21. Atara
Atara
The study is a wreck. There is no other word for it. Books have been shoved off the shelves, the mahogany desk is skewed across the hardwood, and the heavy velvet curtains are shredded where the stray rounds caught them.
Maeve is still shaking. She's huddled on the sofa with her knees to her chest, her eyes following every shadow in the room. I can't leave her here. This is no place for a six-year-old, and Lorcan is standing over a bloodstain on the floor like he's forgotten how to look away from it.
I cross to the doorway, where Maria is hovering with both hands pressed over her mouth.
"Maria." I keep my voice low. "Take her. East wing, all the way down to the basement bunker. Don't stop. Keep her there and keep her busy—books, juice, puzzles, whatever she asks for. Understand?"
Maria nods, pale, and goes to the sofa with more grace than I'd have expected. She murmurs something soft.
Maeve doesn't fight. She’s just tired. She lets Maria take her hand and looks back at her father for one confused second before the door closes.
Then it's only the two of us.
Lorcan hasn't moved. He's in the middle of the room with his hands hanging at his sides, not looking at me, looking at the carnage. There's soot on his cheek, and his shirt is torn at the shoulder over a shallow, jagged cut along his collarbone that's leaking dark red.
"You're bleeding," I say.
It’s nothing. He blinks and shakes his head slowly.
"Lorcan."
"It doesn't matter," he mutters.
"It matters if you pass out." I take a step toward him.
His head snaps around. His eyes are glazed, swimming, and for a second, there's something in them I don't recognize. He's never been violent with me. But he's holding so much down that it's coming off him in waves.
"Get out," he says, low and raw. "I'm not in the mood for an audit."
"I'm not here to audit you." I close the distance and stop a foot short of him. I'm not scared. I'm not even shaking anymore. I'm angry. "I'm here to stop you from losing your mind."
He laughs, dry and harsh. "My mind went a long time ago. You're just now noticing the vacancy."
He moves to step past me, heavy and uncoordinated. I plant my feet and block him. He stops, his chest against mine. He's a head taller and twice as broad, and he could put me on the other side of the room without trying. He doesn't. He just stands there, breathing hard.
"Move, Atara."
"No."
"I won't ask twice."
"You haven't asked once." I look up into that wrecked, glassy stare. "You're acting as if you've never had to fight before. Like this is the end of the world. It's just a Tuesday for you, isn't it?"
He huffs out a breath. "A Tuesday. They breached the gate. They came for Maeve."
"And they failed," I say, raising my voice just enough to cut through the room. "They failed because you fought them off. Because you killed them. You’re still standing. So stop acting like a victim and start acting like the man who runs this city."
He sneers, his upper lip curling. "You have no idea what it costs."
"Then tell me!" I shout. The sound rings off the walls. "Stop keeping it in your head! Stop turning into ice every time things go wrong. It’s not protecting anyone! It’s just making you a shitty partner and a shitty father!"
He flinches at the word ‘father’, stares at me with wide eyes, and I watch something behind them start to give. He looks like he's about to scream, break something, or throw me out of the room.
Instead, his knees hit the hardwood with a dull thud, and he sits there, hands on his thighs, head down.
I've never seen him look so small.
I don't say anything. I lower myself to the floor and sit beside him, leaving a foot of space between us. I cross my legs, fold my hands in my lap, and look at the wall.
"She wasn’t a victim, Atara," he says, his eyes fixed on the dark, empty space in front of him. "She was an asset. I didn’t know then. I thought… I thought we had something. I thought we were building a life."
His voice remains steady, clinical, as if he’s describing a failed business acquisition.
"It was a setup. A long one. She was Silas’s sister.
She didn't love me; she hated me. Every touch, every night, every day—it was all scripted to wear me down. Silas wanted the Syndicate’s routes, and he figured the best way to get them was to put his own blood in my bed.
She was supposed to get me to commit to a partnership, and when that failed, she grew impatient. "
He doesn't pause, his posture rigid.
"The night she died... she orchestrated it. She had her brother attack our home to hold us hostage, thinking if she threatened Maeve, I’d finally fold and sign over the business. It was supposed to be a leverage play. But it went sideways."
He stops for a second, his throat bobbing.
"Silas got tired of the back-and-forth. When I wouldn't budge, Elara panicked, she actually took a knife to Maeve’s throat, holding her own daughter hostage to force my hand. I would have agreed. God help me, I would have signed everything over to save the girl. But Silas... he was impatient. He realized she was failing. He grabbed her hand to pull her aside and finish the job himself. He was going to slit Maeve’s throat, and Elara was just in the way. "
Lorcan’s hands clench into fists at his sides, his knuckles white in the dim light.
"I didn't think. I didn't feel. I shot them both. Two for her, one for him. I ran to Maeve and covered her eyes so she wouldn't see her mother bleeding out on the floor. I thought Silas was dead. I watched the life drain out of him, too."
He goes very still. The air in the room is tight.
"I let her haunt me for five years because I thought I’d killed the woman I loved," he whispers, his voice cracking for the first time. "I didn't realize I’d just executed a plant. I carried that guilt like a stone, and all the while, Silas was out there, laughing."
"You’ve been using this for five years," I continue, my voice steady, unsoftened by pity. "You’ve been letting Silas hold this over your head, not because you’re weak, but because you think you deserve to be haunted.
You think that by feeling this, you’re paying a debt.
But you’re not paying a debt to Elara. You’re just letting him use her to break you, over and over again. "
He doesn't look away. I hold his gaze. I don't blink. I don't offer him a hand. I just give him the truth, raw and unvarnished, because he’s spent five years surrounding himself with people who are too terrified to tell him what he is.
"You aren't the villain in that story, Lorcan," I say. "You were the victim. He’s the villain. And as long as you act like he’s the one who won, he is."
His jaw tightens. His shoulders bunch up. He looks like he’s vibrating on the edge of a breakdown, or a rage, or a breakthrough.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he says, though his voice lacks its previous conviction.
"I know exactly what I’m talking about," I say. "You’re a man who hates himself for surviving. But Maeve survived too. And she doesn't need a father who’s half-dead. She needs the man who runs the city. She needs the man who can actually protect her."
He goes very still. The last of the tension seems to bleed out of his frame. He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.
We sit in the dark.
The silence isn't the cold, empty silence of before. It’s dense, complicated, and entirely new. I don't move. I don't speak. I just sit there, breathing, waiting for him to decide what he wants to do with the truth.
He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't move.
But after a long time, he reaches out his hand, his fingers hesitating, and then he rests his palm against the floor, right next to mine.
He doesn't touch me. He just leaves his hand there.
I leave mine right where it is.
The room is dark, the only light coming from the faint, blue pulse of the screens on the desk.
Something has settled between us. It isn't peace, and it isn't forgiveness. But it’s something new. Something solid. Something that feels a hell of a lot like the beginning of the end.
And we sit there, in the dark, together.