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Gabriel came to my side and clapped my back. “Nice job.” He curled his lip at Moreau’s disintegrating body. “May he burn in a light-filled hell.”
“Amen to that,” I muttered.
Ridley stared down at Moreau. She’d shut down. Her affect was flat, her emotions a flat line.
My triumph at sending Moreau to his final grave curdled. I reached for her. “What is it, sweetheart?”
She turned empty gray eyes to mine. “I thought I’d feel something. Happiness. Relief. Satisfaction. Something. But all I feel is cold.”
I enfolded her in my arms. “Let me warm you, then.”
37
RIDLEY
I shivered. I was so chilled. Encased in ice like I’d been buried in a glacier for hundreds of years.
Or maybe just buried with my mom.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Over the years, I’d played little movies in my head of what would happen when I finally caught up with my mom’s killers. In those movies, I’d laughed in the monsters’ faces. Taunted them with the fact that I was the strong one now, the one with the power. And after I’d staked them, I was elated, triumphant.
Never had I imagined feeling nothing but a weary satisfaction.
It was over. I’d avenged my mother.
But staking Moreau hadn’t miraculously brought her back to life, and it wouldn’t take away the hole her death had left in my heart.
Zaq wrapped me in his arms. “I love you,” he said against my hair.
I made a small, hurting sound and burrowed into his heat.
Gradually sensation returned. Zaq’s smell and the strong, steady sound of his heartbeat. His arms holding me and his soft T-shirt against my cheek. Beyond us came the murmur of voices—Gabriel and Leo de Froulay discussing the next step.
A phone buzzed and de Froulay answered, carrying on a short conversation with the person on the other end. Something about Slayers, Inc. and Operation Angel.
“It’s over,” he told Zaq and Gabriel after he’d ended the call. “The Board has officially pulled the plug on the operation to kill you and Rafael.”
“What about Ridley?” Zaq asked over my head. “She’s been declared a rogue. SI won’t stop coming after her.”
“They want Reaper dead,” said de Froulay. “So she’ll die.”
Zaq’s body hardened. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
I pulled back so I could see his face. His brows formed an inverted V and his green eyes glittered with challenge.
“There was a fight,” de Froulay explained with a sly smile. “Philippe Moreau staked the Reaper. She’s ashes now. If we all tell the same story, it will be believed.”
I heaved a breath and turned in Zaq’s arms so I faced de Froulay and Gabriel. “It won’t work. They’ll investigate. My alpha will tell them I’m with Zaq. She knows I chose him over my mission.”
De Froulay crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’ll rebuff them,” he returned with regal disdain. “You are my spawn, after all—Princess Renata.”
My jaw slackened. I blinked several times.
Princess Renata?
“You’ll have to change your name, of course,” de Froulay continued. “They might suspect, but they won’t be able to prove anything. After all, the idea of a syndicate princess joining Slayers, Inc. is bizarre. SI will look like fools if they insist it’s true.”
“It could work,” mused Gabriel. “SI is on the defensive now. We can make it clear it’s in their best interest to accept the story that Reaper died tonight.”
