Chapter 32 #2
I shook my head. The words didn’t make sense; he didn’t make sense.
“Legacy what?” My voice barely made it out.
He crouched, close enough that I could see the vein fluttering in his neck.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he whispered, almost tender. “About your dad?” His eyes blazed. “The newspaper calls him ‘The Butcher’. But really, he’s ‘The Alchemist’. The Alliance worships him. You’re their queen, Mackenzie. The heir. Every legacy has to claim its place.”
My stomach lurched so hard I thought I’d be sick.
“You’re sick,” I hissed. “You’re so fucking sick.”
He tilted his head, considering.
“I used to think I was sick. Until I met you. Then it made sense. I saw it in your eyes. I felt it. You’re sick too. That’s why we’re meant to be together.”
He leaned in and spat on the ground beside me, just close enough that I could feel the fleck of it on my cheek.
“You think this ends with you hiding in a dorm room and playing house with Max?” he grinned, the expression snagging at the edges. “He’s an unmarked—a stray. Not blooded like me.”
What the fuck was he talking about? He was talking in riddles.
“What? This is fucking insane, Jackson,” I whispered.
His hands twitched at his sides, a constant, restless flex when he needed to feel steady. I could see the war in his eyes, a mix of devotion and rage. He wanted to worship me and destroy me in the same breath.
He stepped in closer.
“Time’s up. All you’ve got to do is scream,” he said.
But I didn’t scream.
I moved.
My fingers brushed against something solid just beneath the leaves. For a second, I thought I was imagining it. Then my thumb found the notch.
The hatchet.
He didn’t see. His eyes were on my face, drinking in every flinch.
He straightened, looming. My hand tightened around the hatchet’s handle, inch by inch, keeping my movements buried in the tremble of my body.
“I should have marked you first,” he hissed. “I should’ve claimed you before you forgot who you belong to. But I was too busy following the fucking rules.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I whispered, hoarsely, tears mixing with grime and blood on my face. “Max belongs to me. He always will belong to me.”
My head snapped sideways as he backhanded me again; the world flared white.
“You don’t get to choose your game,” he whispered, breath hot and sour against my ear. “They choose for you.”
He bent low, lips brushing my ear. The intimacy of it made my skin crawl.
“He’d be proud of me,” Jackson breathed. “Daddy dearest. My future father-in-law.”
He reached into his pocket with one hand. The other hovered above me, ready to strike if I moved wrong.
Something glinted in the pale moonlight. He was holding a small blade.
He pulled out a picture of Max, folded and worn at the edges. He lifted it up between us like an offering, then drove the blade straight through the paper. The metal punched through Max’s printed face.
“I’ll kill him for you,” Jackson said softly. “Maybe then you’ll see how much I love you.”
The world narrowed.
I stopped seeing the trees, the sky, the blur of his face.
All I saw was the knife pinning Max’s picture, and the hatchet in my hand.
“I hope he buries you,” I spat, blood on my tongue.
He smiled, white teeth shining in the moonlight.
“Oh, baby. He ain’t coming for you. Heather has a nice pussy. Super fucking tight. Max ain’t gonna come for you once he gets his hands on her.”
Something in me snapped.
I surged upward, driving my forehead into his nose with everything I had. The dull crack of bone-on-bone shuddered through my skull.
He roared, staggering back, hands flying to his face. The knife and photo dropped, forgotten, into the dirt.
I rolled, clutching the hatchet to my chest, and scrambled to my knees. My body screamed in protest, my leg on fire, blood soaking down into my shoe. The world tilted, but rage held me steady.
Jackson lunged.
I swung.
The hatchet’s weight pulled my arm wide; I wasn’t clean or precise. But the blade still caught his forearm with a sick, meaty thunk. He howled, stumbling sideways, clutching the sudden blossom of red.
“You fucking bitch,” he gasped, staring at the blood on his hand like it was a betrayal.
“Yeah, I’m a bitch,” I panted. “And you still can’t handle me.”
My vision tunnelled in and out as I ripped the hatchet out of his arm. I could feel how much blood I’d already lost from the gash in my leg. My hands were slick on the handle, and I accidentally dropped it into the wet moss.
“You should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” I said, my voice shaking but loud. “Because if I’m really the Alchemist’s daughter, you better fucking run.”
The hatchet lay in the dirt between us now, a dark, blood-slick shape beside the torn photo. We both saw it and lunged.
I was slower. My injured leg buckled. But I grabbed the hatchet in one swift motion.
He crashed into me, shoving me back into the tree. A strangled sound ripped from his throat. The massive gash along his forearm tore wider; fresh blood spilled, spattering onto the leaves.
For a split second, his grip faltered.
The hatchet slipped from my fingers.
Jackson’s hand clamped down on the handle instead, knuckles whitening around it even as blood poured down his wrist, his arm, dripping from his elbow in thick streams. His face tightened in pain, lips peeling back from his teeth—but beneath it, something like exhilaration flickered.
We were nose-to-nose, blood streaming down his face from his broken nose, his expression twisted, ecstatic. The hatchet’s blade gleamed between us, flecks of red already drying along the edge.
“You think this ends here?” he panted, every breath hitching over the pain in his arm.
“The Alliance doesn’t stop. You’ll play this game for years, until you’re finally ready to move to the next stage.
” He grinned through a grimace, a wet, shaky smile.
“And guess what? I’ll be there every step of the way. ”
He grabbed me by the shoulders with his good hand and what was left of the other, and slammed my skull against the tree. A sharp, shrill ringing burst through my ears. The world wavered, then tilted sideways.
I slid down the trunk and hit the ground. The sky above was a smear of twilight and branches, blurring as my vision wobbled.
I let it blur.
I let my mind split open.
For just a second, I wasn’t here. I wasn’t in the dirt with Jackson’s shadow looming over me and a hatchet in his hand. I was at the lake. Max’s heartbeat under my cheek. His voice. His eyes when he thought I wasn’t watching.
“I love you,” I whispered into the ringing, to no one and to him. “I love you so much.”
But clinging to Max wasn’t enough. Not now. Not with the hatchet in Jackson’s grip and blood screaming through his veins like fuel.
I wasn’t the broken girl.
I was the storm.
A small white moth fluttered just above my face, its wings catching the faint light. I fixated on it. I focused on the softness of its movement, the impossible calm in its flight.
And then I twisted my body and got up.
Summoning everything left in me, I drove my elbow back, hard, into Jackson’s temple as he reached down for me. He snarled, reeling sideways. His injured arm spasmed; he nearly dropped the hatchet.
I pushed off the tree, shoving my knee into his gut. Pain screamed up my own leg, but he folded with a wheeze, breath exploding out of him.
I clawed, shoved, and kicked. I fought like someone who had already died once and refused to do it again.
I scrambled to my feet, dragging myself upright on the tree trunk. Every nerve screamed.
He was already pushing up too, unsteady but grinning, teeth red. Blood poured from his arm in sick, rhythmic pulses, running over his wrist to slick the hatchet’s handle again. His fingers trembled just to keep hold of it. I couldn’t believe he was still fighting.
“You can’t outrun what you are,” he rasped, staggering toward me. Each step was a lurch, his wounded arm hanging a little lower, the hatchet wobbling in his grip.
He lunged.
I braced myself, lifting my arms—but then he jerked.
His entire body seized.
His mouth opened in a small, stunned O.
And then he slumped forward.
A wet, choking gurgle tore from his throat as he crashed into me and drove me back to the ground. Hot, sudden weight pinned me. Something warm and thick soaked through my shirt, my skin.
Blood.
His.
I froze.
The hatchet was sticking out of his back. It was buried to the hilt, the handle jutting up at a crooked angle.
Behind him, a shadow in black. A presence I recognized before my mind could form the word.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t need to.
The shadow stepped past Jackson’s sagging body, into the strip of moonlight.
My father.
The man who once cradled me in the dark, whispered lullabies, and taught me how to draw monsters, and how to become them.
He pulled Jackson’s body off me like it was trash that offended him, one hand on the ruined shoulder, heedless of the torn arm and the hatchet still lodged deep.
“Failure,” he said, almost bored, flicking his gaze over Jackson’s twitching body.
Then my father knelt beside me.
“Get up,” he said, voice low, almost tender.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
“I’m not here for you,” he added. “Not tonight. It’s not your game—yet. You need to run. They will take you if you don’t.”
My heart stuttered. He sounded almost protective of me. Like he was trying to shield me from the people who worshipped him.
He reached out and tucked a blood-matted strand of hair behind my ear with a touch too gentle for a killer.
“What about Max?” I croaked. My head swam.
He shook his head, almost fond.
“It’s his turn now. Run, little one,” he whispered.
I held my breath, staring into his green eyes. Exact replicas of my own.
“Who is coming for me? Tell me what all of this means,” I rasped. “Are you the Butcher or the Alchemist?”
He didn’t answer.
He rose, his silhouette dissolving into the trees, leaving only the rustle of leaves and the stench of blood.
I pushed myself up, raw, shaking.
I could hear it, my father’s voice, echoing in my skull: Run.
The trees blurred into streaks of black and forest green as I staggered forward, then ran.
Jackson’s words beat against my skull: Legacy Thirteen. Your father. Max. Game.
And beneath them, colder and calmer:
I’m not here for you. Not tonight. It’s not your game—yet. It’s his turn now.