CHAPTER 18 - Deimos
The engine of the sedan screams as I throw it into gear, the tires clawing at the asphalt of the private drive. I don’t look back at the Gilded Cage or the monsters inside it. My world has shrunk to the size of this car and the woman bleeding into the expensive leather of the passenger seat.
"Stay with me, Madeline," I rasp, my voice sounding like broken glass.
I reach over, my hand trembling, a sensation I haven't felt in a decade, as I press a wad of sterile gauze against the furrow the bullet tore into her arm. At this moment, I can't even feel my own wound. The bullet just scratched my shoulder.
She winces, a small, sharp intake of breath that hits me harder than any physical blow Charles ever dealt.
"I've got you. We’re almost there," I lie.
We aren't almost there, but I need her to believe it. I can't take her to the hospital. Every ER in this city is a sieve for the High Council’s informants. To take her there is to hand her back to the man in the porcelain mask.
I head toward the industrial district, toward the one place no one knows exists. My sanctuary. My hidden apartment.
As I weave through the midnight traffic, my mind is a dissonant roar of static and fire.
He’s alive. The thought sits in the back of my throat like bile. I knew he was, but the way he looked at her, like she was a pawn, a leash, a weakness. The fact that he knows about her existence. A red light flashes by. I don't slow down.
I glance at Madeline. Her skin is too pale against the midnight silk of her dress. The sapphire fabric is ruined, soaked through with a dark, heavy crimson that matches the stain on my soul.
This is your fault.
The thought repeats with the rhythm of the windshield wipers. You brought a creature of light into a room full of shadows. You thought you could control the chaos. You thought you could keep her clean.
"I'm sorry," I mutter, the words feeling foreign and clumsy on my tongue.
"I'm so sorry, little storm."
Vengeance and guilt fight for space in my chest. I want to turn this car around and burn that estate to the ground until there is nothing left but ash and Charles’s teeth.
But then she shifts, a soft moan of pain escaping her lips, and the rage is instantly swallowed by a suffocating, paralyzing fear.
I’ve spent my life deciding who lives and who dies. I’ve mastered the anatomy of the end. But looking at her, I realize I don't know how to live in a world where her heart doesn't beat.
I pull up to the unmarked steel shutters of the apartment. My hands are slick with her blood as I punch the security code into the keypad. The shutters grind open, revealing the cold, clinical glow of my private infirmary. The one I tortured Jake in.
"We’re here," I whisper, killing the engine.
The silence that follows is terrifying even for me.
I unbuckle her, lifting her into my arms again. She feels heavier now, as if life is slowly leaking out of her. I carry her toward the surgical table, my mind already cataloging the supplies I’ll need. Sutures, lidocaine, antibiotics.
I am the man who cleans up messes. I am the man who erases mistakes. But as I lay her down under the harsh LED lights, I realize this is the one stain I will never be able to wash away.
"I won't let you go, Madeline," I whisper, my voice dropping to a low, lethal vow.
"Not to the Elite. Not to the shadows. And especially not to me."
My hands, usually as steady as a mountain, are vibrating with a frequency I can’t suppress. It’s not just fear. It’s an inferno of pure, unadulterated rage.
As I prep the suture kit, my mind spirals into a dark, calculated fantasy.
I see Charles’s porcelain mask shattering under my boot.
I see the High Council, one by one, gasping for air as I collapse their empires and their windpipes.
I will hunt them through the vents of their mansions.
I will turn their gilded world into a slaughterhouse.
I will kill them all. The thought is a rhythmic pulse in my temples. Starting with the man who gave me life just so he could try to take hers.
I look down at Madeline, my "Mali", and the guilt slices through the anger. My mind is spiraling uncontrollably. I might have some kind of fucked up personality disorder.
I let this happen. I let her get close enough to the blades.
I pull the surgical stool closer, my jaw so tight it feels like the bone might crack. I will never let her out of my sight again. I will build a fortress around her, and if the world wants to touch her, it will have to crawl over my corpse to do it.
"Stay still, Mali," I whisper, my voice thick with a protectiveness that borders on obsession.
I work with a feverish precision. I clean the wound, the sting of the antiseptic making her flinch even in her daze. Every time she whimpers, I feel a fresh wave of hatred for my father and myself.
I stitch the torn skin, my movements a blur of silver needle and black thread. I am a man who mends what others break, but I have never felt so broken myself.
When the last knot is tied and the bandage is secure, the silence of the room settles over us like a shroud. I don't move. I stay hunched over her, my hand resting near her head, my eyes tracing the line of her throat.
Slowly, her eyelashes flutter. The ice-blue of her eyes is clouded with pain and exhaustion, but as she focuses on me, the fog begins to clear. She doesn't look at the bandages. She looks at the dried blood on my collar.
"Deimos," she breathes, her voice a fragile thread.
"I'm here," I rasp.
She shifts slightly, her gaze drifting toward the tray full of surgical instruments.
"The man in the mask..." she starts, her voice gaining an edge of curiosity.
"You called him Charles. He’s your father."
She’s putting the pieces together inside of her mind. I freeze. The name feels like a curse in the air of my sanctuary.
"He said things, Deimos," she continues, her eyes searching mine, demanding the truth I’ve spent years burying.
"He talked about you. About a game of trust. He said you were the one who..."
She stops, the weight of the accusation hanging between us. She’s not afraid of me, she’s curious about the boy I used to be. And for the first time in my life, I don't have a lie ready to protect myself.
I stay hunched over the surgical table. My fingers are still stained with her blood, a permanent mark of my failure.
I look at the small cross hanging from my neck, the one piece of cold metal that never leaves my skin.
I don't look at her eyes. I can't. If I see the pity in them, I might actually break.
"My father didn't believe in sons," I begin, my voice a hollow rasp that barely carries in the vastness of the warehouse.
"He believed in instruments. Tools. He spent my childhood carving away anything that looked like a feeling, teaching me that an emotion is just a lag in reaction time."
I reach up, my thumb tracing the rough edges of the silver cross. It’s crude, handmade, and completely out of place against the expensive silk of my tuxedo.
"My mother... she couldn't survive him," I continue, the words feeling like stones in my mouth.
"The marriage, the secrets, the Elite. It fractured her. She turned to a fanatical kind of faith to fill the holes he left in her mind. She became obsessed with protection, with icons."
I pull the chain slightly so the cross catches the harsh LED light.
"She made this for me. She put it around my neck and told me it would keep the darkness from swallowing me whole. She gave it to me just hours before he decided she was no longer useful to the family legacy."
The memory of the night and the blade flashes behind my eyes, but I shove it back into the dark. I can't tell her the rest. I can't tell her that I was the one who carried the instrument for him to end her life, thinking it was a gift, a game, a way to make them both happy.
"He killed her to prove a point, Mali," I hiss, my grip tightening on the edge of the table until the metal groans.
"He killed her to show me that love is a tether that only leads to the grave. And now, he thinks he can use you to prove it all over again."
I finally look at her, my obsidian eyes burning with a dark, obsessive light.
"But he’s wrong. He thinks that you’re my weakness. He doesn't realize that you’re the purpose of my existence."
I lean in, my forehead resting against hers for a fleeting, desperate second.
"I am never letting you get hurt again. I am going to find every hand that touched that ledger, every man who whispered your name in that vault, and I am going to erase them. Starting with him."
I watch her carefully, my pulse is in an uneven rhythm against my ribs.
She sits on the edge of the surgical table, the ruined silk of her dress draped over her like the wings of a fallen bird.
Her eyes are wide, glassy with a mixture of exhaustion and a deep, aching pity that makes me want to flinch away.
"I'm sorry," she breathes, her voice barely a thread in the vast, hollow silence of the surgical room.
"I'm so sorry."
The words hit me harder than the recoil of a rifle. I don't want her sorrow. I want her safety. I want the world to stop bleeding into the sanctuary I built to keep the darkness out.
I reach for the silver cross at my throat again, my knuckles white as I grip the metal my mother’s trembling hands once forged. It’s a cold, heavy anchor.
"In his world, you either become a monster or you are erased by one." I rasp, my voice sounding foreign even to my own ears.
I lean in, my height stretching over her, a protective wall I hope she can't see through.
My mind is already spiraling, calculating the trajectories of my revenge, visualizing the moment I press a blade to Charles’s throat. I want to dismantle every gilded cage in this city until there is nothing left but blood and my own name.