Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
IVY
Death was never going to come easy for me, even though I’d spread my legs for it on multiple occasions.
Humanity. Such a fickle inconvenience.
The blade lands in my open palm with every flick while the ocean throws itself against the glass wall of this awfully sanitized hellhole.
“Are you worried?” the pest opposite me asks, sprawled across a two-seater sofa with her arms spread wide.
I smirk, holding her smug stare. “Not as worried as you should be, considering it’s just you and I in here—“ I tilt my head and pretend to examine her posture. “—and would you look at that? You’re already in the Blood Eagle stance.”
Her mouth drops at the same time as her arms.
I roll my eyes and go back to my knife. I’m bored and understimulated. Silly me for thinking Emeric would unleash me onto the streets. Of course he has a plan.
Over the past two days I’ve picked up plenty. For one, everything in this place is sterile. Polished concrete, deep-set LED strips. The main hallway loops on and on with no visible doors, yet walls open up for you if you press on them right.
Strange mind-fuck of a building.
This room is different. A whole wall made of glass where I’m guessing the cliff used to be.
Camille sighs, pushing up from the sofa. “I need to use the bathroom.”
“Cool!” I ignore her, annoyed with her overshare.
What the fuck is taking Emeric so long anyway?
I reach for the phone on the small table, tapping the screen a few times before putting it back.
Camille returns just as the main door slams open on Aléia, and behind her, Emeric.
It takes me a second to look at what he’s pushing in, and when my eyes land on the gurney, I lift slowly out of my chair.
“What is this?” I ask, catching the blade at the handle without taking my eyes off him.
A bloody arm slides to the side, and—wait. I recognize those tattoos.
He’s not moving.
Thud. Thud.
“This!” Emeric gestures to him like a prized fucking fish he caught. “Is your gift.”
My mouth snaps shut.
He must read my expression because his brows dip inward. “Yes, for your hard work. Now, come…”
I can’t move. My muscles seize, everything in me locking up.
“Mariee…” he drawls, his voice drifting in and out. “Do I have to repeat myself?”
“Not at all,” I say, blinking up at my father.
I tighten my grip on the blade. Each step hits somewhere in my fucking chest.
Odd. Would prefer it not do that.
Metallic hits my nose, mixed with… what is that?
One more step and his face comes into view. Split lip, blood dried into his eyebrow, lashes stuck together with it. My fingers go numb around the handle.
“Jesus, you’re slow—here! I’ll fucking do it!” Camille shoulder-barges past me but doesn’t get far before I grab her by the hair and tug her back.
“Ouch!” she screams, stepping back behind me.
Another step.
The blade in my left sheath finds my hand, and without looking away from Asher, I slice clean across Aléia’s throat.
Camille’s screams erupt behind me, people moving at the edge of my vision. No doubt Emeric has slithered off like a fucking snake, but I don’t care. I don’t care about a fucking thing except that he’s…
I drop to Asher’s side, cupping his head. “Oh my God. What did he do?” I whisper, his blood once again on my hands.
Asher laughs, and then winces, clutching where the piece is sticking out of his side.
I slap his hand away. “Leave it! It’s what’s stopping you from bleeding out.”
Punk stares at Asher. “Ivy! We need to—”
“—I’m fucking fine!” Asher snaps, trying to sit up. “You and me!” He glares. “We gotta talk.”
I narrow my eyes. “Mmmm, maybe we should knock him out…”
His hand flies to my throat and he pulls me close to his face. “Unless you’re gonna do that by riding my dick to sleep, I’d suggest you fucking don’t. Atlas!” he yells, keeping his eyes fixed on me.
Atlas crashes through the door, takes one look at Asher, and his face pales.
“Get—Ivy—out!”
I open my mouth.
“—and Camille.”
It snaps shut, and cold crawls up the back of my neck.
Asher’s mouth tips. “Oh, not so smug now?”
“Fuck you.”
And I mean it, because when all this adrenaline dies and I know Asher is fine, we really are gonna fight.
“Later,” he mutters, pushing himself upright on the gurney.
Khloe looks between me and him. “Asher, you really should lay down.”
He bares his teeth, blood drying at the corner of his mouth. “I’m fine. Had worse in the ring with Sinead.”
Pushing off the gurney, he gets all the way up to full height, bare chest smeared red, and for a second, I hate myself for being distracted by his body.
Amazing. Death all over the place and my brain still finds time to be depraved.
“Camille!” he snaps, and Camille’s whimpers stop from somewhere behind me. “You need to come stitch me up before Punk takes you.”
I freeze.
He hasn’t looked away from me, and with every passing second, rage builds deep in my belly. I’m still pissed about him knowing Emeric was my father and keeping it from me, and now he’s throwing gas on the fire with this bitch…
Camille’s shoulders brush mine as she lifts her hand to his chest.
My hand shoots out, laying the flat edge of my blade under her chin without breaking eye contact with Asher.
That annoying fucking grin spreads over his face, and my jaw slams shut.
“If you even think of touching him, Cameltoe, I’ll have you dead beside your mother.”
“Baby…” Asher starts. “She’s gotta touch me to fix me…”
I shrug. “I know other surgeons. Ones who don’t know what you feel like inside them.”
Asher shoves Camille away, taking me by the chin with a bloody hand. “How do you feel?”
“What?” Out of everything I expected him to say, that wasn’t on the list.
“How…” His lips skim mine and my heart races. “Do…” He kisses me and I melt. “You feel?”
“I feel—” I pause, stepping back—
I stare at my hands. Blood. Asher’s blood.
I touch his chest. “Alive.”
Alive.
The word leaves me and the room slips sideways. My hand stays splayed over Asher’s chest, his heart hammering under blood and skin, and the walls inside my brain split open.
“Ivy,” he says close to my mouth. Too close.
Cold air cuts my throat. Branches slap my arms. Snow sinks under my bare feet as I run with no plan except away, away, away from the house, from his lies, from the look on that woman’s face when she—the woman.
Sharp cheekbones. Green eyes.
“I don’t understand—“ I stumble backwards, squeezing my eyes shut like it might drag me out of this nightmare.
“You see this?” Emeric said, gesturing to the same picture of the same woman. God, what was his deal with her? “When you see this face, what will you do?”
I didn’t even answer because what?
“Ivy, look at me.” Asher’s thumb presses under my jaw. The touch almost pulls me out. Almost.
It had been a month since he last pulled out her photo, but here he was again.
“Who is this woman!” Emeric yelled so loud my ears rang.
I stared at the picture, like a cloud going over my head. Blank. Void. “A trigger.”
“Who is also…” he asked, eyeing me.
I looked up at him. “My mother.”
He clicked his fingers.
Tears burn my eyes as the room around me softens.
Asher steps closer, and the night I ran from him drags me back under.
Once I’m far enough from my mother, I walk through trees. I walk down the mountain road. Ice cuts my soles open and gravel grinds into raw skin, leaving blood across snow, dirt, and pavement, and I don’t feel a damn thing. The tunnel waits at the bottom of the road.
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, the concrete damp under my feet. My footprints smear red behind me.
I don’t look back.
I know where I’m going.
Shit. “I know where I’m going.”
A black security panel sits beside a steel door I’ve never seen, except my palm lifts to it on its own, fingers spread, hand steady. The reader flashes green.
“He put my biometrics into the—” My hands wave around the room, everyone watching me. “I don’t know when…”
The door opens, carrying bleach and metal. Beyond it, the conditioning ward.
Cuffs hang from a ceiling rail, leather worn dark at the edges, chains already lowered to the right height. I step beneath them. I lift my arms. No command. No struggle.
I slide one wrist in.
Click.
Then the other.
Click.
The chains draw tight, taking my weight until I’m hanging by the wrists, toes brushing the floor, shoulders pulling hot in their sockets. Skin splits under the cuff. I feel the facts of it without the pain, the same way I feel cold glass with a glove on.
I did this.
“Ivy.”
Asher again, somewhere past the ward and the blood, except the memory keeps going because there are footsteps outside the room. Two sets. One heavy, one quick. I know the second from the scrape in her heel before Camille says my name, and the latch starts to turn.
“Finally,” she mutters. “What an entrance, but at least the trigger finally happened, whatever it was.”
I ignore her rambling. Camille was the perfect puppet. Glad I never killed her.
“Since no one knew what the hell Emeric’s trigger was—what was it, by the way?” she asks, turning her face to me as the door opens and her mother steps inside.
“It was Amelie. Emeric didn’t use a word, it was an image of her own mother. One he wanted to kill.” Aléia smirks. “Poetry, really…”
“I don’t—“ I shake my head, the room refusing to hold still.
Voices overlap. Asher grabs my arm. “It’s Nonna, her counter weave broke through…”
“Love, Ivy… love is what sets everyone free. That’s why we do La Journée du Nous.”
I think over what she says. “But I don’t want to love…”
It was the easiest answer.
Nonna chuckles, pointing to Jord. “I think you do.”
“I don’t even know who I am,” I mutter, kind of annoyed.
I already cared for Nonna, loved her enough. Love means order and control. Nonna is order, Emeric is control. Leon is the foundation I always land on, Luce is the walls that keep me safe, and Punk is the security. Love is a house of order and control. What the hell would Jord be useful for?
Nonna laughs under her breath, bending to my height and placing both hands on my shoulders.