to lift the syringe but her body doesn’t work any more and I know that if things had been different, I could have loved this crazy bitch.
“Goodbye, sister,” I say.
Mackenzie Malloy is still holding on, still clinging to her final, bloody battle, as the final spark of life fades from her icicle eyes.
George
I wait in the drawing room while the boys bury Mackenzie and Antony in the grave they dug for Claudia. There isn’t much of Nero left, so we leave him in the empty swimming pool and let the lion finish off his meal. He’s earned it.
My arm screams from holding down on the trigger. Luckily, Cali knows all about explosives – she was able to take the grenade and disarm it. I’m coated in Mackenzie’s blood, which sucks because I liked this shirt. But even when I tug it off and Eli offers me one of his, I don’t feel clean.
I doubt I’ll feel clean again.
I sit with Claudia, squeezing her hand and talking a mile a minute about nonsense because my job is to keep her awake and I don’t fucking know what you’re supposed to say to someone who’s been shot full of animal tranquilizer and chopped off her own sister’s arm and learned that her rapist was her cousin.
She doesn’t cry, and I know that’s because she has no tears left for Antony. All the hate in the world for what he did to her can’t erase the love in her heart.
And it’s that love that will make her queen of this city again, that will steer her to make the right decisions for our family, and rule her savage empire with a just and iron fist.
The boys drag Claudia to her bedroom. I send Galen in as soon as he arrives at the house. It feels wrong to be in the room with them, so I pace around the kitchen. Yara bustles around, laying out platters and containers of food from the fridge.
“You should eat.” She shoves something lumpy into my hands.
I push the dish away. “You’re probably right, but not that. That’s Noah’s lasagna.”
“Lasagna? But it’s orange…”
I nod sadly. Yara picks up the dish and dumps it in the trash.
Galen emerges some time later, his face lined in shadows. He slumps at the table and Yara hands him a coffee. I glare at him until he sighs. “She’ll live.”
“She will?” Relief floods me. I know Galen doesn’t like to be optimistic with his diagnosis.
He downs the rest of his cup and holds it out for more. Galen looks tired. He’d known Antony since he was a kid, and Antony had managed to keep all of his betrayals a secret. I worried when I called him that Galen and Tiberius might be in on Antony and Mackenzie’s plot, but he knew nothing about it. “I’ve given her a dose of tolazoline, which reverses the effects of the tranquilizer she was given. She’ll be on an IV for at least the next seventy-two hours, and someone will have to stay with her to make sure she’s conscious. She was given a hefty dose, and she’s not out of the woods – I’ll need to monitor her for long-term side effects.”
“That’s amazing news.”
“Is it? Brutus, Constantine, and Nero have all been knocked off in such a short period. A trusted, high-ranking soldier has been unmasked as a traitor. The entire institution of the Triumvirate is in jeopardy.” Galen slams the glass down on the table. “This is going to create a power vacuum. We thought we’d seen how bad things can get in recent weeks, but this is nothing. The streets are going to run red with blood. It’s already starting.”
He shoves his phone toward me, showing me the breaking news. There are articles about a spate of arson attacks, with a picture of a fire engulfing Vault, and a bloody gunfight in a busy street in Tartarus Oaks.
I swallow my coffee. Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we bathe in blood. I think of the phrase Claudia liked to say whenever we had one of our family meals together. I don’t know if I’ll ever be merry again.
After everything we’d been through, I thought this was over. But it looks like the battle is only just beginning.
“Hey,” I slide into the chair beside Claudia’s bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like an elephant sat on me and farted.” Claws looks up at me with wide, haunted eyes. Galen has tubes sticking out of her and monitors crowded around her bed. She looks so tiny, so vulnerable. She’s such a force of nature it’s unsettling to see her like this – I forget she’s only a couple of inches taller than me.
Eli, Noah, and Gabriel crowd into the window seat, trying to give us a moment to speak in private without leaving her. They should be taking it in shifts so they can sleep, but none of them can bear to be parted from Claudia.
“You look amazing,” I smile down at her. “Blood of the guilty looks good on you.”
“Don’t lie.” She cracks a smile, then breaks down coughing. “And don’t make me laugh. That’s an order. Tell me what’s going on out there.”
