Chapter 29
The air is sucked from my lungs. My heart stumbles. I freeze in the doorway, my body refusing to listen to my mind’s commands.
“Daddy?”
It slips out in a whisper, broken and small—
Childish.
Because that’s what I feel like again.
A child.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Time warps and my pulse goes still as I take in the shattered body on the bed. What’s left of him.
My world.
My everything.
His face is barely recognizable. Bones exposed, skin purple and raw, gauze soaked in blood that won’t stop leaking. His chest rises, barely. One eye is sewn shut. The other…blinks slowly in my direction.
“Irina?” His voice is wet and slurred. So quiet I almost miss it. I’m on my knees beside him, grabbing his hand before I even realize I’ve moved.
“No… Dad…”
I don’t have words. Only sobs. My mother’s name rips through me.
It can’t be him.
Not my strong, fearless, impossible-to-kill father. He was always untouchable. Untouchable even when he bled.
“It’s me, Dad. It’s Arlo. I’m here.”
“Arlo…” His head turns slightly. “Firecracker? Is it really you?”
I try to nod, but I’m already crying too hard.
His right hand trembles in mine—and I realize there are only three fingers left. A sob rips through me, but I force it down and kiss what’s left of his hand.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m right here.”
“Oh firecracker…”
He smiles—smiles—a crooked, broken mess of teeth and blood. “You look so much like your mother.” He coughs hard, and blood splatters on the pillow.
My heart rips wide open in my chest.
“What’s wrong with him?” I spin toward Arsen. “Help him. Please. Please—”
He hesitates.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that! Do something—he’s right there!”
“He’s dying, Arlo. I’m sorry. We tried.”
“No.” I shake my head. My hands tremble as I turn back to my father.
“There has to be something. He’s strong…he’s…he made it through worse. I know he did.”
Wolff’s voice cuts in. “He’s in total organ failure. We’ve got him on morphine to numb the pain. That’s all we can do.”
“No…” My voice shatters.
“Priest.” I look to him, begging. “Please. Please do something.” He stares at me, unmoving. His eyes are fractured ice. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to.
No! He’s not dying.
“I did everything you taught me, Dad,” I whisper, turning back to him. “Everything.”
His smile is soft, but proud.
“I know,” he rasps. “I always knew you’d be better than me.”
I lower my head to his chest, my hands shake so bad I can’t even hold him still.
“Don’t leave me,” I breathe. “Please don’t leave me again.”
His breath rattles. His body shakes. But he lifts his hand—what’s left of it—and brushes it toward my cheek. Tears pour freely now, my entire body trembling against him.
Behind me, the room empties.
And I sit with my father—my everything—as he slips further away from me with every broken breath.
“Stay with me…”
I whisper it again. And again. Until my throat is raw and I have nothing left but his blood on my hands and the memory of how much I loved him.
Arsen sedated Arlo when Lev started hallucinating from whatever shit they did to his brain. I carried her to her room, her face puffy and tear stained.
She was still crying in her sleep.
Pleading.
Begging.
The sound of a little girl breaking inside a woman’s body.
I’ve ripped screams from thousands of throats. Tears mean nothing to me. But hers—hers gut me. I’ve never cared about pain that wasn’t mine.
Until hers.
The bunker is quiet now. I’m still in the Lev’s room when he speaks.
“I saw you…at Valcross.”
I lift my head, staring at him across the dim room. He doesn’t look lucid. His lips twitch at the corners—something between a smirk and a snarl.
“They took your name, didn’t they?” he croaks. “Carved a new one into your skin. One-eight-seven. Stripped the boy out of you and left what was useful.”
The numbers burn at the mention. I don’t remember seeing him at Valcross.
“You were just a kid. Half the size you are now. But you’d already outlived all the others.” He laughs. “No one survives Valcross that long. Not like that. And there you were…elbows deep in blood, standing in the pit like death didn’t scare you.”
“Why were you there?”
He coughs, blood coating his chin. “Your father sent me. To kill you.”
My jaw clenches and my spine locks.
“Told me you were a stain. That if you made it out of that hellhole, you’d tear the whole system down. He thought Valcross would kill you, but when it didn’t—he sent me.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Lev turns his head slowly. His one good eye—swollen and bleeding—fixes on mine. “Because you weren’t Sterling. That’s what I was expecting. Another polished sociopath in a pretty suit.”
He shifts with a wince, breathing hard.
“I hated that man long before he locked me away. He built his empire on political lies, rot, and graves. And I helped him. I helped all of them.”
He grits his teeth. “When I saw you in the pit…I knew what you were. You’d make Sterling answer for what he destroyed. You’d be his fucking reckoning.”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
“I received kill orders for the others too.”
My gaze sharpens. “Dalton and Alistair?”
He nods. “But not from Sterling. From their fathers. All the Commanders in the South. The North. Even the North High Chancellor. They all turned on their sons. All of them.”
“Why? Dalton and Alistair bleed for the Sovereign. They’re loyal.”
“Exactly,” Lev mutters. “Too loyal. Too bound to the old ways. They wanted to cut the legacy clean, burn the bloodlines, split the Sections, and build something new. No Council. No balance. Just control.” His head tilts back, voice rasping. “They want a world that answers to no one.”
He wipes blood from his mouth, smearing it across his cheek. “I refused. And Sterling locked me in a tomb to rot before I got the chance to tell anyone.”
I grind my teeth until my jaw aches. Arsen was right. This isn’t just Sterling. It’s bigger than him.
“Why now? Why start again after all these years?”
“I don’t know. But I always knew if that first attempt failed…he’d try again. Didn’t matter how long it took.”
“Why keep you alive?”
“Because he could. Because watching me rot was entertainment.” He coughs again. This time, it takes longer for him to recover. His lungs sound like they’re drowning.
Then he laughs. “Last time I saw my daughter…I was shoving her into a panic room. I was covered in blood that wasn’t mine. Gunfire echoing through the walls. I told her I’d be back.” He turns his head toward the ceiling. “I fucking lied.”
The silence stretches.
“I couldn’t protect her. Not from Sterling. Not from the blood I gave the Sovereign. Not from the man I chose to be.” He coughs again, body convulsing from the force of it.
“I was supposed to be her father. But all I ever did was make her into something that had to survive me.”
I shift, jaw locked tight.
“She’s a fighter.” It’s all I say. But Lev hears what I don’t.
He turns his head and stares at me like only a father can—like he already knows the truth I haven’t spoken.
“Have you tried convincing yourself you’ve got a heart?”
I don’t answer. Can’t.
Because whatever lives in my chest, it doesn’t beat the way it should. It doesn’t soften. Doesn’t yearn. It just hurts. A dull, relentless ache I’ve been trying to carve out ever since the night I heard her scream with a gun pressed to her skull.
Please, Priest.
That voice still scrapes along my ribs, echoing in the parts of me I didn’t think could feel. I can’t cut this out. I’ve tried. With rage and violence. With everything they taught me at Valcross.
But it’s still there. Still fucking there.
Maybe it’s a heart. Maybe it’s just the last echo of whatever human piece of me never got beaten out. All I know is that it started with her. And now, it won’t stop.
“She’s too fucking good for this world,” he mutters. “Got her mother’s fire. Her mother’s faith. Everything I didn’t deserve.” He sucks in a shallow breath. “I gave everything to the Sovereign. My youth. My blood. My wife. My daughter.”
His voice drops as he swallows blood. “Men like us don’t get good things, Priest. We take them.
And if we’re lucky, we get to keep them for a while before the world takes them back.
” He looks toward the ceiling. “I lost Irina because of what I am. I lost Arlo because of what I chose. That was my path. My punishment.”
He goes quiet. For a moment, I think he’s slipping. But then he shifts, just enough to look at me again.
“That’s why Sterling fears you. Because you survived the place that was supposed to kill you. Because you became what he never could. You’re everything he tried to be. You don’t have to lead, Priest. You just have to end it. Burn it all down so something better can crawl out of the ash.”
I hate this conversation. Hate what it means. Hate that some part of me doesn’t want him to be wrong. Lev’s eye starts to close.
I turn to leave.
“Priest.”
I pause.
“Kill me. Give me what little honor I have left. Don’t let me rot in a bed. Let the Sovereign remember me as a man who made his death count.” He coughs again. “Give me a Sovereign’s death.”
I stare at him. At the wreckage, the blood. The bones that once held up a legend. A man Sovereigns whispered about like a myth.
And now—
Reduced to this.
The others file in behind me, the sound of boots heavy against the concrete.
Lev’s breaths come shallow, wet. His eye drifts closed, mouth trembling as he mumbles incoherent fragments, names, numbers, and ghosts. He’s slipping. And there’s no coming back.
A Sovereign’s death. The final honor. A choice only the strongest are granted. I’ve denied that honor to hundreds. Left them to bleed out in dirt and silence.
But this man…this broken legend…
He’d earned it a thousand times over.
Lev’s gaze locks on mine, his breathing grows shallower, every word slower now. “My daughter’s a firecracker. Too fucking good for this world,” he repeats. “For men like me. Like you.” He reaches up, fingers curled in a weak grasp, and pulls me closer, saying something only I can hear.
My chest tightens, an unfamiliar weight pressing against bone. I give him a small nod. It’s all he needs.
“Lev Veronin. Warrior of the South. You’ve been granted the right to choose the manner of your death.”
I draw my blade. The room stills. Even the air stops moving. His one good eye meets mine, and for a split second, I see the man he once was—the one young Sovereigns grew up hearing stories about.
The Shadow.
A man even the Commanders feared. And now he’s nothing but blood and memory.
His lips twitch into a faint smile. “Do it.”
I press the blade to his heart. His body stills. His eye closes. I drive the knife deep into his chest.
“NO!”
The scream rips through the room. Arlo bursts in, her voice breaking. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? STOP!” She lunges, but Arsen grabs her before she reaches the bed. She thrashes, kicking, clawing, screaming.
“PRIEST, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! STOP!”
Lev’s eye flutters open and he looks toward her. Tries to speak, but fails. His lips tremble, his chest rattles, and that’s it.
Silence.
I yank the blade free and his blood coats my hands. Arsen releases Arlo, and she collapses to her knees beside the bed, sobbing.
“Dad, please…please, no…” Her fingers clutch at his shirt, shaking him. “You promised. You promised you’d come back to me.” Her voice cracks. “Priest, you fucking monster! How could you do this? To him? To me?”
The word hits harder than the fists that follow. Monster.
She flies at me, pounding her fists against my chest. I let her. I could stop her with a single move—but I don’t.
Because she’s right.
I am a monster.
Born for this. Built for this.
Every breath I take costs someone else theirs. Every life I touch ends in ruin. But this…this is different. I’ve felt bullets tear through muscle. I’ve shattered bones with my bare hands. I’ve heard men scream as they bled out, cried for their mothers, begged for their gods.
But this sound? Her sobs. It doesn’t echo. It sinks.
Right into the hollow space in my chest where nothing is supposed to live. Where it’s always been empty. Where every flicker of feeling was carved out. And now, as she collapses beside her father’s corpse, whispering words I can’t hear through the tears, I feel it surge.
Not guilt.
Not remorse.
Something worse.
Because it feels real. I don’t understand it. I don’t want to. But it’s there.
And it’s hers.
I just stand there. Covered in his blood. Drenched in what I am. A weapon. A curse. I told her once that death is all I bring. And tonight, I proved it.
Because I was made for this—for endings.