The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  Akio and I split off in separate directions to keep from arousing any suspicion. I had been sent home with less than half a day’s pay, and I had to get milk from the market, so I went off in that direction, all the while internally stewing about having eighty denariuses when under Adam’s rule, I would have walked away from half a day’s work with at least triple that in his currency. Even after so much time had passed, I still remembered our time in the house and in the village. Sure, those times had been rife with the issues that absolute freedom inevitably brings, but at least we hadn’t been living like Lucy, Macie, Millie, and I were living with the Old Spirits. Thinking about how our lives had been when we were living under Adam’s rule versus how we were living under Tyre’s rule always depressed me. Obviously, living under a tyrannical leader hell-bent on installing a brutal theocracy is not fun, but to know that he had killed the six people I loved most in the world—Brynna, Penny, James, Nick, Alice, and Quinn—was the absolute worst part of it. I probably should have been more disturbed by the fact that we were living devoid of basic human rights and freedoms, but I was, perhaps selfishly, concerned most about the personal toll his rule had taken on Lucy, Macie, Millie, and me.

  My eyes wandered in the marketplace. The women were walking silently, talking almost in whispers and always with their eyes downcast from the shopkeepers. Men who were not noble hurried their wives along, keeping them close, so that the Holy Order guards would know that they were spoken for. I was alone, but I, unfortunately, was still spoken for; Caspar spoke for me, the same way he spoke for Lucy. He was not “bedding” us both, because that was a sin, but we were his responsibility, and because he was so busy, he could not accompany us while we completed our trivial daily chores. So, I stood out like a sore thumb, as they say, there in the marketplace, because I was a woman walking alone.

  “It’s for your protection,” They had said in our training, “Though we are all good, we make mistakes. We do not want harm to come to you because you are walking alone and a man is suddenly besieged by his desire for you. Of course, punishment against that man would be swift, but he would not die, because his desire is part of him. So, you must be accompanied by a man.”

  So they decreed it. It was so stupid.

  I secretly wanted someone to step to me, but all the men who would be “besieged by their desire” for me kept it under control because they were afraid of Caspar. He was known for making his deals, for getting stronger each time he did. He could rip a man in two, literally. He had survived when I had stabbed him, he had survived being stabbed by two others, being shot… Once, a man enraged by his son’s execution (which Caspar had ordered) stole a bottle of booze from his boss’s private stores, stuck a rag in it, lit the rag on fire, and threw it right onto Caspar. Though he had been burning, he had still ripped the man’s head clean from his neck, and the fire had extinguished in the wind that had whipped up from nowhere. Everyone feared him. They thought he could not die, and maybe they were right.

  The reason why I wanted someone to step to me was because I had been yearning for a fight for twenty-three years. Lucy and Macie kept me calm, because they knew that being Caspar’s squeeze would not save me from the punishments that his superiors would order for me if I provoked an uprising simply by showing the slightest resistance. “Think of Millie,” they always said, and I did, because she was like my little sister. She reminded me so much of Penny, because Millie’s age was stuck at five, and she was blonde and blue-eyed just like Penny had been.

  “Hello, Violet Mae.” A voice said behind me, and I spun around, suppressing my urge to punch the man who had suddenly appeared squarely in the face.

  Paul.

  “Hello, Paul.” I said, and speaking cordially to him, even when I was so obviously faking it, made my skin prickle.

  “What brings you here today?” He asked.

  “I was sent home early from the hospital, and Lucy asked me to grab milk on the way home.”

  “Oh, good. How is Lucy these days? I trust she has rehabilitated from her time behind bars?”

  I stared at him for a moment, and then picked up the glass milk jar from inside the cooler, hoping that my long, pointed glare would be a rude enough response to his question.

  “And Macie? How is she?” He continued, still sounding chipper even though I had ignored him. “Most importantly… How is Millie?”

  My stomach soured. My palms began to sweat. He was smiling pleasantly, the way he always did. But the fact that he had randomly mentioned her… I couldn’t tell Macie. It would make her sick again. She would end up in bed, crying for days. It might have been an innocuous mention, but my gut wouldn’t let me believe that it was.

  As if on cue, a group of them walked by. The kids from the Joined Hands Academy. Led by a woman dressed all in white, with her hair pulled back in an austere bun, they were wearing all-white uniforms, lined up in rows of four behind her, alternating between girl and boy lines. They were staring ahead, some smiling softly, some just staring, but no matter who walked by them, their blank eyes stayed trained forward.

  “Look at them.” Paul said serenely, “They are so happy.”

  Kids were “chosen” to attend the Joined Hands Academy. It was considered the greatest honor that could be bestowed upon any family. When the Septas came knocking, the mother and father were supposed to collapse onto their knees and thank the One God before handing their child over willingly. The vast majority of parents did exactly that, but there were some who resisted. They had seen how those kids would walk, their backs straight, staring ahead, just smiling, and they knew that it was not normal. They were most certainly not happy.

  “They’re drugged,” Akio had said once, “Maybe Phantasm. Maybe they have stores of Armistice like what they had on Earth, and they’re drugging them up.”

  But the thought of them always made my stomach churn. My instincts told me that it was not drugs, it was something fundamental. It was a change struck deep into the core of each child, implanted there only God knew how. No parents were allowed inside the Academy. Once their child was “given,” they were offered to the One God, to be used in his service. What that meant, I didn’t know, but apparently, the Joined Hands Academy was not unique to our city. They were all over our world, in all the Old Spirit territories.

  The thought of that actually made bile rise in my throat. There was something so wrong with them. As downright awful as it sounds, I thanked God that Penny had been lost, because I know that they would have taken her from Brynna and James and turned her into one of those strange, lost children. At the same time, I wished Brynna had not been lost, because Brynna, with her powers of the mind, could have brought them back. I stared after them as they walked, feeling the chills twisting all around my spine even after the group had been gone for several minutes.

  “So, how is she, Violet?” Paul asked me again.

  “She is fine.” I said, and I forced myself to continue being something close to polite, “Thank you for asking. I have to go now.” I had gotten the milk and wanted nothing more than to get as far away from him as possible.

  “How soon after they come for her do you think it will be before Macie ingests some nightshade?”

  He had come up behind me, grasped my arms, and held me back to keep me from walking away.

  “And what about Luciana? Do you think her famous strength and resilience and iciness will withstand the pain of losing her daughter? Her last link to Millen?”

  Macie would be destroyed. That much I knew for sure, and I could not bear to think of my life without her. Lucy was the strongest woman on Purissimus, easily, but could she survive losing her daughter, especially in that way? To them? She would see her in the street, walking, staring, smiling… I would not be able to stand it, so Lucy, one of her mothers…

  She was strong, but she was not unbreakable.

  “What do you want, Paul?” I asked him.

  “I need you, Violet.”

&nb
sp; He had needed Brynna, too. That had ended in disaster. I had to tread carefully, or the same would happen here. He had not won over Brynna, though he had played her. Maybe he had won, but I will never admit that he did. If she were still alive, she would have had her vengeance on him, but she was dead. So yes, he did win. But not to me. Never to me.

  Brynna, I thought, I need you now. Watch over me.

  And maybe she really did whisper to me, or maybe I heard what I wanted to hear. But I heard her voice in my mind, as clearly as I could see the day around me, as clearly as I could feel the cool Pangaean breeze on my face. I felt her in my heart, felt the harsh yet alluring pang of nostalgia in my chest that was always present when she was present.

  Right here, baby.

  And just like that, I was strong. Smart. Ready to play his game.

  “For what do you need me, Paul?”

  “For an act of sabotage, of course. It seems that I am about to be usurped by none other than your dear love, Caspar.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I am. We have the highest casualty rate for our men in Duty out of all the Holy Cities. They are shipped out, their training fails them, and they die. Tyre has been talking to the Lord of War, who says that it is a disgrace to him as leader, and it is a disgrace to the One God, so Tyre is furious. We have more imprisonments per quarter than any other district. We have more executions. At first, he thought that I was being tried. I had been given the most difficult populace by chance as a means of testing my faith in the One God. My ability to use His teachings to influence the lives of others is being put to the test. But I have failed my test, if it is a test, and now, he wants a harsher rule.”

  Paul’s rule was already quite harsh, as these re-tellings have attested. But Caspar’s? Caspar’s rule would go down in history as the worst, I knew. He would enslave us all, forcing every man and woman to make a deal with him for their lives and for their children’s lives, and where Paul bent the One God’s old rules, Caspar would uphold them all, to their most literal meaning. I wondered sometimes if either one of them truly believed, but whether they did or did not was irrelevant; Tyre believed they did, so they were given absolute power. What they did with that power was up to them, and Caspar would do the worst.

  “So, what do you want me to do?”

  “What I want you to do is very simple: I want you to kill Caspar.”

  I was shocked, rightfully. We were standing in an alley, far away from the eyes of the others in the marketplace. Still, I looked around frantically, feeling like the brick walls surrounding us were listening and watching. I knew no one was in earshot; Paul would have guaranteed that, but still, I worried that someone might have overheard. Even though I could see that no one had, I still whispered when I finally managed to come up with a response.

  “I tried that once.” I murmured, “I stabbed him so many times that the knife almost broke, and he lived.”

  “Well, then, think of a more foolproof way, and kill him. Twice now, I have tried, and both times, he crushed the men I sent in before they could even get close to him. He is always watching, always waiting. His power is boundless, Violet. He cannot read hearts and minds like your sister, but he is stronger and shrewder than any man alive. He has the strengths of both his birth father and his adoptive father, and none of their weaknesses. Well, he has one weakness, and that weakness is you.”

  “Caspar doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw me.”

  “Well, though he could literally throw you quite far…”

  “Thank the One God I didn’t mean it literally.”

  “Regardless, I understand.” He reached out and took one of my hands, which I immediately pulled away. “Violet… I am desperate. We do not get to retire. Commanders and Governors and Sanctums… We are not simply asked to step down and then allowed to go off and live a quiet life. We are sent to see Heaven, and I do not want that. I have far too much to do. I have far too much to offer the world.”

  I had never seen him so worried. His hair was slightly disheveled, and he had not trimmed his long beard in days. His eyes were slightly wild, totally devoid of the hint of cool amusement that was always present within them. The man who pulled all the strings was losing his grip, and he did not know how to cope. Well, that’s not necessarily true. He did know how to cope; he coped by devising a plan, and his plan was to send in an assassin to kill Caspar, and who better than me, because with whom was Caspar more enamored than me?

  “If you called on him for a meeting, he would receive you with no question. He lives for the moments when he can see you.”

  “Not here of late. He’s wanted nothing to do with anyone, actually. Not that I mind, as the sight of him churns my stomach and sickens my heart.”

  I sounded quite Brynna-esque when I had said that…

  Caspar, as it turns out, did not want me around all the time. His “infatuation” with me had not been lessened after I had stabbed him, but it was lessened by whatever it was that was occupying his mind there in our city. Maybe his desire for solitude was the result of his need to scheme, or maybe it was because he was constantly worrying about how to stay in Tyre’s good favor. In fact, sometimes I think he spent most of his time scheming about how to usurp Tyre, how to become the most powerful man in the unfree world. I liked to believe that his obsession with me had lessened, and he didn’t care to have me in his presence anymore. But then he would show up at the hospital to try to talk to me, or he would bring something to the house that he knew we needed. In the latter moments, I wondered if he was there to see me or to taunt Lucy. Either way, his presence was roundly unwelcome.

  I remembered when he had found out that I was seeing Akio, and how his heart screamed envy and hurt and betrayal, but he had said nothing to me. Instead, he had charged Akio with something utterly ridiculous—theft or coveting or something equally unlike my boyfriend—and had him lashed in the city square. Afterwards, he had forced Akio to make a deal with him. He could keep his life so long as he never put a life inside me. If I became pregnant, Caspar could close out their deal by killing Akio and the child, too. Akio had taken the deal, because he could either take the deal, or he could die there in the cells of the prison.

  So far, we had not conceived, and I thanked the One God for that every day of my life. Lucy was able to feel my belly and tell me whether or not it was suddenly abuzz with a little life, and every time, she had told me that my womb was mercilessly vacant, in response to which I always cried in complete and utter joy, and she would laugh with me, hug me, and tell me, “Good job.”

  “Do this for me, Violet. Call on him, get him isolated, get him drunk.” Paul told me, “Whatever it takes. Wait until he falls asleep, and then take his head. It is the only way to kill him. Stabbing him in the heart, shooting him between the eyes, burning him… None of that has worked. But he cannot re-attach his head, now can he?”

  “No.” I said, and I looked around again, “Caspar has a way of knowing these things, even when no one tells him. It is part of his power. He has a grip on everyone and everything, including me, including you. He will smell it on me the second I walk in, Paul.”

  “Not if you know how to keep the scent of it off of you.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  “By being afraid of something else. That is where I come in.”

  “You are going to scare me? That is supposed to make me want to help you?”

  “I am helping you, Violet. This will scare you, but I am telling you this to keep you abreast of what is happening here: Millie is going to be taken.”

  Dizziness took me. Almost instantaneously, my body collapsed into the wall, and my sweating palms reached out desperately to find the bricks, to place my hands against their solid surface so I could keep myself on my feet. Vertigo is rendered inert by touching a hard, flat surface. Brynna had told me that.

  Breathe, Her voice said, He is not winning, Violet. He is desperate. He is coming to you for help. Remember that. Breathe
.

  “You want my help, then you had better help me.” I hissed at him, when I had regained myself. “You will tell the Academy that they can’t have her.”

  “Of course. If you do this for me, I will redirect their gaze to another child, though they feel that Millie must be saved from her idem parents, from their morbum.”

  From her “same” parents. From their “sickness.”

  “But I will keep them away. I will allow you to keep her.”

  He was regaining his composure. That mischievous glint was in his eyes again, and the smile had returned to his lips.

  “I will also do you one better.”

  “What exactly could be better than keeping Millie out of that awful place?”

  “I don’t know. How does me releasing you, Macie, Millie, and Lucy sound? Not only will I release you, but I will tell you the exact location of the Lapsarian, so that you may procure their dear Illa and whomever else you may find.”

  The thought of it made my heart soar. I pictured leaving that place, getting as far away from the Old Spirit territories as possible. They were all over the seemingly endless world, but much of the land was unaffiliated domain, and though the Unallied were dangerous—perhaps more so than the Old Spirits—we would take our chances out there. We would be free to use our powers, we would be free to run, free to hunt, free to fight when we needed to fight, and free to kill when we needed to kill. We would be free.

  “You are going to be much easier to convince than your sister was.” He said quietly, “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must advise you to think carefully about this, Violet. He is very dangerous.”

  “You don’t care if he finds out about this and kills me, so why are you telling me to think carefully? Do you want me to change my mind? I’ll take your deal, Paul.” I outstretched my hand to him, and he clasped mine in his firmly.

  “I do care. Do you want to know why?” He pulled me closer to him and whispered in my ear, “Because you have much work to do, and that work will not be done here. I am not ashamed to say that my allegiance is to the winning team, and it is my true instinct that this team will not be winning for much longer.”

  “Why is that?” I asked him.

  “Because your sister is alive, Violet. I have heard the stories of who she is now that she is imprisoned onboard the Lapsarian. And her fire is strong. Stronger than it ever was. Soon, it will burn everything in its path.”

  Brynna had not believed him when he had said that our mother was still alive, but I believed him now. His heart was not lying. She was out there. She was on the Lapsarian, waiting for us to find it so we could free her and the rest of them, and then, together, we would wrest control of our world back from them, and be free again.

  “You know what she’ll do, once she finds her way out of there.” Paul said, and before I could answer, he did, “She will tear this world apart so she can assemble it again to her liking, and I do not want to be one of the pieces she discards. My only wish is that you will tell her of the moment I freed you when you see her again, and that when she comes looking for all those who aligned with Tyre, she spares me her wrath.”

  “What makes you a sudden believer in my sister? Did you suddenly develop her gift of foresight?”

  “No.” He said, with a shake of his head, “I visited the Lapsarian, and saw the beast for myself. She is not who you knew, Violet. She has taken many lives, and she will take many more. Her power there is almost absolute, and those who follow her will remain loyal even after they have stepped onto dry land once again.”

  I believed him. From the bottom of my heart, I believed him. If there was one thing I knew, it was that Brynna could become what he had described, that she could wield that power over others so easily even without exercising her gift. I believed him, and even more resolutely, I knew what I had to do.

  If I could barter for my freedom, and for Lucy, Macie, and Millie’s freedom, for Millie’s life, and for my sister… There was no question. There was nothing to say but “yes, absolutely.” So I did say it.

  “I’ll do it, Paul.” I said, “I’ll kill him.”

  Grace

  “I’m not your friend.”

  I was standing in front of James, biting my lip, wanting to bite my nails, even though he had told me not to do either in the elevator. My eyes were on the floor, on his desk, on his hands, on the golden wedding band around his finger. His eyes, meanwhile, were rooted onto me, and under their intense gaze, I wanted to squirm, wanted to run away. It is not that I felt uncomfortable in a sexual way, it was just that his gaze could burn holes.

  “Do you hear me?” He asked, and I nodded. “Sylvie is my first assistant, and you are my second. In return for doing your job, I will ensure that you are given all that you need. My last second assistant was killed by one of Brynna Elohimson’s people. Do you know why?”

  I shook my head and brought my hand up to my lips so I could bite my nails. Immediately, I put it back down at my side and hooked my fingers in the belt loop of my pants.

  “I don’t know.” I said.

  “She targets anyone who associates kindly with the guards. I saw that you two were talking the other day, and I know that you’re cellmates.”

  “I’d hardly call it talking, and yes, we are cellmates, but she and Janna are always so caught up in each other that they barely notice me.” I stopped, remembering that she was his wife, and immediately, I began to stammer out an apology. He held up his hand to stop me.

  “I know of my wife’s proclivities.” He said simply, “It doesn’t concern me. I do what I want, and so does she. The rules of Tyre’s world don’t apply in here. Sylvie!” He called, and a girl a little older than me came into the room.

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “Tell Grace everything she needs to know about me.” He said without looking up from the papers on his desk that he was now reading, “Be nice.”

  “Always nice.” Sylvie replied with a smile that was not noticed by James, let alone reciprocated. Him ignoring her seemed to take the wind out of her sails, as my mother used to say, but he didn’t take notice of that, either. “Let’s go.” She told me curtly, and I followed her out of the room.

  Out in the living room of his quarters, she kicked off her shoes, sat down on the couch, curled her legs up under her, and lounged back, looking like she owned the place. Before looking at me, she flipped her long, perfectly styled blonde hair and smiled. Her lips were painted red, her eyes were outlined in black, and her clothes were perfectly fitted to her trim body. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had a thing for him. I just didn’t know how deeply that “thing” went.

  “He’s the best.” She told me, a little too loudly. It didn’t matter how loudly she talked; I could hear James in his office, talking, so I knew that he was not secretly listening to our conversation. Still, she continued talking at that volume, “He’s never really sunny, and he rarely makes jokes, but he’s the fairest out of all the guards. Tell me something, little one: have any of them fucked you yet?”

  I actually startled at the blunt question, at the obscenity of it, at the forwardness. I stammered over my words, and she giggled more hysterically than she had to.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ Count yourself lucky. Normally they sniff out little virgins like you and eat you for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack. And then, if you made them happy, they’ll move on to someone else and never look in your direction again. But if you didn’t make them happy, they’ll throw you away.”

  “Has he f—”

  Nope. Couldn’t do it.

  “Has he… with you?” I asked, because I couldn’t help thinking about whether or not he had, though I didn’t know why I was thinking about it.

  At first, she smiled, looking how I would imagine a very dramatic actor would portray a villain. In fact, her grin, which was out of the corner of her mouth, coupled with the malicious glint in her eyes, made her look
like a knock-off, bargain version of none other than Brynna Elohimson, herself. I wondered if that was intentional. She opened her mouth to answer me, and my mind diverged into hers, and I read first her quickened speculations on how to most convincingly stretch the truth without outwardly lying. Then, in her heart, I saw minor signs of panic, because she didn’t know how good I was at detecting embellishments, though she suspected I was not very good at it. Little did she know, I could see into minds, and from minds, I could see into hearts. My mother and father had told me that it was imperative that I keep my ability a secret, and I did, to the best of my ability. If she lied, I would nod and say that I believed her so as not to give myself away.

  “We try to keep our relationship professional.” She said, but her grin faltered ever so slightly and her gaze diverted from mine for half a second. Signs of lying, as my dad would say.

  “Okay.” I said.

  “We try.” She said, but now, her gaze stayed off of mine for a full second, though her smile actually grew wider. My mind invaded hers again, and I regretted the intrusion once I was besieged by manufactured images of her and Commander Maxwell, writhing naked together on the couch, him moaning out her name, saying he loved her and no one else… It was all so pathetically idyllic that I couldn’t help but chuckle very softly to myself.

  “Is something funny?” She snapped at me, and my heart skipped a few beats in a panic.

  “No.” I answered quickly, “So…” I needed to divert the conversation away from this topic, “What is it exactly that you do for Commander Maxwell?”

  “Typical secretarial duties. Bring him his mail, get his coffee, polish his gun… and his nightstick.” She grinned, and even I was not so naïve and dumb that I missed that stupid double entendre. I didn’t know why I was so afraid of her, except I did: I was afraid of everyone and everything. I blamed my upbringing for that; being raised Old Spirit, under the tyrannical rule of Tyre, Rich Bachum, and Paul had taught me never to push any person’s boundaries, to keep my questions to a minimum, and my eyes to the floor. I knew never to raise my voice above what was barely conversational volume, and I especially knew how to recognize my superiors. This girl, though she was only a few years older than me, and she was a first-generation (meaning that her physical age and her literal age were the same; she was exactly what she looked like), had been on that ship longer than me, and she had been working for Commander Maxwell longer than me. She knew things that I didn’t. And besides, as the old saying went there on the Lapsarian, if someone survived the first year, they were something to fear. As I looked into her dark eyes, at her perfectly manicured nails, at her make-up that was so perfectly applied, and at the loose, blonde ringlets of her hair, I knew that she wanted him, and I knew that it was not just a little crush. It must have been hard to find the materials necessary to keep oneself styled like that, and yet she was perfectly styled. She wouldn’t go to that effort, nor would she take the risk of looking so perfectly, if she didn’t want him badly.

  When he emerged from his office, she rose onto her feet and irritably gestured for me to do the same. I jumped up so quickly that I stumbled into her and nearly knocked her to the ground. James looked at us both, his eyes traveling from me to her and back again, and for a minute, he looked mildly confused. Then, without a shrug, without the slightest acknowledgment of the fact that we had both just almost toppled to the ground, he murmured something about being done with his coffee and that we were dismissed after his office was cleaned.

  “Of course, Commander.” Sylvie said with a smile, but once he was gone, she pushed me hard, her eyes burning red, her hands shaking. “Watch what the fuck you’re doing!”

  “Okay!” I said from the floor where I had crashed after her forceful shove, “Okay!”

  “Stupid fucking little girl!” She spat at me before storming into his office and sitting down in his chair. That quickly, she seemed to calm. She looked at me, smiling somewhat guiltily but also with so much joy and so much mischief. Her hands were running up the smooth leather arms of the chair, and she laid against the back of it after a moment and put her feet up on the desk.

  “I want to fuck him while he’s sitting in this chair.” She told me as I stood awkwardly in the doorway, watching her, fearing all the while that he would return and discipline us both for what she was doing, while also cringing inwardly at the awkwardness I felt listening to all that she was saying. “What are you waiting for? Start cleaning his desk. Use the polish over there.” She pointed, and I obediently walked over, opened the cabinet, and pulled out a small jar of polish. She threw the polish rag at me when I turned around, and it hit me in the face. I wanted to call her a rude name, but thought better of it.

  “I will fuck him.” She said, “Right here.” Her hands ran slowly up the armchair again, “I’m going to be down there right where you are now, polishing his desk or his shoes, and I am going to crawl towards him, unzip his pants, and blow him until he comes twice. Then I am going to fuck him. Or I’ll let him fuck me. Whatever he wants.”

  “Okay.” I said, because I was almost squirming in discomfort. What was I supposed to say? I didn’t want to hear her perverse sexual fantasies, all of which were highly unlikely to actually happen. He showed absolutely no interest in her, and yet in his disinterest, she saw some sort of hidden desire, like he was playing hard to get.

  “If it’s true what they say…” She continued, except now, her tone was darkening, as were her eyes, “And he was with her before they messed him up, I am going to take any trace of her out of his mind. I heard they used Contact so that they would never be able to touch each other again, and that it broke his mind. That’s why he hates her so much. He wants her dead. I’ve heard him talking to the Warden. ‘Why won’t you just let me finish it? Why won’t Tyre? I know how to finish it. I know I can finish it,’ he says. That fucking Brynna Elohimson. The subject of one million wet dreams.”

  I looked up at her, totally stunned.

  “Brynna and Commander Maxwell used to…”

  “Yes.” She shot at me snippily, “A long time ago, so shut about it. Believe me, whatever remains of her in his mind, I am going to take it away. He’ll feel no pain after I’m done with him. He’ll only feel me. He’ll only want me. Of course, he doesn’t want her. Not at all. Like I said, all he wants is to kill her. But still, he is going to be mine.”

  When I chanced a glance up at her, I saw that she was smiling with her eyes closed. She must have felt my gaze on her, though, because her eyes opened, and she looked down at me as I continued to polish the desk.

  “You’re doing it wrong, you fucking idiot.”