26. Jet
JET
“What the fuck, Sev?”
Sev ignores me as Jameson shows us to our rooms while educating us on the castle’s history as if we’re here on some tour. A fucking vacation maybe.
“Your rooms are adjacent,” he says and opens the first door. “Here is—”
“It’s fine,” I bark at him, needing to talk to my brother alone. “My wife?” I ask.
“She’s having lunch in the East Conservatory.”
I’m surprised but glad she’s not cowering to these assholes. “We’ll join her in a few minutes.” I close the door in his face before he can annoy me further and I have no choice but to punch it.
Once we’re alone, Sev walks through the room scanning it. Trust issues. It’s a Blackstone family trait. He’s a man experienced at looking for bugs and hidden cameras. I wait for him to finish and raise my eyebrows.
He shakes his head, signaling he doesn’t see anything obvious. “But you never know,” he says casually, walking over to where his suitcase is laid on a luggage rack, the case itself open. “Someone unpacked for me. How lovely.”
“I’m sure it was all done with the best of intentions,” I say with an eyeroll. “Just being nice and wanting to make us feel welcome.”
“Don’t antagonize Senna, Jet. Or Robertson for that matter. Let’s just get through this night and get home.”
“Why the hell do they want us to stay?”
“You know how official things are with them.”
“I don’t, actually. You handled all of that.
Why are you being so cooperative? That bastard knows full well what our grandfather did.
Hell, they were grateful once upon a time that we handled the situation for them.
We did them a favor. Yeah, I kept the watch when I agreed I wouldn’t keep anything.
Make the man disappear like he never existed at all.
You know I wanted that more than anyone.
But it was me down there in that room, Sev. Me he—”
“I know that, Jet.” Severin walks toward the window. He keeps his back to me. “Believe me, I know. But it doesn’t matter, not to them.”
“I know. I’m sorry you’re in this shit again because of me.” I push a hand into my hair.
“It’s not because of you,” he says.
“Yeah, well, we’re here all the same so.
” He just gives a shake of his head as he studies the view from the ironclad window.
I dig my phone out of my pocket, at least they didn’t take those.
But then I remember Amal doesn’t have one because I took hers.
“Shit.” I scan the messages but realize nothing new has come in since about the time we got on the plane.
I try sending one to Cassian to test a theory, but it doesn’t send.
“They’ve blocked our phones,” I tell Sev.
“Figured they would if they didn’t take them outright.”
“I need to find Amal. I don’t want her alone with these people.”
“Wait, Jet.”
“For what? I’m not going to bend over like you do.” I walk to the door. “I’m going to get my wife and—”
“You should know a few things,” Sev says and the tone of his voice has me stopping with my hand on the doorknob.
I wait for my brother as he turns from the window to face me. Lines furrow his brow and his eyes are narrowed like he’s thinking. Deciding.
“What is it, Sev? What could be more important than me getting to my wife?” I ask, still pissed.
He draws a deep breath in, exhales. “There was a reason they helped us.”
“Yeah, I know. Me killing our grandfather saved them from having to dirty their hands.”
“That’s not all.”
My hand tightens around the doorknob. “Spit it out then,” I say, feeling in my gut whatever he’s about to say is bad. Very bad. “Just fucking spit it out.”
“You know Grandfather was blackmailing those… animals.”
I nod tightly.
“There was one whose face I saw.”
My hand slips from the doorknob. The world tilts just for a moment.
“He is… was… a member of The Society. A high-ranking member.”
Cold sweat covers me and my heart thuds slow and hard. I’ve always said I wanted to know who. To see their faces so I could kill them. But hearing this? It just takes me back.
“Was?” I hear myself ask in a voice I don’t recognize.
“He’s dead. And I think if they ever learn the identities of the others, they too will be dead. I believe that.”
“Well, I’ll give them a gold star then,” I say, letting anger take over. “What does this have to do with anything now?”
“They sent it to me”
“Sent what to you? Just fucking spit it out. Stop being so fucking cryptic.”
“The killing, Jet. They sent me a video of it, audio and all. It was a warning. What they could do. Would do. That’s why I was so desperate to get hold of you when you left Devil’s Peak.”
“What?”
“When you wouldn’t answer your phone. When I had no idea where you fucking were.”
My hands are fists at my sides, nails digging into flesh. Somewhere in my head, I hear that watch keeping time.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Did he know, my grandfather, that it didn’t matter when it stopped because for me, it was never over. Never.
And hearing this, feeling my throat close up, it’s like I’m right back there. Back in that room. Naked. Terrified. Knowing what was to come. Knowing there was no way to escape it. And I was desperate to escape. However escape looked.
“Show me. Show me the video. Show me his face.”
“That’s not why I’m telling you,” Sev says, taking two steps toward me. “He’s dead. He doesn’t matter.”
“He matters to me.”
“Brother.” He shakes his head, starting to unbutton his shirt. “That’s not why I’m telling you,” he annunciates slowly.
“Then why?” My voice is unrecognizable. Hollow. My brother tugs his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks.
I watch, but it’s like I’m not me. Like I’ve left my body and am watching these two men, these strangers, from above. I learned to do that after the first year. I’m very sure it’s how I survived.
“Because you have to understand how dangerous these men are. How ruthless.” With that, he tugs his shirt down to expose his chest.
At first, I’m unsure what I’m looking at. I step closer, my gaze locked on that spot. On the ruin of skin spanning the center of his chest.
“What the hell?” I ask, coming closer.
“Grandfather had me tattooed when I turned seventeen. He’d have done the same to you.”
I meet his gaze, remembering seeing that tattoo. The mark of The Society. My grandfather had it too.
“When they let us go—”
“Excommunicated us,” I correct.
“That was language for the other members. Saving face. I made an agreement with them. With Senna. But there was a price to pay.”
“Hadn’t I already paid it and more?”
He nods, keeping his head bowed, eyes closed for a moment. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner,” he says.
“I’m not saying it to guilt you, brother. You saved me. Our grandfather was a monster who fooled everyone. Tell me what this is. What I’m looking at.”
“They required their mark removed, which I agreed with. I didn’t want that thing on my skin.
But, in typical Society fashion, they wanted it done in the most archaic, Medieval way possible.
” Here, he pauses. “I was given three days to decide. If I agreed, I was to return to have the tattoo branded off—”
“Christ. Fuck! Why the fuck would you agree to that?”
“Because the alternative would have been to frame you as a murderer and me as accomplice and clean up the whole mess permanently.”
Silence descends between us as I comprehend his words, his meaning.
Permanently. Death. They’d have killed us both and destroyed our bodies along with our grandfather’s.
“So, I returned in three days’ time and well, the rest is history.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hadn’t you had enough by then? I couldn’t, wouldn’t weigh you down with more.”
I touch the uneven, ruined skin, feeling the texture of it, knowing the agony branding would have caused. Knowing they would have made sure he felt every ounce of pain possible.
My brother and I have a complicated relationship.
Always have. I don’t know him, I think. Not really.
But I do know the responsibility, the guilt he feels.
It’s why he’s so fucking overprotective.
He’s making up for what happened to me even though it’s not his fault.
Even though he couldn’t have stopped it if he tried because there was only one way our grandfather would stop and that was death.
Sev is not a killer. He’s brutal, but he’s no killer.
“It’s why you froze when you saw him. Senna. It’s why you’re being the peacekeeper.”
“We just need to get out. That’s all,” he says, pulling his shirt back up and buttoning it.
“And in order to do that, we need to play along. They have the upper hand, Jet. We’re not in Devil’s Peak.
We’re on their territory. On their fucking island.
They can make us all disappear and it would be easy. ”
“And yet they haven’t,” I say, wondering why, feeling a fresh dread. “I need to find Amal. Now.”