Chapter 220: Hostile Takeover

BRADLEY

She hadn’t moved from where she stood.

One finger remained extended, as though she’d merely tapped me to get my attention.

"Yes, of course," she said, her voice gentle again. "I’ve never let it go. Nor do I intend to."

Her smile returned, but there was nothing pleasant about it now.

"This ends with me getting my healing for what was done to me. Cornelius brought this upon himself, and upon this house."

I spat blood onto the carpet.

"You won’t win," I said, forcing the words past the metallic taste in my mouth. "Not unless you kill me."

She regarded me for a moment, her head tilted slightly beneath the hood.

Then she smiled.

"And why would I do that?"

She was walking toward me now, each step soft and measured, the hem of her cloak whispering across the floor.

"You are in my story too, Bradley. The loyal fool to the very end." Her eyes glinted beneath the shadow of her hood, like wet slate catching the light. "Oh, your family will suffer when we’re finished with them. Your wife, sitting in her mother’s chair. The little one with her bear book. And I’ve been terribly curious about your nephew and his crooked gate, too."

Something inside my chest gave way.

"Do not fucking dare!"

I hated that I couldn’t move. My body remained locked in place, a statue fashioned in the shape of a man, but inside, I was screaming. I wanted her throat beneath my hands. I wanted to tear out whatever it was inside her that allowed her to stand there smiling as she spoke about my family.

"Do not worry. You won’t remember any of this," she said. "That’s the kindness I’m offering you. All you have to do is remain the lapdog you’ve always been. Fulfil Cornelius’s last wish. Kill those three. Ruin your legacy as a hero and die a monster."

She tilted her head, studying me with an expression of almost tender amusement.

"Take your family down with you. That’s how your story ends."

She reached the desk and laid her palm against my forehead.

The cold struck first, seeping through my skin until I felt it settle against the bone. Then came something sharper, a bright, needle-thin sensation that travelled along the curve of my skull. Her fingertip moved in a slow arc across my crown, and wherever it passed, a line of fire opened beneath my skin.

Heat spilled down my forehead and into my eyes. It was thick and blinding, turning the room red before plunging half of it into darkness.

I tried to scream.

She caught it.

I don’t know how else to describe what happened. I felt her seize the scream before it could escape me, catching the very shape of the sound somewhere inside my mind. At the same time, she pressed two fingers against my lips, holding them shut with the effortless gentleness of a mother quieting a child.

The scream died behind my teeth.

What escaped me instead was a thin, high sound, something closer to an animal whimper than a man’s voice.

"You know," she said conversationally, "my speciality is runes. And I’m rather good at concealing them in creative places."

Her fingertip continued its slow passage over my skull, tracing one line after another. Each movement was deliberate, each stroke following the last with the precision of someone writing a familiar word.

"For yours, I think the skull is perfect. Private, hidden beneath the flesh, and rarely examined closely."

Something was being carved into me.

I could feel every stroke, every turn and intersection, as though a blade were being dragged across the bone itself. The pain had a terrible precision to it, too focused to escape and too deep to ignore. Tears streamed from my eyes, mingling with the blood that ran down my face.

I wept.

I wept like a child, without a sound or even the freedom to draw a proper breath, while she continued her work. I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t do anything except endure the steady movement of her finger and the unbearable certainty that whatever she was writing into my skull would remain there long after the pain had passed.

"Done," she murmured at last.

She withdrew her hand.

"Now, let’s stitch that up. And clean away the blood."

The pain receded so abruptly that my body nearly folded beneath the sudden relief. Warmth spread across my scalp, and I felt the skin knitting itself together, the wound closing as though it had never existed.

Then she passed a hand over my face.

The blood coating my eyelids drew away in thin crimson threads, lifting from my skin and gathering briefly in the air before dissolving into nothing.

My vision cleared.

My jaw unlocked, and I dragged in a breath so sharply that my lungs hurt.

She stood close enough that I could make out the faint details of her face beneath the hood. She smelled of metals and strange enough freshly cut flowers. It was an incongruous combination that made my stomach turn.

"Forget that you saw me," she said. "Forget what I told you. Forget your softening heart and that little fantasy of opening up to your regent."

Her voice had lost its earlier amusement. Each instruction settled into the air with the weight of a command that expected no resistance.

"Your focus is Cornelius’s last will. As Beta, your family comes second. Your own will comes second. You owe it to the crown, Bradley. You owe it to him."

Her eyes held mine.

"Do you understand?"

"No." The word scraped its way out of my throat. "No..."

Something tore.

It wasn’t a physical sensation, not exactly. I felt no fresh pain, no sudden pressure against my skull. Instead, it was as though someone had begun peeling a sheet of paper from a wall, slowly lifting one corner and stripping it away a little at a time.

Pieces of the last hour went with it.

The raven... The red mouth... The voice speaking in my office... A phrase I couldn’t quite grasp, a name that slipped away whenever I reached for it...

I chased after them as they burned off.

I shook my head violently, back and forth, like a man trying to dislodge water trapped in his ear. I strained to hold on to something, anything, but the harder I reached, the more the memories seemed to recede, leaving only the faint impression of something important that I had somehow failed to keep.

She watched me struggle with a wide, wicked smile.

"Your magic will fail here... Luna..." I managed.

I didn’t know what I meant to say after that. I wasn’t even certain whom I was trying to address.

The rest of the word never came.

She was gone.

The air where she’d stood rippled once, like the surface of water disturbed by a falling stone, then settled. My office was empty, silent, and bright with the afternoon light filtering through the window.

I stood in the middle of the carpet, my gun still hanging uselessly from my hand.

My head throbbed with a slow, dull ache. I raised my free hand and touched my scalp to scratch it in confusion.

I frowned.

I had been about to do something.

The certainty came without any accompanying memory, a conviction that there had been a purpose to my actions before something had interrupted them. I glanced around the office, searching for whatever might have distracted me.

There was the desk, the window and the blinds that hung crookedly, as though someone had yanked them too hard.

A faint ache lingered behind my breastbone. I had the uncomfortable feeling that something had been on the tip of my tongue, a name, a thought, a warning that I should have passed along before it was too late.

But whatever it was had slipped beyond my reach.

I tried to retrieve it, staring at the desk until my eyes began to water. Nothing came. It was like trying to hold smoke between my fingers.

"What the fuck was I thinking of doing again?" I muttered.

My gaze dropped to the open drawer.

A pistol lay beside the five vials, arranged neatly in their green felt bed. Their contents caught the afternoon light, each a different shade, each sealed with wax. At the far end sat the red vial, dark and strangely warm-looking against the glass.

Of course.

The gala. Sterling among other things.

"Yeah," I said slowly, and the word felt hollow in my mouth. "Right. Poison."

I then reached for the red vial.