Chapter 41
ANNIE
I thrashed against Dread’s grip as the wind whipped my hair across my face, desperate to reach any exposed skin. If I could touch him—
But he was holding me with my back pressed against his chest, my arms pinned uselessly at my sides.
Dread banked sharply, circling the training ground’s replica of the Tower. The familiar architecture loomed before us, a perfect miniature of the building I’d called home for so many years.
We landed hard on the rooftop helipad, my knees buckling as Dread finally released me. I stumbled forward, barely catching myself before I fell.
“Nowhere to run now,” Dread said, stalking toward me as I backed away. “No more Heroes.” He laughed. “Well, no more Villains to save you.”
Dread moved fast. One moment he was several feet away, then he was giving me a vicious shove, sending me sprawling onto my back.
He pulled the knife out of his jacket once more and brought it up.
I screamed at the searing pain as it plunged deep into my shoulder, sliding between muscle and bone, pinning me to the roof.
Before I could even try to breathe through the agony, his boot pressed down on my throat.
Dread’s eyes glowed brighter with excitement as he looked down at me, savoring my helplessness.
I clawed desperately at his boot with my one good hand, my fingers scrabbling uselessly against it. The pressure increased gradually. He wanted me to feel every second of my death approaching. My lungs burned for air as my windpipe began to collapse under the pressure.
As the edges of my vision darkened, I knew what was coming, any moment now, he would apply that final, crushing force. My windpipe would collapse, or my neck would snap. Either way, this rooftop would be where I died.
As the darkness crept in and consciousness began to slip away, I thought I saw movement behind Dread, a darker shape among the shadows. A hallucination, I decided. My oxygen-deprived brain conjuring one last desperate hope before the end.
The pressure on my throat increased.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t move…
Dread’s weight lifted as his body jerked backward and I gasped, sucking in precious air as my vision cleared enough to see the impossible.
Cipher stood there, his arm plunged straight through Dread’s back.
Blood-soaked and swaying on his feet, Cipher looked like death incarnate, a walking corpse animated by rage. His silver eyes burned with an unholy light as he twisted his arm within Dread’s chest cavity.
Dread made a wet, gurgling sound and with a vicious yank, Cipher tore his hand free, bringing something dark with it.
Dread’s heart.
Dread’s shadows disappeared as his body crumpled to the rooftop beside me, eyes wide with disbelief as Cipher crushed the heart in his fist. Dread’s mouth opened and closed silently, before his eyes glazed over.
The monster who’d hunted me was gone.
I looked away as Cipher took his head. I’d seen him take Ash’s and I didn’t need to see him do it again.
Only when Cipher screamed in rage did I look back just in time to see him launch the head across the Crucible.
Then he kicked Dread’s body away, sending it tumbling across the rooftop before he dropped hard to his knees beside me.
His movements were jerky and uncoordinated while blood still streamed from the holes in his chest and abdomen, but his eyes were clear and focused as they scanned my body.
“Annie,” he whispered, hands hovering over me. His gaze stopped at the knife still embedded in my shoulder. “Don’t move. Please don’t move.” His fingers trembled as they gently probed around the wound, careful not to disturb the blade.
“The knife’s too close to your subclavian artery.” His voice cracked. “If it shifts even a millimeter...”
I stared up at him, unable to process what I was seeing. Blood covered his suit. The wounds that should have killed him were still there, still bleeding.
“You were dead,” I whispered, my voice broken and hoarse from Dread’s boot crushing my throat. “I watched you die.”
His mouth twitched into something resembling a smile, though pain twisted it into a grimace. “I’m harder to kill than that.”
He reached for me, his blood-covered hand trembling as he gently touched my face. His fingers left warm streaks against my skin, and I couldn’t tell whose blood it was anymore—his or mine or Dread’s. Probably all three.
“Did you give him my name?” The words scraped past my injured throat, barely audible.
Cipher’s eyes widened, his hand freezing against my cheek. “I didn’t know it was you. I swear to god, I didn’t know you were the Warden. I would never—“
He didn’t deny it. He’d actually done it. Given my name to a monster.
“You did.”
The confirmation was written all over his face. “I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I—”
The man I’d trusted, the man I’d let touch me, kiss me, he’d handed me to a monster. Even unknowingly, he’d signed my death warrant.
“Dennis Reeves,” I finally said, needing to know everything. “Did you give Dread his name too?”
Something shifted in Cipher’s expression. The desperate emotion drained away, replaced by something detached, the face of a man retreating behind walls.
“Yes.” His voice flattened, all inflection gone. “The data I decrypted from Dread contained two Warden names. Dennis Reeves was the first. The second was encrypted more thoroughly.”
“You knew what Dread would do.” My voice broke. “You knew he’d kill him.”
“Yes. I wanted him dead too.”
I stared at him, searching for any hint of remorse, any flicker of humanity behind those silver eyes. There was nothing. Just cold calculation.
A chill spread through me. The man hovering over me, his hands still gentle despite the horror of his words, was a stranger. This was the real Cipher, the one who could reduce human lives to numbers and probabilities. Who could hand over names knowing they were death sentences.
The physical agony of my injuries was almost welcome. It gave me something to focus on besides the emotional devastation.
“You knew he was the rogue.” My voice sounded hollow, distant, like it belonged to someone else.
“Yes.”
Something inside me shattered and a sound escaped me, a broken sound for a broken thing.
This final betrayal was worse than the others somehow. I could almost understand him not knowing I was the Warden, not connecting the dots between Annie Bishop and some encrypted name. But this? Knowing Dread was the monster I was hunting and saying nothing?
I turned my face away, unable to look at him.
The night sky stretched above us, the stars cold and distant, indifferent to my pain.
Blood pulsed around the knife in my shoulder, a steady reminder that I was still alive despite everything.
Still here to feel every excruciating second of his betrayal.
When I finally looked back at him, his expression hadn’t changed. He waited, patient and still.
“How long?” I whispered. “How long have you known?”
Cipher tilted his head slightly, studying me with those eyes that suddenly seemed as cold and empty as the sky above him. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.” I forced the word past the lump in my throat.
For a moment, I thought he might refuse to answer. His jaw tightened, a muscle in his cheek jumping as he clenched his teeth. When he finally spoke, his voice was emotionless.
“Since the night at the penthouse.”
The night in his bedroom. The night he’d first fucked me and everything between us had started.
A lie. All of it had been a lie.
I closed my eyes, tears rolling down my temples and into my hair. My body trembled from the effort of containing the scream that wanted to burst out of me. A scream that would shatter me if I let it out.
All this time. Every moment we’d spent together. While I was hunting for the rogue, Cipher had known exactly who it was. He’d been working with him.
When I opened my eyes again, Cipher was still watching me, his face unreadable. Blood continued to seep from the wounds in his chest, wounds he’d taken protecting me. Another contradiction I couldn’t reconcile.
“You let me search.” My voice cracked. “You gave me access to your systems. You pretended to help me while you were helping him kill people.”
His head snapped up, attention shifting to something beyond me.
“I sent a distress call,” he said. “Right before I killed Dread. The emergency response team is on their way.” He pushed himself to his feet with a wince. “I can’t be here when they arrive.”
He turned away, moving toward what was left of Dread’s crumpled body. He knelt beside the corpse, searching until he found what he was looking for.
The Tinkerer’s Hammer. Cipher examined it briefly before sliding it into his armor.
“Dread said you did all of this for the Hammer.”
Cipher turned back to me. “I did.”
“What’s stopping you from finishing what Dread started?” I demanded. “You gave Dennis to him, and you gave me too. So what’s stopping you?”
Cipher came back to me and dropped to his knees.
His hand moved toward mine, and I flinched, expecting...
I don’t know what. He gently took my hand in his and pressed his lips against my palm, the kiss so gentle it was barely there.
I felt his breath shudder against my skin as he gasped, his body trembling with what seemed like genuine pain.
“I love you, Annie,” he whispered against my palm, his voice breaking. “I love you. I could never—” He didn’t finish, like the words were caught in his throat.
“But you would kill other people like me.”
His eyes met mine, unflinching. “Yes.”
The simplicity of his answer was devastating.
Cipher placed my palm against his cheek, his eyes drifting closed. I could feel him trembling beneath my touch, the slight stubble on his jaw rough against my skin. His face was too pale, almost gray in the moonlight.
“You don’t love me.” I whispered. “You don’t know how to love. It’s just possession or control or—“ A sob escaped, and I couldn’t finish.