Chapter 50 #2
“Isn’t it?” Rook asks.
Wraith just shakes his head.
“Shall I wake him again?” Rook asks me, clearly displeased with the turn of events.
I think about it for several moments, remembering all the times he hurt me. I’ve caused him pain. I’ve exacted some kind of revenge, and he will not leave with his life. The decision is instantaneous.
“Get rid of him.”
“With pleasure,” he murmurs, voice low, threaded with equal parts pride and desire.
Rook doesn’t waste a single second, yanking Marcus up by the head and slicing clean across his throat.
Blood sprays, and Marcus gurgles, choking on every bit of it.
I watch for every second. Every single moment that he fights for his breath.
In the end… he goes quiet. That’s all I’ll remember of him.
Now… Damien.
I step back in front of him and let loose a breath. Damien hasn’t spoken yet. Not once. That’s almost funny, considering what kind of man he is.
He’s already waiting for me. He’s not pretending he’s not afraid. He couldn’t if he tried. Eyes bulging, his skin color pale and washed out. He’s simply pretending he’s above it, and that Marcus’s death hasn’t rattled him.
That’s worse.
He’s still got that government arrogance in his jaw. The posture. The assumption of authority like it’s oxygen and gravity. He looks insulted more than anything else.
“You’ve been busy,” he says.
His voice is low. Condescending. Like I’m a report on his desk instead of the reason his wrists are bleeding against the restraints.
I don’t answer. He gives this tiny, unpleasant smile. “I’ll admit, this is not how I expected you to go.”
“Go?” I ask.
“Burn out,” he says simply. “Girls like you never make it long-term. I told Owen that. Sensitive girls don’t survive the dark. You’ll bend too hard to protect her. You break in the wrong place. I warned him. I told him you’d get him killed if he didn’t learn to detach.”
The air in my lungs turns razor-cold. Behind me, I hear Wraith make a sound that isn’t quite human. Rook is still. I can feel him, though. I can feel how tightly he’s holding himself together.
I take another step forward until I’m right in front of Damien. He smells like stale cologne, blood, and rain.
“Girls like… Me,” I say.
He nods, almost indulgent. “You weren’t built for this.
You’re too impulsive. You were always going to get someone hurt.
Never could stay where you were told, always sticking your nose where it didn’t belong.
I told him if he didn’t start thinking like an asset handler and not a brother, he’d watch you die.
He wouldn’t listen. So he got himself killed instead. ”
He’s so calm when he says it. That’s what does it. Not the words themselves, but the calm. Like Owen’s death was a scheduling inconvenience. Like I was overhead. Like loss is just something men like him file under “acceptable.”
Something in me goes very, very still. “You told him I’d die,” I say.
“I told him the truth,” he spits out. “He needed to hear it.”
My vision pulses black at the edges.
“He loved you too much, I told you already,” Damien continues, and there’s something almost pitying in his tone that makes me want to peel his face off.
“That was his weakness. Family makes you sloppy. Attachment makes you predictable. I told him if he didn’t cut you loose, you’d be a ticking time bomb, or turn rogue. And that’s exactly what happened.”
I stare at him. And then I laugh. It’s quiet. It sounds wrong even to me, and I relish in the way Damien’s eyes bulge in response. “You think you made me,” I say softly.
He blinks.
“You think you get to claim this,” I whisper. “You think you get to sit there and take credit for what I am. You think you built me. That I’m your monster.”
His jaw tightens.
“You didn’t build me,” I say. “You broke me. I built me.”
That lands. He doesn’t like that either, but I’m long past caring.
“Every time you said ‘asset’ instead of my name? Every time you looked at Owen and told him to pick you over me? That wasn’t strategy. That was cowardice. You’re not a handler. You’re a parasite.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps.
“You let my brother die thinking he failed me,” I say, and my voice goes quieter instead of louder. It goes deadly. “You let him die thinking he deserved it. You let me live thinking I broke him. That sits on you. Not on me. Not on him. On you.”
He doesn’t look so smug now. Good. I lean in. Close enough that I feel his breath hit my cheek. Close enough that he has to see my eyes. My face. My certainty. “Look at me,” I whisper.
He tries to turn his head away. My hand comes up swiftly, and I put my palm against his jaw and hold him there. I don’t have to hurt him, I just make him face me.
He goes still.
“Look at the girl you said wouldn’t survive. Look at the liability still fucking standing when you said I would get myself killed for following my intuition. Look at the problem you told Owen to cut out,” I repeat quietly.
His breathing changes.
“Do I look dead to you?” I ask.
His mouth opens, like he’s trying to find the words to say. I keep going.
“You watched us bleed for you,” I say. “You watched us tear ourselves apart so your corridors stayed clean on paper. You watched him fall apart for five years and then signed off on his death like it was line item clearance. And you slept. You slept at night. You went home. You ate. You lived. You don’t deserve that comfortable life. Not after what you did.”
He swallows.
“For years,” I whisper, “I thought you were the nightmare. I thought you were the thing I’d never get free of. I thought you’d haunt me forever.”
I smile, and it feels different than the one I gave Marcus. It feels… final.
“I’m not haunted anymore,” I tell him. “I am the haunting.”
He stares at me. And then I watch it. That flicker. That first flash in his eyes — fear that he’s no longer in control.
That’s the shift—the crack. That’s what I wanted. Not his screaming. Not his apology. That.
I lower my voice. “Say his name,” I whisper.
Damien blinks. “What—”
“Owen,” I say. “Say his name.”
His throat works.
“Ember—”
“Say. His. Name.”
A heartbeat passes between us. Then two. Then, forced and hoarse, he finally says his name. “Owen.”
My eyes sting. Not with weakness. With rage.
“That’s right,” I breathe. “Remember that name. Because it’s the name of the person who sealed your fate. This is your reckoning.”
He’s shaking now. Just at the edges. In his hands. In the way his shoulders pull against the restraints like he can muscle his way out of what’s already happened.
I straighten.
My heart is hammering so loud I can feel it in my teeth. My lungs are burning, like I’ve been holding my breath for years and only just remembered how to draw air.
I take the knife and I punch him in the gut with it.
Over and over—until blood pools around my hands and down his body.
I lose count of how many times. I lose count of how many times he begs.
I lose myself in ending him. In reclaiming vengeance for the brother stolen from me.
Vengeance for the innocence I lost. And that’s a fucked up sort of beauty I never thought I’d find.
Behind me, it’s silent. No one moves. No one interrupts. No one tries to soothe me or stop me or take this from me.
For the first time in my life, five men stand behind me and let me finish something without stepping in front of me to do it “for my own good.”
That hits harder than anything else tonight.
When it’s over, Damien is quiet, too.
That’s how I leave them.
Two men who thought they owned me sitting still in cheap metal chairs in a forgotten warehouse with rain dripping steady through a torn roof, and silence where their voices used to be.
I turn away. My hands are steady, and covered in the blood of my enemies. My breathing is not.
I walk, past the chairs, past the slick ring of oil and water spreading over concrete.
Wraith moves first, because he always seems to know what I need before I do. He’s already at the side door, one big hand braced against the rusting metal. He shoulders it open, and the outside night rushes in, cold and wet and honest.
The first breath I drag in hurts. The second hurts less. By the third, I can feel my ribs again.
We’re dockside. One of those old bones-of-London places where brick and steel meet water and rot.
Rain needles down steady. It’s not a storm, not dramatic, just relentless.
It soaks my hair immediately, copper strands sticking to my cheekbones, dripping along my jaw.
It slides under my collar, chills the heat still rolling off my skin.
The emerald at my throat catches what little light there is and throws an arrogant green spark.
I walk out from under the overhang, and let the rain take me.
It runs down my face in cold streaks, trails over my mouth, tastes like metal and night. The dock lights smear gold in the puddles. Somewhere in the distance, something hums — a generator, a ship, the city itself.
I tip my head back, close my eyes and just stand there, face to the rain, mouth parted, crucified in water and whatever this is. This is not relief. It’s not victory. This is not even closure.
It’s reclamation.
For so long I’ve felt like I was living in a body that wasn’t mine. Like I was wearing evidence. Like everything I was was proof of what someone else did.
I don’t feel like that right now. Right now, I feel like a weapon.
I don’t know how long I stand there, letting London baptize me in her filth. Eventually I feel them behind me. I don’t turn. I don’t have to. I know their shapes now the way I know my own heartbeat.
Wraith closest, heat at my back and danger hanging off him like scent.
Vale off my right shoulder, vibrating with the high of it, dark joy wrapped in silk.
Saint just left of center, rosary in his fist, eyes on me like I’m an altar.
Ash a half-step behind, his silence pressing against my spine like a vow.
Rook is last, dead center, presence like a hand spanning the back of my skull.
They don’t touch me.
They don’t have to.
Rook’s voice cuts through the rain.
“Long live the Queen.”
It’s not loud, but it hits like a body blow. Rough. Hoarse. Reverent. I feel it all the way down.
Vale answers first, low and wicked-satisfied. “Long live the Queen.”
Saint’s voice follows, soft and solemn, like liturgy torn off the bone. “Long live the Queen.”
Wraith’s next, a growl shaped into a promise. “Long live the Queen.”
Ash last. Barely above a whisper. Like it hurts him to say it because it means he feels it. “Long live the Queen.”
My throat goes tight. Rain keeps running down my cheeks. I let them think that’s all it is.
I open my eyes.
I look out at the black water and the city beyond it and whatever is going to come hunting us next, because we just changed the balance of power and I can feel the tremor of it in my bones.
We’ve just painted a target across all our backs and dared the world to aim.
None of it matters as long as the five of them are at my side. We’ll face it—together.
I lift my chin.
“Long live the damned,” I say.