28. Scarlett

I struggle upright,still weak from giving Hadria the transfusion. But the sight of Ariadne marching toward me makes my adrenaline spike as I brace for an attack, quickly glancing around for potential weapons or defensive objects.

But she stops at the foot of my bed. "What happened at Grandmother's house?"

I watch her warily, years of brutal training screaming at me not to let my guard down for even an instant. Ariadne—no, Sarah—made it abundantly clear just how deep her hatred for me ran for the whole time we were at Grandmother's house. And I don't know that I believe it's suddenly died away.

Just as the anger and hatred I have for her hasn't totally died away, either.

"We got close," I reply tersely, my gaze never wavering from her slightest movement. "But Grandmother managed to escape. And Hadria—she was injured. Badly."

Sarah's jaw clenches, and I wonder if she's fighting back a snarl of frustration or simply grinding her teeth against the urge to kill me. "Will she live? Hades?"

I hope so. I'll speak it into existence, in any case. "Yes."

"I want to join the Syndicate," Sarah declares abruptly.

"You…what?"

She seems to brace herself before repeating the words with more force. "I said, I want in with the Syndicate. And I want you to speak for me so that they'll let me join."

A harsh scoff of laughter escapes me before I can stop it. "Are you serious? First of all, I'm not a member. And they hate me, all of them. So me speaking for you would have the opposite effect you're looking for." Sarah's mouth flattens into a grim line, but I'm not done. "And second, you killed my brother." She finally blinks. "So vouching for your membership to the Syndicate is not something I'm inclined to do, Ariadne."

"Sarah. It's Sarah."

"Is it, though?" I ask, watching her closely.

The door swings open once more and Lyssa backs through, a tray of food balanced carefully in her hands. She freezes the instant she registers Sarah's presence, the tray slipping from her fingers, ceramic shards going everywhere as the cup and plate shatter.

But even before they hit the ground, she has Sarah locked in a brutal chokehold, forearm crushing against her windpipe as she hauls the other woman off her feet with seemingly no effort at all. Sarah doesn't so much as flinch, her hands hanging limply at her sides as she stares at me with that same eerie, vacant expression.

"Lyssa, stop!" I cry out, my voice ringing with more authority than I actually feel as I struggle out of bed.

For a moment, I'm not sure she's going to listen. Then, slowly, almost grudgingly, Lyssa releases her grip and tosses Sarah away from her in disgust. The other woman crumples to the floor in an unceremonious heap, drawing in a rattling gasp of air.

"If you ever come near Scarlett again, you're dead," Lyssa tells her. "Do you understand me?"

Sarah just nods as she pulls herself upright. She's making no move to defend herself, to lash out or throw accusations in return. There's something almost...broken about her stillness, her docile acceptance of Lyssa's threats.

I wonder if this is how she dealt with Grandmother's abuse, too.

"What are you doing here?" Lyssa demands. I open my mouth, feeling some strange urge to defend the woman who was my greatest tormentor apart from Grandmother, but Sarah beats me to it.

"I came to apologize to Scarlett."

Slowly, almost mechanically, Sarah turns to face me fully. "For Adam," she continues woodenly. "I came to tell you…that I'm sorry. I killed him on Grandmother's orders, and I'm sorry."

My breath catches in my throat. Hearing her say sorry like that, as though it will make any difference…

"Grandmother had been watching you for a while," Sarah goes on. "Wanted to recruit you into her ranks. She thought killing your brother would be the most effective way to bring you into the fold—to make you burn for vengeance so you'd be open to her offer when she made it. She made me wear the mask. Wanted me to make sure it appeared in that video so you'd think it was Lyssa. And…it worked. It set you on a path straight to us, straight to her."

It takes every ounce of restraint I possess not to lunge across the space separating us and beat her face in. Lyssa can see it, too, because she holds out a hand to the side, where Ariadne—Sarah—can't see, silently urging restraint.

"So that's it?" I ask thickly. My legs are weak, and it's not from the blood I've given. Not now. "You killed Adam in cold blood on Grandmother's orders, all so she could twist me into one of her attack dogs, and you're sorry about it?"

"I didn't have a choice," she says flatly. And then: "What would you have done, Scarlett? What noble path would you have chosen?"

"Knock it off with the sarcasm," Lyssa says softly, "or I'll remove your tongue from your throat."

My hands have curled into white-knuckled fists at my sides as I fight to stay calm, to stay right here. Because no matter what lay behind Sarah's actions, the end result is the same.

My beloved brother is still dead. And that can't change.

"Do you really think that makes a difference to me?" I ask, my voice shaking. "That Grandmother ordering you to do it somehow makes it forgivable?"

For the briefest of instants, genuine remorse flickers over Sarah's carved-marble features. "Of course not," she murmurs. "But I'm still sorry, Scarlett. For—for everything."

With that, she backs toward the door and finally leaves the room, so that Lyssa and I are left alone in silence. For several moments more, neither of us speaks.

Until, haltingly, I give voice to the most pressing inquiry I have right now. "How's Hadria doing?"

Lyssa gives a faint half-smile. "Better than anyone should be after that hit she took." She shakes her head with a small huff of disbelief. "Already sitting up and talking like she wasn't just about dead an hour ago."

The knot inside me loosens up a little. Lyssa wouldn't be so casual if Hadria's condition wasn't truly improving.

"I'm glad," I say, and I even smile. "I wish things could have been different, you know?"

"What, that you'd taken the bullet instead?" She grins, hustles me back into the bed. "That I had?" she demands in mock outrage.

"Of course not," I snort softly, as I let her bully me back into the sheets. "I mean…I wish I'd known about all this"—I gesture vaguely to the room around us—"and about the Syndicate, before Grandmother got her claws in me. Maybe then I could have—" I cut myself off abruptly. "But that's not how life works, is it? It doesn't matter what might have been. I made my choices."

Lyssa says nothing to that, patting the quilt up high around my shoulders. "Do you still plan on killing her?" she asks carefully, each syllable feeling heavier than the last. "Sarah, I mean. To try and make things right for what she did to Adam?"

Do I?

There's a part of me that still screams for the release that revenge would bring, to balance the scales of justice. But that's a part that Grandmother put into me. That's not the real me.

Is it?

Slowly, I pull my hands out of the sheets, staring numbly at them. Once, these hands were intended for healing, for mending the tears in flesh and bone and preserving the sacred spark of life. Now they're forever stained, marred by violence and death too great to ever be undone.

But…just an hour ago, these hands were also covered in Hadria Imperioli's blood. Hers was the first life I've preserved rather than extinguished in a long, long time. Could I truly go back to dealing in death after that?

Whether or not that ugly, vengeance-seeking voice in my head is my own or Grandmother's, I don't want it to be who I am. Not anymore.

"The cycle has to stop somewhere," I tell Lyssa, and a sense of peace comes over me. "So it will stop with me."