Chapter 27 #2
I slip out from beneath the sheets without disturbing Asher, dragging my fingers through my hair. Le Boucher had no patience. He stayed controlled, sure, but waiting? Never. He proved that during our training when he shoved us toward our first US targets the second we arrived.
Why are you thinking of this at—
I snatch my phone off the bedside table.
Three-thirty-three a.m.
Shit.
I need air.
I tiptoe out of the room, pull on a nightgown, and knot the belt tight as that weekend plays through my head again.
Why isn’t he attacking? He saw us together.
Saw my drunken mess and Asher’s annoyingly impressive aim.
Yet he’s still hiding. By now, he should’ve come in guns blazing and taken us all out.
Slipping out the patio door, I shiver as the cold slips beneath my nightgown.
I try to force the pieces together again. The priest’s story. That jaw. Emeric’s face has carried burns for as long as I’ve known him, surely the priest would’ve mentioned them. Anyone would. You don’t describe a man who frightens you that badly and leave out the one detail that would make him.
Le Boucher had patience. A fucking obscene amount of it.
Emeric? I had doubts. He got pissed when we took too long to finish a task, and God forbid I couldn’t recite a chapter from the Codex after reading it once.
Trust Le Boucher, Nonna had said.
Why tell me to trust the man who’d end up killing her? Nobody could fool Nonna that completely. Nobody. Emeric couldn’t have manipulated her that badly. Impossible.
The only other explanation would be that…
“What’s the matter, Venom?” Asher asks behind me, his voice brushing across my back. “Have a nightmare?”
The grass crackles beneath my feet, and I hear him stop a few yards behind me.
I turn to face him, then hesitate as the moonlight sharpens every hard edge of his face.
Thud. Thud.
My heart kicks into a gallop, each beat pounding clear to my toes.
Those eyes. Almost white in the dark. Ice stretched over a frozen ocean…
My mouth dries up. The priest’s voice loops through my head. He had eyes that would chill the Devil. I’d convinced myself he meant empty. Soulless. A man with nothing left inside capable of thawing.
The priest wasn’t talking in metaphor's. Not completely anyway. He’d been talking about the color.
I search Asher’s face as the truth gathers itself. Every question he dodged. Every hushed secret between his family. The calm he wore when anyone else would’ve panicked. His patience with me in all the years I’ve known him.
And those fucking eyes.
He stays still. Even his breathing changes, his chest holding for half a second too long before it rises again. He watches the answer take shape across my face, following each tiny betrayal my body offers him—the widening of my eyes, the twitch in my jaw, my fingers curling against my palm.
Oxygen thickens until each breath is a struggle.
He’s always known this was coming. Maybe every soft look, every smartass comment, every touch, it all had this ending buried underneath.
I wait for him to grin and call me paranoid. I wait for some filthy joke, some clever excuse that’ll let me hate myself for doubting him.
He could remind me he’d already told me everything.
He could swear he hasn’t lied to me again.
His jaw flexes once.
He says nothing.
Silence cracks around us as Nonna’s face flashes behind my eyes. Then the priest’s poster, then Emeric’s hand flat on the table as he claimed the name.
He kills leaders. Their families. Their lovers. Anyone in his path that gets in the way.
Cold spreads under my skin. All this time, I thought we were on the same side as this evil. Turns out, we’ve been hunted by it all along.
My stomach twists, turning everything in it to acid.
I suck in a deep breath. “Asher.”
He takes a single, slow step toward me.
I counter it, stepping back, the wound on my side screaming.
I’ve always said I wasn’t a runner. I charge headfirst into everything that chases me, but this time—
I fucking run.
Asher
Ivy sprints barefoot across the grass, disappearing through the clearing of trees.
“You gonna chase her?” Atlas asks from behind me. “Or just watch her disappear?”
I don’t answer.
Out of all the things I thought she would do when she finally figured it out, running wasn’t one of them. Murder? Yes. Run? No.
Dovecrest was bullshit. I knew it the second I laid eyes on her again.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, especially the ones that tell you they love you.
“She knows,” I say instead. “About…me.”
Atlas exhales. “Then she’s running from you, not Emeric.”
I flip him off without turning. “No shit.”
He steps beside me, shoulder brushing mine. “You want me to bring her back?”
“No.”
He pauses, shuffling his feet. “You want me to kill her…”
The corner of my lip twitches. “Touch her and I’ll gut you.”
Atlas barks out a laugh. “Just checking to make sure we actually are on the same page. Also, I ain’t about to run through the forest, so if you think—“
“—shut the fuck up, Atlas.” I head back inside because if I hear another fucking sound from my brother my mom’s gonna be down a kid.
Atlas looks between me and the spot Ivy ran through. “Yo, you can’t just leave her out there, Ash. She’ll fucking die!”
I ignore him.
“Ash!” he yells again, but I slam the door closed, cutting him off.
I’m not worried about her dying. If she got too cold she’d slide into the hot springs she stumbled across a while ago, or she’d just come back.
Her training means she can probably handle temperatures that would kill anyone else.
So as per usual, Atlas is being dramatic.
Khloe flies up from the sofa, Camille right beside her.
“Jesus. Did everyone fucking wake up?”
“What is happening?” Camille asks, eyes wide and face pale.
So this is what fear looks like. Something Ivy could never feel because I would never fucking kill her. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Camille stumbles back, catching herself on a chair. “Asher?”
Too late.
I fist the hair at the back of her head, tearing the phone from her hand before tossing her at Khloe.
Khloe catches her without effort. “And what the hell do you think I’m gonna do with her?”
“Tie her up,” I say as if talking to a toddler.
Khloe snorts. “No offense, big brother, but—”
“—oh you are so dead, Asher! You go against the fucking Conduct! You go against generations of loyalty, blood—”
Khloe’s elbow slams into her face and Camille drops to the ground with a thud.
“If I knock her out we don’t need to tie her up.” Khloe shrugs, moving for the alcohol cabinet on the floating shelf by the back wall.
“Asher!” Atlas snaps from the entrance. “She will die out there.”
“She won’t,” Khloe says. “And we all know why.”
Exactly.
Khloe shoves Camille with her toe. “So how bad of a number has Emeric done on her?”
Atlas sucks in a breath. “You did make sure before you let her run off, didn’t you? Because if you hadn’t, we’re all fucking dead.”
My eyes roll. “Well-the fuck-aware, dipshit.”
Why didn’t I just knock Ivy’s ass out and tie her up in the basement...
“Everyone cliff side.” I grab the hoodie off the sofa and shove it on. “We’ll meet you all there.”
“Boss?” Devon hollers from behind me. I glance over my shoulder at the arm in the sling. He looks fucked up, but Ivy did a good job of missing a killshot.
Again.
“What?” I snap, still wanting to kill one of my own soldiers for touching her.
He clears his throat. “It could be too late.”