10. Scarlett

I hit the mat hard,the breath knocked from my lungs. Ariadne stands over me, a triumphant smirk on her face. “Had enough yet?”

I grit my teeth, pushing myself up on shaky arms. We’ve been sparring for hours, ignoring the other trainees who came in and worked out and watched us and left—and I haven’t managed to best Ariadne once. Every time I think I’m getting close, she finds a new way to exploit my weaknesses and send me crashing to the ground.

She does it again now, dropping into a leg-sweep that takes mine out from under me, winding me once more.

Exhausted and frustrated, I choke out the training safe word. “Foxglove.”

Ariadne’s smirk turns into a sneer. “You know what? You’re pathetic, Scarlett. You’ll never avenge your brother at this rate. Trying to best that blonde bitch will be your death sentence, even if you are one of Grandmother’s favored pets.”

Her words cut deep, striking at the heart of my insecurities. Ariadne has been begging Grandmother for a chance at the Wolf for years, but Grandmother always refuses, telling her that the Wolf will be my trophy, since the Wolf killed Adam.

And so far, it seems like Ariadne has a point. If I can’t even take her in a fight, how can I possibly take Lyssa?

I gather the last remnants of my dignity to push myself to my feet without staggering, and take my battered body off to the change rooms without a word.

I take a shower in the open shower stalls. There’s no privacy here in Grandmother’s house, not even locks on the toilet stalls, which was a shock when I first came here. But I learned soon enough to be as comfortable with nudity as I was with clothes.

You never know when you’ll need to fight, after all.

As I step under the hot spray, I let the water wash over me, soothing my aching muscles. But it does nothing to ease my mind. Ariadne’s taunts replay in my head, mingling with the memories I can never escape.

Adam.

I found him, that night. In the alley behind our family’s restaurant, already dead from a single stab to the heart. I tried desperately to save him, putting every scrap of medical training I had to use, but it was no use, and his hot blood cooled quickly as I sat there with him in my lap.

Eventually my father came out, wondering where we both were. I’ll never forget the cry he gave.

No matter how hard I try.

I knew Adam had gotten involved with some small-time illegal stuff, just to help pay my way through college. I knew he was taking a risk, doing things that could land him in jail. But I turned a blind eye, telling myself that once I became a doctor, once I was successful, I’d be able to support him and our parents, pay him back for his sacrifices. I’d be able to get all of us into a better life.

But I was too late. And now, the guilt eats at me every day. I should have done more. I should have tried to talk him out of it, to find another way. But I was selfish, too focused on my own dreams to see the danger he was in.

Adam’s death destroyed our parents. They sold the restaurant and tried to find ways to cope, tried to find peace.

But I never could, because nothing he’d done deserved the death penalty. Nothing. He wasn’t even a middleman, for fuck’s sake—just some low-down-the-pole courier or message-bearer.

So I can’t allow Adam’s murder to have been for nothing. Can’t let Grandmother’s psychological warfare or Ariadne’s endless scorn pierce the armor that keeps me inexorably moving forw?—

A solid, hard kick in my lower back sends me face-first into the shower tiles, and I collapse to the floor, soap stinging my eyes, pain lancing through my skull.

Over my shoulder, I see Ariadne laughing, naked and arrogant as she stands over me, hands on hips as her eyes travel over me.

White noise roars in my ears, drowning out her laughter along with the shower water. And swimming up from the static, I see Lyssa’s face.

I surge upright from the tiles in a single explosive movement. Ariadne barely has time to tense before I’m on her like a wildcat, all restraint and strategy forgotten in the blazing inferno consuming me from the inside out.

We thrash across the bathroom in a hurricane of blind fury. For every blow she deflects, I catch her with another, matching and then raising the tempo with frenzied intensity. At some point, Ariadne abandons all finesse and starts brawling back, as if she recognizes I have no capacity to restrain the violence she’s unleashed in me.

I slam her into the wall hard enough that the tiles crack, and then I drag her by her hair over to the shower and slam her head down into the drain, under the stream of water. My hands finds purchase around her wet throat, crushing against her straining trachea as she chokes and flails.

Some distant part of me screams to stop before it’s too late. But I can’t. I won’t.

Not until I finish this. The beast of revenge has possessed me now, and I’m angrier than I’ve ever been in my life.

“F...Fox...” Ariadne chokes out, her eyes pleading as she scratches at my hands. “Fox…glove…”

I blink, as if waking from a nightmare. I see my death grip on her neck. See her face turning from red to purple as I strangle her...

I’m killing her.

With a gasp of horror, I let go and scramble away until my back hits the wall opposite. I bury my face in my hands, shaking.

How did I become…this?

I’m no better than Lyssa.

Ariadne gasps and coughs for air, throwing herself over so her face is out of the water. Blood still runs from the back of her head, spiraling down the drain as I watch.

Something soft hits my chest and I startle as badly as if it were a punch.

It’s a robe. I look up to see Grandmother standing a few feet away, observing me with an appraising eye. I scrunch the robe she tossed at me in my hands, confused.

“Get up,” she says.

I get up and pull on the robe, shaking so hard that it takes a while to get my arms through the holes.

“Follow me.” She turns and leaves without another word. I’m frozen, my gaze flicking between Ariadne crumpled on the shower floor and the door Grandmother left through. The dread churning inside finally pushes me to move—toward Ariadne.

She flinches away, terror in her eyes.

I feel something in me cracking. There’s an emptiness blooming in my fractured soul promising only destruction.

I blink, backing away from Ariadne, and then turn to hurry after Grandmother.

As cruel as Ariadne has been to me, what I just saw in her eyes chills me to the bone. A wailing despair deeper than any pain I’ve known. A place you can never come back from, only keep falling into endless black.

And in the shattered depths of my own soul, I can feel that same howling void threatening to engulf me.