CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
“Bright girl,” she says approvingly. “She made herself very useful. All that time she spent with you and your Fallen friends? With Salem and Michael? With that new sewing circle you all like to call the New Fates? She soaked it all in. She dreams in sigils, did you know that? Her subconscious draws the pathways between realms while she sleeps.”
I taste bile. “What have you done to her?”
“Nothing she didn’t willingly walk toward,” Pestilence says, shrugging. “I showed her a door in her dreams. She opened it. Humans are so eager to understand. So hungry for more.”
Ash curses under his breath. “She’s weaponizing her.”
“Yes,” Pestilence says. “And you’re going to help.”
I laugh. It’s not a pleasant sound. “That’s not happening.”
“Oh, it is,” she says, all fake sweetness gone.
“You’re going to come to me, Reaver. You’re going to walk willingly into my circle, with that pretty little knife bound to your arm and your wings blazing.
You’re going to give me the last piece I need to pry this broken cosmos open and let the rot spill through. And in exchange…”
She lets the word hang.
My throat is dry. “In exchange?”
She smiles, slow and vicious. “I let her live.”
Every muscle in my body goes rigid.
“You think I believe you?” I snarl. “You think I’m stupid enough to bargain with someone whose entire brand is plague and lies?”
“Believe what you like,” she says. “But there are a few things you understand better than pain. Imagine what she’s feeling right now in that cell.
Time doesn’t move the same there. Minutes stretch.
Hours break. Days…” She trails a finger through the air, gaze distant, savoring. “She’s already begun to fray.”
The image of Kennedy in that basin—eyes wide, torchlight flickering over her face—slams into me. I picture her in Treachery-style chains, in darkness that smells like shit and despair, with Pestilence’s voice in her head.
My scar burns white-hot.
“Where,” I grind out, “is she?”
Pestilence’s lips curl. “You know I can’t just tell you. Where’s the fun in that? But I will give you a… hint.”
The crow beneath her projection shudders. Its claws scrape the floor hard enough to gouge the polished concrete. Then, slowly, impossibly, it lifts one talon and drags it through the thin layer of spilled liquor and glass on the ground.
It draws a shape.
A circle. A line. Another, curving.
Recognition slams into me a second before Cain sucks in a sharp breath.
“That’s the seal on the Rose Garden gate in Boston,” he says. “Near the Common.”
Pestilence smiles. “Very good.”
Of course. The Rose Garden. The same place Hades’ cursed basin showed her sitting. The same damn bench.
“I’ll meet you there at midnight,” she says. “Come alone.”
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah, no. That’s not how this works.”
“If anyone else crosses into the circle, she dies,” Pestilence says calmly. “Body. Mind. Soul. I will unravel her until there’s nothing left but screaming. You know I can. You’ve seen what I leave behind firsthand.”
The room is very, very quiet.
Humans shift uncomfortably, not knowing why their skin crawls. One girl near the bar throws up into her drink. Tina hustles to get out of the splash zone.
“Midnight,” Pestilence repeats. “Boston. Or you can stay here, safe with your brother and band of misfits and listen as she begs for you. Your choice.”
Her eyes lock onto mine, blue and bottomless and utterly, utterly cold.
Then she’s gone.
The smoke collapses in on itself, sucking down into the crow like water down a drain. The bird lets out a shriek that sounds torn from the end of the world, then bursts into black ash.
The music system hiccups once and dies completely. Emergency lights flicker on, bathing the room in red.
Humans start chattering nervously as the spell over them loosens. A few laugh it off as “freaky Vegas shit.” Most look like they’re about ten seconds from bolting.
I don’t move.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. That invisible thread in my chest—my connection to Kennedy—pulls taut, then jerks in what feels like protest.
“Fuck,” Ash whispers at my shoulder. I didn’t even hear him approach. “Fuck.”
Cain exhales slowly and joins Asher and me. “Well,” he says. “She certainly knows how to make an entrance.”
“And an ultimatum,” Alastor adds. “Classic Pesta—overconfident and far too dramatic.”
I finally force my feet to respond, turning to face them.
“I’m going,” I say. “You all heard her. Midnight. Rose Garden. Alone.”
“No,” Ash says instantly. “Absolutely not.”
“You don’t have a say,” I snap. “She has Kennedy. She has the woman I love, and I swore that nothing and no one would ever harm her.”
“And you think walking straight into her circle without backup is going to save her?” His eyes are blazing. “That’s not a plan, Reaver, that’s a fucking suicide note.”
Alastor folds his arms. “He’s not wrong. Pesta’s counting on you doing exactly this. She wants you desperate and alone. To isolate you. If we walk into that park on her terms, we’re playing her game. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that game.”
“You heard her. She said if anyone else comes, Kennedy dies,” I bite out. “What part of that are you not understanding?”
“Yeah, I heard her. She’s not about to make a declaration in a public fucking forum if she didn’t think we were all going to tag along.
” Alastor’s voice sharpens. “I heard her alright, but I also listened and I know her. And in case you’ve forgotten, I know a bit about Themis, and the way her twisted mind works. ”
I grind my teeth. “Enlighten me.”
“She didn’t say no one else could be in Boston,” he says. “Didn’t say no one else could be near the circle. She said that if anyone else crosses into it. There’s a difference, and she knows it.” Alastor nods slowly. “Loopholes. The only language either of them really speaks.”
“So you go,” Ash says. “You walk into her fucking circle, and you keep her attention on you. Meanwhile, we cut off her exits. Ward the perimeter. Michael and Salem can anchor from the other reality, maybe use that Rose Garden gate as a choke point instead of a doorway.”
Michael.
The name loosens something in my chest I didn’t realize I was holding so tightly. If anyone can figure out how to reinforce a breaking barrier, it’s the former general turned reluctant researcher.
“And Hades?” I ask. “He won’t leave The Inferno, but he’s got eyes down there. If Pesta’s pulling power from below to fuel whatever she’s doing…”
“I’ll handle him,” Cain says. “He owes me a favor or three.”
Ash runs a hand through his hair, thinking fast. “We don’t have much time. It’s what, eight here? Midnight Boston is three hours difference.”
“Give or take,” Alastor says. “You go and grab Michael and Salem, coordinate, fill her in, and hope that some good old-fashioned witchcraft and magic will help this ridiculous plan. I’ll take care of getting the wolves in position around the Common and let Moirea know the Fates might want to avert their gaze around midnight. ”
“I’ll keep this place locked down,” Ash says. “Sloane will kill me if I let anything happen to the club while we’re off saving the world. Again.”
“You’re not coming?” I ask him, surprised at how much that stings.
“I’m coming,” he says. “But I’ve got to move some pieces here first. Security. Wards. Make sure our daughter—your niece—isn’t in the blast radius if this goes sideways.” His jaw flexes. “I’ll meet you in Boston.”
I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat.
“Reaver,” Cain says, catching my gaze. “You’re the key she wants.
The key Themis purposefully designed when she kept you from falling.
That cursed blade on your arm. It will cut whatever it’s pointed at, including whatever fuckery Pesta is trying to complete.
But you need to be prepared to use it to sever whatever hold she has on Kennedy. ”
The idea of severing anything between me and Kennedy makes my skin crawl. But if what they’ve lashed her to is a world-ending spell… “I go in,” I say slowly. “You ring the park, lock it down. If Pesta tries anything with Kennedy, I cut it at the source.”
“Exactly.” Cain’s smile is sharp. “Let her think she has you where she wants you. You break her fucking toy instead.”
“Of course,” Alastor adds lightly, “this is all assuming Themis doesn’t show up personally to swat us like flies. But I guess if she does… we improvise.”
“Great,” I say. “I love a good improv apocalypse.”
Ash grips my shoulder again, hard. “We don’t have the luxury of doing nothing,” he says. “And we’re not letting you do this alone. Not this time and never again.”
I look at him, at Cain, at Alastor. At the crowd of oblivious patrons already beginning to trickle toward the exits, chattering about the “crazy bird show” as if they didn’t just share a room with one of the Four Horsemen.
I think of Hades, drunk in his office over a basin that lies as often as it tells the truth.
I think of Kennedy, torch in hand, standing between prison bars and refusing to crumble even when everything in her world has been ripped away.
“Okay,” I say, the word landing in my chest like a stone, solid and inevitable. “We do it your way, loopholes and all.” I glance toward the back of the club, where the service elevator hums quietly, waiting to haul me up to the roof and the gate that will drop me closer to her.
“Midnight in Boston,” I murmur. “Pesta wants a show?” I flex my fingers, feel the cursed blade purring under my skin, and let my wings stir just beneath the surface.
“Let’s give her one.”