Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
JEX
The ambulance is a tomb of white light and the copper scent of old blood and new sin.
I’m still buried deep inside her, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, feeling the rhythmic, dying tremors of her climax milking the last of me.
Hallow is hanging from the straps above me, her head lolled back, her skin flushed a violent, beautiful pink.
She looks like a saint carved from ice that finally met the sun.
Below us, dad is quiet.
The whistling breath has turned into a shallow, rattling hitch. He’s staring up at the bottom of the gurney, his eyes pinned open by the steel retractors, glazed over with a shock so profound I think his heart might have finally folded under the weight of the shame.
I slowly pull out of her. The sound is wet and heavy in the silence—the only applause for the performance we just gave him.
I don’t reach for my jeans. I don’t cover up.
I want him to see the mess we made. I want him to see Hallow’s slick heat dripping off me and onto his pristine, medical-grade sheets.
“You okay, sweetheart?” I rasp, my voice sounding like it was dragged over gravel.
Hallow doesn’t answer. She just lets out a long, shuddering exhale, her eyes slowly fluttering open. They’re dark, hollowed out, but the frantic, jagged insanity I saw on the bridge has been replaced by something much more dangerous.
Clarity.
“Untie me,” she whispers.
I reach up and hit the ratchets. The nylon straps hiss as they release, and Hallow collapses into my arms. I catch her, her skin hot and damp against mine, and I set her down on the edge of the gurney, right next to our father’s head.
She doesn’t look away from him. She leans over, her hair falling like a curtain of silk and soot, and she stares directly into his pinned-open eyes. She reaches out a hand—slow, steady, her fingers no longer shaking—and she begins to trace the line of the stitches on his cheek.
“Does it hurt, Dad?” she asks, her voice terrifyingly soft. It’s the voice of a girl telling a bedtime story to a doll. “The fire? The glass? The way Jex looked inside me?”
He makes a small, gargled sound. A single tear rolls from the corner of his pinned eye, disappearing into the foam block.
“I remember thinking you were a god,” she continues, her thumb pressing into a fresh bruise on his neck. “I thought if I did everything right, you’d let me stay in the light. But you didn’t want a daughter. You wanted a ghost. You wanted something you could sell without it screaming.”
She looks at me, and for a second, the coldness in her gaze makes even my blood run cold.
“Jex,” she says, her voice as sharp as a scalpel. “Hand me the med-kit. I want to see if the Mayor’s heart is as black as the one he gave me.”
I don’t hesitate. I reach for the tray and slide it towards her. There’s a tray of surgical steel—scalpels, forceps, sutures. The tools of the trade he used to keep us in line.
“What are we doing, Hallow?” I ask, my hand resting on the small of her back, my thumb tracing the curve of her spine.
She picks up a small, shimmering blade, turning it over in the light. She looks at her reflection in the steel, then at the man trapped beneath her.
“We’re going to give the city one last broadcast,” she whispers. “We’re going to show them what’s under the suit. No more lies. No more silence.”
She leans down, the tip of the blade resting just above his collarbone.
“Don’t blink, Father,” she hisses, a slow, dark smile spreading across her face. “This is the part where the ghost starts to scream back.”
I watch her, and for the first time in my life, I feel a flicker of something that isn’t just rage. It’s awe.
Hallow is holding that scalpel like it’s a part of her own anatomy, the clinical white light of the ambulance reflecting off the steel and into the dark, dilated void of her pupils.
She’s naked, smeared with the salt of the harbour and the slick evidence of my come, but she looks like she’s wearing a suit of armour made of spite.
“Jex,” she whispers, not taking her eyes off the pulse thrumming in Aris’s neck. “Hold the mic. I want the city to hear the sound of a god coming apart.”
I reach for the PA handset, my hand steady, my thumb hovering over the trigger. I lean back against the telemetry monitors, the steady beep-beep-beep of the Mayor’s heart rate providing the metronome for our final act.
“Go ahead, sweetheart,” I rasp. “The world is listening.”
I click the mic. The feedback hums through the external speakers, a low-frequency growl that vibrates the very floorboards of the bridge.
Hallow leans down, her lips brushing the shell of his ear, her voice a terrifyingly soft contrast to the madness of the night.
“You told me once that the truth is whatever the loudest man says it is,” she murmurs into the mic, her breath hitching in a way that sounds like a sob but feels like a serrated edge.
“Well, I’m the loudest one now, Dad. And the truth is…
you’re hollow. You’re just a bag of meat and lies held together by a tailored suit. ”
She presses the tip of the scalpel into the soft skin just above his collarbone. A bead of bright, oxygenated blood wells up, a ruby against the sterile white of the sheets. He lets out a muffled, rhythmic whimper, his eyes darting toward the blade with a primal, suffocating fear.
“Does it hurt?” she asks, her voice rising, cracking into a jagged, beautiful insanity.
“Does it hurt to feel the air touching the parts of you that were supposed to stay hidden? Because I remember the cold, Dad. I remember the way the air felt in the clinic when you walked out and closed the door. I remember the way the silence tasted like pennies and shame.”
She drags the blade—a slow, shallow line across his chest, tracing the trajectory of his ribs. It’s not a killing blow. It’s an edit. She’s rewriting the story he told the world.
“Look at him!” she screams suddenly, her voice exploding through the speakers, making the people huddled by their cars on the bridge jump in unison.
“Look at the man who promised you safety! He couldn’t even keep his own daughter safe from himself!
He’s a parasite! A leech that fed on the light until there was nothing left but the dark! ”
I’m watching the way her muscles move, the way the tension in her back ripples with every sob-racked breath.
I’m hard again, the sheer power of her breakdown-turned-execution turning my blood into liquid fire.
I want to take her again, right here, in the middle of the blood and the humming monitors, but I don’t move.
This is her altar. I’m just the acolyte.
Dad is thrashing now, a weak, pathetic struggle against the nylon straps. The heart monitor is screaming, a frantic, continuous tone as his vitals redline.
“Jex,” she gasps, turning to me, her face a mask of tears and triumph. “He’s trying to say something. He’s trying to apologise.”
I lean in, bringing the mic close to the Mayor’s mouth, my eyes locked on his pinned-open, bloodshot gaze.
“Say it,” I growl, the PA system amplifying the predatory weight of my voice. “Tell the city what you’re sorry for. Tell Hallow what her childhood was worth.”
He opens his mouth, his lips trembling, his breath smelling of copper and cowardice. He looks at Hallow, then at me, and for a second, I see the recognition of his own creation in his eyes. He didn’t just break us. He forged us.
“I… I…” he wheezes, the words whistling through the mask. “I did it… for the… for the family…”
Hallow lets out a sharp, barking laugh that turns into a wail. She brings the scalpel up, the light catching the blood on the tip, and she looks at me with a terrifying, beautiful clarity.
“He thinks he’s still a father, Jex,” she whispers.
I reach out, my hand covering hers on the handle of the blade, our fingers slick and tangled.
“Then let’s show him what happens when the family finally comes home,” I say, my thumb pressing down on hers.
We move together. The blade sinks deeper, a slow, punctuation mark at the end of a ten-year sentence. The heart monitor lets out one final, long, flatline scream, and the city goes silent.