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Helena stared at her in horror, looking again at Crowther, blank-faced and empty-eyed. He was dead.
“The Necromancer has Sofia. He said he’d give her back to me if I gave him the Headquarters and Crowther. They wanted him alive, but they said it was all right if I had to kill him. So I did.”
“I’m going to have so much fun with you. Once I’m Undying, I’m going to have them keep you alive as they turn you inside out.”
He pulled a knife from his leg and began slicing Rhea’s skin off with it. Then he put it in his mouth and ate it.
Luc turned and gave a low, obsequious bow as someone else emerged from the back of the motorcar. The person was tall, dressed in intricately decorative robes and a cloak of blue and gold, with a crescent-shaped crown rising from his head. Morrough.
Luc was dead, she knew he was dead. Morrough must have found and reanimated him, made him seem so lifelike in order to have the satisfaction of being his executioner.
Pace tried to resist, still protesting, and she tripped, falling too fast for Helena to react. Her head struck one of the iron bars with a sharp crack, and she didn’t move.
“I’m not fragile. I am not going to break. Please believe that about me.”
She would redirect her thoughts, transmute her memories until her mind stopped running to him. She couldn’t confess to something she didn’t remember.
“Why’d you kill Lila?” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t. She’s alive.”
“She has a son now. An exceptionally noisy child, named for his grandfather. And every time I’ve seen her, she’s tried to murder me at least twice.”
“Of course I looked for you. I looked everywhere for you. Did you think I left you there?”
“This room is safe, but Morrough has eyes in the house. He watches from the hallway sometimes. Now that you’re pregnant, he’s unlikely to have you brought in again, but as long as it was a risk, there was always the chance he’d see anything that happened here.”
He tried to use Holdfast for spare parts, but it wasn’t enough, even though he mutilated himself adding his bones.
“Which part of ‘it doesn’t concern you’ do you not understand? Has the meaning of one of those words slipped your mind? Should I bring a dictionary, perhaps?”
“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”
“I’ve never gotten to tell anyone about you. I’d want someone to know what you were like.”
“You’re mine,” she said, heart pounding unsteadily against her ribs. “Did you really think I would still hate you once I remembered?” She shook her head. “Even before I did, you were the only thing that ever felt safe. I thought I was going mad, but a part of me always knew you. I left a note. Didn’t you get my note? I love you.”
“I do,” she said more firmly, her voice shaking with intensity. “I love you. And I always will. Always.”
“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything I did to you,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. “I love you. You left, and I’d never told you.”
“It’s female.”
She brought his face back to hers. “I love you,” she said, kissing him. “I wish I’d told you a thousand times.”
“I don’t want to choose. I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.”
That’s what it had been. Making love. It was what they’d had.
“She very much remembers you. Howled for half the day when you arrived.”
She reached up towards her neck as a line of blood gushed from a slit across her throat.
“I would have killed her then, but it diverted suspicion to have a pretty wife in the house. Living here alone with you could have attracted attention. That was the only reason I let her live.”
“We received word that while the Eastern envoy was passing through Novis, the train was attacked. Everyone on board was killed—including Shiseo.”
“He ripped out my heart first. Said it was—f-fitting…”
It was strange to stand inside a prison, and dread leaving it.
“He looks like your wife, doesn’t he? It’s the eyes and mouth; they’re so much like hers. He’s all you have left of her now. But every time he sees you, he hates you with your wife’s eyes.”
“But you won’t save Kaine by finding him. The killer you’re searching for is your son.”
“Oh dear,” Kaine said, standing over him, pure malice in every word. “Seems you’ve lost your fire again, Father.”
“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”
