Chapter 34 Cyrus
CYRUS
The sun creeps over the horizon as I pull into the parking lot of a cheap motel off the highway.
My body thrums with leftover adrenaline, the bloodlust still singing in my veins.
Tonight felt different. Watching Keira take her revenge, seeing that fire in her eyes—it awakened a thrill beyond the usual one I get when I kill.
“We need to crash for a few hours,” I say, turning off the engine.
Ace nods, our eyes meeting in silent understanding. It’s the same look we’ve shared a thousand times after a job. Except something feels different now. I glance down, realizing our fingers are intertwined on the console between us. I pull my hand away quickly, flexing my fingers.
In the backseat, Keira’s head droops against the window. Her eyelids flutter as she fights to stay conscious. Blood still stains the collar of her shirt—Henderson’s, not hers. The sight shouldn’t make my chest tighten the way it does.
“I’ll get us a room,” Ace says, sliding out of the car.
I turn to look at Keira. “You okay back there, little dancer?”
She nods vaguely, obviously beyond exhausted. The adrenaline crash hit her harder than it did us, since we’re used to it. I reach back and brush my thumb across her cheek. She leans into my touch like she’s starving for it, and something in my chest shifts, protective and possessive all at once.
When Ace returns with a key, I gather Keira in my arms. She feels impossibly light, her head nestling against my shoulder as I carry her to the room. The motel is exactly what you’d expect—faded wallpaper, scratchy bedspreads, the lingering smell of cigarettes poorly masked by cheap air freshener.
I lay Keira on the bed. Her eyes are already closed before her head hits the pillow, her body surrendering to exhaustion. She doesn’t even stir when I pull off her shoes.
I slip into the bathroom, leaving Keira passed out on the bed. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, casting harsh shadows on the peeling wallpaper. Ace is already there, peeling off his blood-spattered shirt.
“She’s out cold,” I tell him, shutting the door quietly behind me.
Ace nods, turning the shower on. Steam begins to fill the cramped space. “Henderson’s blood is a bitch to get off.”
We’ve done this dance a hundred times before. Strip down. Step in. Wash away the evidence. We’ve been cleaning each other’s backs since we were seven, taught by handlers who made us stand in ice water if we left a single trace behind.
The shower is barely big enough for one grown man, let alone two.
Our elbows knock as we take turns under the spray.
Ace grabs the cheap motel soap, scrubbing methodically at his forearms while I work my fingers under the hot water, watching Henderson’s dried blood dissolve and swirl down the drain.
“You see her face when she took that knife to him?” I ask, my voice echoing against the tile. “Like she was born for it.”
Ace’s eyes meet mine, water dripping from his lashes. “She was magnificent.”
There’s something raw in his voice I rarely hear. Something that makes me hyper-aware of our bodies, the steam, the narrow space between us.
I focus on my fingernails, using the small motel comb to scrape under them. “Pass the soap.”
Our fingers brush as he hands it over. I feel a jolt, like static electricity. We’ve never been awkward around each other, not in thirty-one years of existing in each other’s space. But now there’s a current running between us, charged by Keira’s fantasy, her presence in our lives.
“This is different,” Ace says, reading my mind the way he always does.
I nod, unable to look at him. “Everything’s different now.”
I watch the pink-tinged water swirl down the drain. “The way she stood there, knife in hand—like she’d been doing this her whole life.”
Ace nods, his eyes distant with reflection. “She’s not the same woman we claimed in the Hunt.”
“No,” I agree, reaching for the washcloth. “She’s better.”
The steam fills the space between us, clouding the cracked mirror. I can see smears of Henderson’s blood still clinging to Ace’s shoulder where Keira smeared it on him. Without thinking, I step closer.
“Turn around,” I murmur. “Missed some.”
Ace complies, presenting his back to me. I press the washcloth against his skin, working careful circles over the splatters of dried blood. My touch lingers longer than necessary, tracing the familiar map of scars—evidence of our shared history, our mirrored pain.
“Remember what they told us at the Architect Program?” I say quietly. “That pain would break you or forge you?”
“I remember,” Ace says, his voice unusually soft.
“They were right about that part.” My hand stills between his shoulder blades, feeling his heartbeat through my fingertips. “What happened to Keira...it forged her. Like us.”
The water beats down, washing away the last traces of tonight’s violence. But something remains—a tenderness I rarely allow myself to feel, even with Ace.
“When she looked at Henderson,” Ace says, “I saw us. Fifteen years old, standing over Seventeen’s body.”
I nod, though he can’t see me. “Taking back what was stolen.”
I finish cleaning his back, my fingers tracing a path down his spine that reminds me we’re still two broken boys who learned to kill before we learned to live. The touch isn’t sexual—it’s deeper than that.
“We found her for the Hunt,” I say, dropping the washcloth to the floor. “But I think she found us for this.”
Silence falls between us as we finish washing away the last traces of violence. I step out of the shower first, grab one of the thin motel towels, and toss another to Ace. Water drips onto the cracked linoleum as we dry ourselves.
“She changed everything,” I say quietly, wrapping the towel around my waist.
Ace nods, his expression unusually vulnerable in the harsh bathroom light. “I didn’t expect this.”
“What?”
“To feel this way about her.” He runs a hand through his wet hair. “The Hunt was supposed to be like all the others—take what we want and walk away when we’re done.”
I lean against the sink, crossing my arms over my chest. “We’ve still got eleven months left on the contract.”
Ace’s eyes meet mine, and I see in them the same unsettling truth I’ve been avoiding. “You know that’s not going to be enough.”
A knot forms in my throat. We’ve never kept anyone before. Women and men have always been temporary diversions, interchangeable bodies to satisfy our needs before we discard them. But Keira...
“I don’t want to let her go,” I admit. “Not after a year. Not ever.”
“She fits with us,” Ace says. My twin has always been the ice-cold one, the calculated half of our whole. Seeing him acknowledge this weakness feels momentous. “Like she was made for us.”
“You think she’d stay? After the contract ends?”
Ace’s gaze slides to the door, beyond which Keira sleeps. “I think we need to make sure she has no reason to leave.”
I nod, understanding flowing between us without words. We’ve shared everything our entire lives—beds, blood, kills, women. But we’ve never shared this strange, possessive need to keep someone.
“We offer,” I suggest. “After what happened with Henderson...”
“It’s more than that,” Ace interrupts. “And you know it.”
I do know it. What we feel for Keira transcended lust not long after the Hunt ended. It’s something neither of us has a name for, something we were never taught to recognize or express.