Chapter 7 Zaria
ZARIA
Iswallow hard, my mouth dry after finally getting a few words out. My vision swims for a second, then focuses.
He’s sitting in front of me.
One leg stretched out, the other bent, leaning forward. He seems relaxed, like he has all the time in the world. Like he’s not sitting in a basement at three in the morning with a terrified, bound girl in front of him.
Callum Killaney.
The pictures don’t do him justice.
Cormac liked to show images. Mostly grainy security shots, newspaper clippings, and screenshots from events the Killaneys attended. Always with some disgusting commentary about monsters in suits and devils pretending to be human.
But up close, he’s too good looking to be bad. Or maybe that’s the prerequisite for his kind of bad.
He’s taller than I expected. Broad through the shoulders but lean.
Built like a man who doesn’t waste energy, all clean lines and coiled power.
Dark hair, shorter than in half the photos Cormac used.
Jaw shadowed with stubble, eyes a cool green color like mine.
But he has this stare, like he possesses some ability to see straight through me, know all my secrets.
"What did you say?" he asks.
His words cause every story I was ever told about him to explode in my head at once.
He’ll carve you open and watch you bleed.
If he catches you, he’ll send what’s left back to me in pieces.
He'll defile you, make you suffer.
My heart is beating so hard I think I might throw up.
I don’t know what made me say it. Desperation, maybe. The knowledge that I’m dead anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I break the rules.
I clear my throat and try again.
“Probably because I know who killed your father," I say, looking and shaking my head. The drug they pumped into me is still pulling at the edges of my consciousness, making everything feel slow and fast at the same time. "And what’s about to happen to you.”
I can’t seem to look away from him now.
Fear roots me in place. Fear and something else. Something that feels like acceptance.
He’s going to kill me.
I knew it the moment I heard his name. The moment Matei said the Killaneys name. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s better than going back to Cormac.
"Was it you?"
The question hits me like a slap. The Order may have made me do a lot of things, but I never personally killed anyone.
I shake my head quickly, bile burning my throat. “No. No, it wasn’t me, but I was there, well not…” The words stumble out, falling over each other. "I didn’t go in the room. I was supposed to, but I couldn’t. I waited in the hall."
The memory of that night crashes over me and I can’t stop it. The hospital corridor. The lights. Brother George.
I choke on a sob. "I didn’t want to be around those things anymore."
He shifts in his chair. The scrape of metal on the concrete floor is loud in the small room. His face doesn’t change much, but I see the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flex once, then still.
“How did they do it?” he asks.
My stomach clenches. Part of me is telling me to be quiet, not betray the Order and stay silent. The other part, the part that ran from the fire, that refused to step into that room, knows this is the only useful thing I have left.
So I make myself speak.
“There’s a nurse who works there,” I say softly, my eyes stinging with tears. “At the hospital. Shadowharbor flagged her for us. She has a sick kid. Medical bills. Overdue mortgage.” My voice wavers. “We followed her for two days. Found out where she lived.”
I can still see the woman’s face, so hopeful when they told her the Foundation could help. Terrified when she understood the price.
“We threatened her,” I say. “Told her if she didn’t cooperate, her son would pay instead. She gave us access to the floor, to your father’s room. We switched his IVs with something deadly and…”
I trail off. I can’t say it.
He knows the ending anyway.
Callum stays silent and then stands.
And then, with all his might, he kicks the chair, sending it sliding across the floor and crashing into the wall. The sound slices through my nerves. I flinch so hard my wrists burn against the restraints, breath tearing out of me in a ragged sob I can’t hold back.
His eyes are blazing now, from green to a murderous red.
“Who did it?” he demands.
I blink, disoriented. “What?”
“Who put the poison in his IV?” His voice is low, lethal. “Who switched it. Give me a name.”
“Brother George,” I say.
Callum stares at me. “Brother George,” he repeats slowly. “What the fuck kind of name is that?"
I swallow, staring down at my scraped knees. “That’s how I know him. That’s how we all know each other. Brothers and Sisters under the Order. It may not even be his real first name."
Labels instead of names. Titles instead of selves. You forget who you were before. That’s the point.
Callum stares at me like I’ve just spoken a different language. Then he shakes his head, disgust twisting his features. "You guys are fucking crazy, you know that?"
The words sting, but not because they’re wrong, because they’re true.
I let out a shaky breath that almost sounds like a laugh and wipe at my cheek with my shoulder. “I know that,” I say. “Now.”
My skin prickles. My head swims again, the remnants of the drug tugging at the edges of my mind. I’m cold down to the bone, but sweat beads at the back of my neck.
Callum’s eyes narrow. He takes a step closer and I can smell him, something clean and masculine that doesn’t belong in this basement that reeks of mold and fear, but thankfully not that damn incense either.
“And me?” he says. “You said you know about me. What do you know?”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Telling him means betraying the Order completely. It means breaking not just oaths but the entire structure of my life. There is no going back from that.
There’s nowhere to go back to anyway.
But I’ve been trained for so long to keep my mouth shut unless I’m repeating the words they gave me. To keep secrets that aren’t really mine. To die before I reveal them.
My internal struggle makes me hesitate and he sees it.
His entire body goes still. Whatever tentative patience he’s been holding onto evaporates.
Suddenly he’s standing over me, towering, massive, all shadow and threat. I can feel the heat of him.
Then I feel a cool sensation on my temple. I shift my head slightly as I feel the barrel of his gun pressing firmly into my skin.
“Answer me,” he says through gritted teeth. “Or I’ll fucking kill you right now. End your life like you all did my father’s."
I close my eyes.
I should be afraid, but I’m not. That fear burned out of me in the woods when they said my name at the edge of the fire.
If he pulls the trigger, at least it’ll be quick.
I lean into the gun.
His breath catches, barely, a tiny shift I wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t pressed up against the weapon that could evaporate my skull.
“Do it,” I say.
My voice surprises me. It doesn’t sound hysterical. It doesn’t shake.
“Please.”
God, I’m so tired.
Tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of being afraid. Tired of being the Order's pawn, the girl with the mark burned into her skin.
If Callum pulls the trigger, it’s over.
No more rituals. No more fear. No more waiting for Cormac to find me.
Just silence.
I wait for the shot, but it doesn’t come.
Instead, I feel the gun pull back.
I open my eyes and Callum is staring at me, his expression something I can’t read. Disturbed. Maybe even unsettled, maybe even a crack in whatever narrative he had about who I am and what I came here for.
Suppose that makes sense.
He expected begging. Bargaining. Threats. Not this.
Not me asking for the bullet. It’s not that I want to die, exactly.
I just don’t care to fight to live.
I’ve been dead for a long time already. Tonight is just whoever’s turn it is to make it official.
"Shadowharbor is going to pull everything."
The words spill out of me before I can stop them.
He doesn’t lower the gun. But he doesn’t press it back to my skin either.
I take a breath.
“Every contact, every permit, every favor they’ve given you, anything they’ve helped you get licensed or legalized or laundered, they’re going to terminate them one by one.”
I watch his face carefully.
A flicker in his eyes. A muscle twitch in his jaw.
“They’re isolating you before the kill,” I continue. “They’re cutting you off from everything, and then they’re going to ask for a meeting with you and Declan and Keira. A ‘summit.’ A conversation about restoring trust. About ‘what comes next’ after your father’s death.”
I breathe hard and swallow. It’s the most I’ve said in days.
Callum’s eyes bore into me.
“And you’ll never leave that meeting alive.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
I can see the thoughts racing behind his eyes. The calculations. The rage. Maybe even the fear he’s trying to bury beneath that controlled exterior.
He puts his gun away and rubs his face.
“How do you know all this?” Callum asks finally.
The truth is a burden I’ve carried for years. It’s been wedged in my chest like a shard of glass. Every breath cuts. Every ritual, every sacrifice, every plan has pushed it deeper.
Saying it out loud feels like dragging that glass out with my bare hands.
This is it. The beginning of my end.
“My name is Zaria Quinn,” I say. “But that’s not what the Order calls me. To them, I’m the bloodline.”
"Bloodline?" Callum asks.
I nod.
"Cormac Donoghue is my father, and now that I'm here, either you're going to kill me or he will."