15. Scarlett

I returnto Grandmother’s house, the high-rise, my heart so heavy with the weight of my failure that I feel like I’ve left it on the first floor as the elevator swoops upward. The luxurious surroundings of the penthouse feel hollow and oppressive. As I step into Grandmother’s study, I steel myself for the inevitable punishment.

Grandmother sits there in her high-backed chair, her eyes cold and calculating. “Well?”

She already knows the answer, must be able to see it in my face. “I…” I let my arms rise and flop. “I failed.”

“Again, Scarlett?”

I bow my head, hoping she won’t see the whole truth in my eyes. Yes, I failed. But I also want to know the truth about Adam—about Lyssa—and there’s no way I’m telling Grandmother about my conversation with the Wolf. “I was too injured from the training with Ariadne. Lyssa managed to kick me in the same spot and I?—”

“Excuses!” Grandmother slams her hand on the desk, the sound echoing through the room. I jump despite myself. “I have no use for excuses, Scarlett. Only results.”

“I understand, Grandmother. All I can do is apologize.”

There’s a horrible tone in her voice when she says, “That’s not all you can do, girl.”

I suck in a breath and try to raise my chin, keep eye contact. I need to be brave. “I’ll accept whatever punishment you deem necessary.”

Her smile is cruel. “You will undergo the water treatment. Perhaps that will remind you of the cost of failure.”

My blood runs cold at her words. The water treatment—a more banal name for what it really is, water-boarding—is designed to break the will and test the limits of endurance. I’ve had it threatened before, but never carried out.

But now I have no choice.

Not only I have pledged myself to Grandmother’s cause in return for my own vengeance, I need to make sure she doesn’t think too deeply about what happened tonight with Lyssa.

Like why I’m still alive, for example. Though I’m not too sure about that myself…

“Yes, Grandmother,” I say. “As you wish.”

Hours later—or is it days?—I lie soaked and shaking on the floor of the torture room behind Grandmother’s bedroom, wracked with shudders, lungs burning with every breath. Water boarding is every bit as terrible as I imagined, a relentless assault, a drowning that never ends…

And oh how Ariadne enjoyed inflicting it on me.

My punishment was her reward. Maybe she feels she has her payback now for what happened in the bathroom. I hope so. I still feel bad about that, no matter how much I try not to.

As I stare at the ceiling and shiver, my mind drifts to Lyssa once more, our encounter earlier tonight. Was it tonight? Last night? Two days ago? I have no idea. There are no windows, no clocks in the punishment room.

But Lyssa is a constant in my mind.

I keep thinking about the concern in her eyes when she saw my injuries even as she had me pinned against the wall, stiletto point to my throat. The way she asked who had hurt me. It was a moment of genuine care, a flicker of humanity I never expected from her.

She’s…

She’s nothing like I expected.

I try to imagine Grandmother showing the same concern. But in the five or so years I have known her, Grandmother has never once asked about my well-being, never once shown a shred of empathy. On the contrary, she enjoys watching us hurt—all of us—and she enjoys it most of all when we hurt each other.

Is Lyssa right? Is Grandmother using me, manipulating me for her own ends?

I came into this assuming she would. Assuming that she was getting something out of this—the kills I made for her, the endurance under torture…

But Lyssa seemed to think there was a bigger plan in play.

At last the door unlocks, creaks open without a word, without sight of anyone at all. I drag myself through the thankfully-empty penthouse and go back to my rooms, limping from the fight with Lyssa and still nauseas and dizzy from the torture.

My apartment suite is a few floors down, vast but empty, the decor as cold and unforgiving as Grandmother herself. She says that comfort is a distraction for warriors, that we must focus solely on our training and get used to hardship.

But as I collapse onto the hard, narrow cot, I compare my spartan quarters to the opulence of Grandmother’s penthouse. The thick, soft carpets, the crystal chandeliers, the art on the walls…

The doubts grow stronger. If Grandmother truly believes everything she says in training, why does she surround herself with extravagance while denying her trainees the smallest comforts? Of all of us, shouldn’t she be the most focused, the least distracted?

Shouldn’t she have the emptiest damn room of all?

But even if it’s true, if Grandmother’s motives are not what they seem…does it matter? As long as I get vengeance for Adam, as long as I make his killer—Lyssa—or whoever it is—pay, does it really matter who’s pulling my strings?

I knew this journey only ended one of two ways. With me in a coffin, or with me walking away. I said as much to Grandmother when she recruited me, warning her that I would stay under her tutelage only as long as needed to learn what I needed to learn.

To become what I needed to become.

And she’s smiled when I said it. She’d smiled as though she knew something I didn’t…

I turn over and close my eyes again, trying to shut out the swirling chaos of my thoughts. Sleep, when it comes, is fitful and haunted by dreams of water and blood.

Several days pass in a blur of training and preparation. Lyssa’s tracker visits open places, public places, and waits there, tantalizing, a constant reminder of the unfinished business between us.

But I have more to do before I meet her again.

I push myself harder than ever, determined to prove my worth, to silence the doubts that plague me. Ariadne’s sparring sessions are different, now. She taunts less, concentrates more. It helps level me up, because she’s finally putting everything into it. We’re as bruised and beaten as each other, and I seem to have won a little respect from her at last.

Or perhaps it’s just wariness.

We don’t talk. We just fight. Any word exchanged are only about technique.

And she doesn’t call me weak or pathetic anymore.

Finally, on a rain-soaked night, I follow the tracker’s signal to a motel on the outskirts of town, the kind of place where people pay by the hour and ask no questions.

The perfect meeting spot. I’ll take the video and show her, and when I see that spark of recognition in her eye…

I’ll kill her.

The clerk at the front desk, safely ensconced behind thick glass, barely glances at me as I enter. He slides a key across the counter without a word, his eyes already back on the small TV in the corner.

I’m expected, obviously.

I take the key and make my way to the room, my heart pounding in my chest as I get closer. I breathe slowly, try to lower the adrenaline already threatening to spike. When I open the door, Lyssa is there, sprawled on the bed with an impatient look on her face.

I stop and stare at her. Every time I see her, I forget just how—how sexy she is, the messy blonde hair pulled back in her customary ponytail, her long legs bare as she sits there in only a pair of white cotton briefs and a tank top.

I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing a bra.

“God, you took ages,” she says, swinging around to sit on the edge of the bed. “Where the hell have you been?” She looks more closely at me. “And what the fuck happened to y?—”

“I brought the video,” I say, cutting her off.

She stares hard at me for a moment, and then shrugs. “Come on, then. Show me.”

I take out a burner phone, hands shaking slightly as I pull up the footage, the only item on this phone. I had a hell of a job getting it on there and then keeping it secret. It’s not that I’m expressly forbidden to share this footage with anyone. I think Grandmother just knew I never would.

And I never have. Until now.

The grainy image of Lyssa in her wolf mask, the brutal efficiency of her movements as she cuts down my brother. It’s as painful to watch as ever, a raw wound that refuses to heal.

I walk away as Lyssa watches and rewatches, unable to bear the sight of it again. The familiar rage rises in my chest, a searing heat that threatens to consume me.

After what feels like an eternity, Lyssa speaks. “It’s similar to a mask I wear sometimes, I’ll give you that. And the woman moves like me. But I have no memory of this kill.”

I whirl around, my temper flaring. “You’ve murdered so often it’s all become a blur?” Lyssa lets me rage, her face impassive as I continues to hurl accusations and insults. She waits until I’ve exhausted myself, until the anger has burned itself out, leaving only emptiness in its wake.

“I don’t remember names,” Lyssa says calmly, as if I’d never lost my temper at all, “but I remember every kill. And this? This isn’t me.” She throws the phone down on the bed. “Which means Grandmother is manipulating you, Scarlett. And it’s up to you to decide what you want to do about it.”

I stare at her, my mind reeling. “I want justice for my brother,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.

Lyssa cocks her head, a curious look on her face. “Justice? Or vengeance? Because those are two very different things. But either way…I’m prepared to help you get it.”

I blink, shock coursing through me. “Why? Why would you help me when I…” When I’ve killed her compatriots.

Her friends.

Lyssa sighs, running a hand through her hair and then automatically re-tightening her ponytail. “Because in part, it’s my fault. If I’d killed Grandmother when I had the chance, you wouldn’t be in this mess. And because…”

She trails off, something unreadable in her eyes.

But I don’t have the time or the inclination to decipher it, because the weight of everything I’ve lost, everything I’ve sacrificed in the name of revenge, is pressing down on me. The brother I’ll never see again, the life I’ll never have.

The sheer, crushing unfairness of it all.

Something breaks inside me, a dam bursting under the pressure of too much grief, too much pain. And for the first time since Adam died, I begin to cry.

Great, wracking sobs that shake my entire body, tears streaming down my face in an unstoppable flood. I’m dimly aware of Lyssa moving towards me, of strong arms wrapping around me in an awkward embrace.

I collapse to the floor and she goes with me, holding me as I weep, saying nothing. I’m so grateful for her silence that I only turn into her and hug her harder. There’s nothing to say, after all. Nothing can possibly be said to make things better. And when my tears finally subside, when I’m left hollow and aching in their wake…

I look up into her face, and I kiss her.