Chapter 40
Octavia
“Silas, stop.”
The plea tears out of me the second my hand catches his arm.
Cold air hits hard the moment we spill through the back doors.
The music from the formal dulls behind us, muffled by brick and distance until it sounds unreal, like some other life still carrying on without us.
The parking lot stretches under weak yellow lights, too empty, too quiet, too exposed.
Rows of parked cars sit in silence. The whole place feels staged the instant I really look at it.
Silas barely seems to notice any of it.
His body is all forward motion, every line of him drawn tight with purpose.
The knot of his tie has been dragged loose in the rush outside, fabric hanging open at his throat.
A dark piece of hair has fallen across his forehead.
He looks disordered, dangerous, too far gone to care what he looks like.
Fear settles low in my stomach the second I realize how little of him is still in this moment with me.
Then his hand goes into his pocket.
Metal catches the light.
A knife.
The sight hollows me out instantly.
It is not a big blade. That almost makes it worse. Something small enough to hide, small enough to carry, small enough to use before anybody gets the chance to stop him. My fingers close harder around his wrist, every nerve in me turning to ice.
“Silas,” I hiss, voice shaking despite the force in it. “What is your plan? To stab him?”
The question sounds absurd while I say it.
His face says it isn’t.
He turns toward me then, fully at last, fury blazing so bright in his eyes it almost looks like panic. “Maybe I need to,” he snaps. “Maybe that’s what it takes. Maybe I need to get rid of him for good.”
The words land like a blow.
This is not some wild threat. He means it enough that I can hear the shape of it clearly.
For one horrible second, I see the rest of the night unfolding in blood and sirens.
My parents at a police station. The Warden’s face.
St. Augustine waiting with its jaws open.
Silas gone because Kadin knew exactly what nerve to touch.
I step in front of him without thinking.
Both hands come up to his face, forcing his gaze down to mine. His skin is cold from the night air. His breathing is rough. The knife stays low at his side, but even that is enough to make my stomach twist so hard it hurts.
“Look at me,” I whisper.
At first, it doesn’t work. His eyes are on me, but not fully with me. Some part of him is already somewhere darker. Somewhere final. My thumbs press into his jaw harder, keeping him there.
“Do not do this for me,” I say. “Do not give him that.”
His throat works once.
“He threatened you.”
The sentence comes out quieter now, more frightening for it.
“I know.” My voice softens, not because I am less scared, but because I can feel how close he is to slipping past anything I can reach. “I know he did.”
I lean closer, forcing him to stay with me, with my face, with my voice, with the fact that I am alive and standing in front of him instead of the image Kadin has already become in his head.
“He wants this,” I tell him. “He wants you furious. He wants you messy. He wants something he can carry to other people and call proof. Don’t hand him that.”
Something shifts behind his eyes.
Not enough to calm him. Enough to make him think.
Then clapping cuts through the lot.
Slow...mocking.
The sound is ugly enough to raise gooseflesh across my arms. My head turns before I can stop it. I know who it is even before he steps fully into the light.
Kadin.
He stands near the hedges by the side entrance with his hands coming together in lazy applause, smile stretched across his face in a way that instantly makes the whole night feel wrong. Not smug in the usual way. More pleased than that.
“You really have that killer instinct, don’t you, Corvin,” he says.
Every muscle in Silas hardens beneath my hands.
Kadin sees it. His smile deepens a fraction. He takes another step forward, bruises still visible on his face from the blows he’s already taken this week, yet somehow still looking pleased with himself.
“Who knew it would take so little to piss you the fuck off.”
The words are bad enough. His tone is worse. He sounds amused. Interested. Like this is less confrontation than experiment. Like he dragged us out here to see exactly what would happen if he pressed hard enough.
“If I wanted to hurt her,” he says, eyes flicking to me, “I would’ve done it already.”
Silas jerks against my hold.
The movement nearly pulls me off balance. I catch his arm with both hands now, bracing myself against him. Fear is climbing fast, but something colder is beginning to take shape beneath it.
This feels wrong.
Not just cruel.
Staged.
The empty lot. The timing. The way Kadin keeps speaking as if the point is not simply to provoke, but to draw Silas farther from the version of himself that can still stop.
“Silas,” I say, and this time the terror in my voice is obvious.
Kadin hears that too.
His eyes sharpen. Then his gaze moves over me in a way that makes my skin crawl.
“I figured,” he says, looking back at Silas, “I’d let you have your turn with her first. Girls like Octavia always remember what they’re actually good for.”
The sentence is so vile it seems to split the air.
Silas does not need time to process it.
He moves.
Not a thought. Not a choice. Movement. Pure, immediate violence breaking loose from the body I’ve been trying to hold together with my hands. My grip tears loose. The knife flashes again near his thigh. My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts.
That is when the feeling in my gut becomes certainty.
Kadin is baiting him.
Not impulsively. Not because he cannot help himself. Deliberately. Every word. Every look. Every second spent in this empty lot. He wanted Silas furious enough to chase. Wanted him armed. Wanted him in motion.
This is not just a fight.
It is a trap.
I move before I can think.
Silas is already breaking away from me, every line of him aimed at Kadin with that terrifying, immediate certainty I have only ever seen when rage has finished becoming purpose.
My whole body launches after him on instinct, panic and fury collapsing into one violent need to get between them before whatever Kadin wants from this actually happens.
Then I see Kadin’s face.
Not the smugness. Not the taunting little smile.
His eyes.
They slide past Silas, over his shoulder, toward something in the dark behind him. The expression there is not surprise. It is anticipation.
A scream rises in me so fast it feels like it claws straight up from my stomach. It never gets the chance to fully leave.
A shape tears free from the shadows at the edge of the lot.
The man moves with brutal, awful certainty.
No stumble. No hesitation. A metal pipe arcs through the weak parking lot light and crashes into the side of Silas’s head with a sound that seems to split the night in half.
The force of it snaps him sideways. His body folds hard, faster than my mind can process, the knife spinning from his hand and skidding uselessly across the pavement.
Silas hits the ground.
For one impossible second, the world becomes that sight and nothing else.
The dark suit. The spill of him against the concrete.
Blood appearing so quickly it feels wrong, too bright, running from his temple, down into the cracks of the parking lot.
He does not catch himself. Does not get up.
Does not even make the sound I am desperate to hear just to know he is still inside that body.
Something rips out of me then. A scream, his name, maybe both. I do not know. I only know I am lunging toward him with everything I have, legs scrambling, hands reaching, the whole rest of the world gone except for the need to get to him before the dark takes him farther than I can follow.
I never make it.
An arm slams around my waist from behind with enough force to wrench me backward off balance.
The breath leaves me in one shocked burst. My body twists instantly, nails clawing, heels scraping uselessly over pavement as I fight to get free, but the hold only tightens.
Whoever has me knows how to hold someone who does not want to be held.
He drags me back against a chest that feels too solid, too familiar in all the wrong ways.
Then he speaks.
“Easy now Octavia. You used to know how to stay still for me.”
The voice hits before the words do, thick with the kind of ugliness I know in my bones.
By the time the words register, I am already shaking.
They are filthy, gutting, dragged up from the deepest part of my past, the kind of thing men used to say when motel walls were thin and my body was not mine enough to protect.
Hearing that voice against my ear now, years later, in this parking lot with Silas bleeding on the ground, splits something old and half-buried straight back open.
“No,” I choke out, twisting harder, wild now, all reason gone. “No, get off me, get off me-”
My voice breaks apart against a rough hand.
Something is forced over my mouth. Cloth.
A hand. I do not know. I only know the smell is instant, a chemical sting that burns through my nose and throat, turning panic into something even more violent.
Jerking my head away, I thrash with everything in me, but the man only hauls me tighter, holding me there while the world starts slipping at the edges.
The parking lot smears.
Light stretches. Shadows bend.
My limbs stop obeying the way they should. Strength drains in horrible, impossible waves, each one taking more of me than the last. I am still fighting, still trying to tear free, still trying to scream around the pressure over my face, but the body doing it no longer feels fully attached to me.
Through the blur, I find Silas again.
He is still on the ground.
Blood at his temple. One arm bent wrong beneath him.
The shape of him so still it horrifies me in a way nothing else ever has.
The masked man is somewhere near him. Kadin too.
Their edges smear in and out of the weak light, but Silas remains the only thing my eyes can hold.
I try to reach for him even then, uselessly, hand shaking in the air toward the one person I cannot get to.
Another sound leaves me, torn and swallowed immediately.
The last thing I see is him bleeding into the pavement while the dark closes over everything.
Then even that is gone.