Page 81 of Because I Killed Him
“You said that if we keep running, it’s who we are. Maybe we ran too long.”
My eyes drop to her Blood Ring, and I suddenly realize. “You joined Edmund’s entourage, too?”
“Not yet, but I’m about to.” Charlotte’s fingers brush the cut on her scalp. “I already tried to keep my pride. Look where it got me.” She pauses, and a bitter laugh sticks in her throat. “You can’t fight because you’re not allowed, Lore. I can’t fight because I never learned. If Rosamund challenges me to a death duel, I’ll go down like a damn weed.”
Charlotte grips my wrist, and the pressure aches with surrender. Still, I know there’s no judgment between us anymore. Neither of us wants this, but wanting has nothing to do with survival.
“Don’t forget what I told you about the spider, Lore,” Charlotte says, her tone turning severe. “We might be safe with Edmund for now, but she’ll find a way in. She always does. Rosamund doesn’t just want to be near Jack and Edmund—she wants toownthem.”
“Why?” I ask. “We’re not dating them. All we need is protection.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Charlotte plants her elbows on the bar top and sighs wearily. “In Rosamund’s head, just standing near them is stepping on her claim. That woman would cut her own throat if she thought it would make Jack or Edmund look her way.” Charlotte blows out a stream of smoke, then stares me dead in the eye. “The minute you joined Edmund’s entourage, you declared war. So, saber or not, get ready to fucking fight.”
I nod, feeling a twinge of fear, until a flash of blue catches my eye.
I turn and spot Edmund leaning in the doorway, arms folded, a single loose curl falling across his forehead. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to.
He owes Charlotte, and he knows it.
I study his face, marred by a proud, angry scowl that burns with resentment for both of us.
But I don’t care.
It’s the face of our freedom.
When I first met Edmund Prew, I felt as if our fates were meant to be intertwined. The feeling was so overwhelming, so undeniable, that I knew then he wasn’t a stranger.
—IRENE HUSSEY
CHAPTER 17
Over the next few days, I limit the time I spend alone, knowing what awaits me in the silence: Irene’s voice in my ear, the cold edge of her threat as she tried to blackmail me into becoming her rat. The violent recoil of her bullet as it ricocheted off the energy shield. The sprint down the corridor and the scramble into the ceiling shaft, with the deathstalkers inches behind. Worst of all, the student hanging from a noose over the Diamond floor, his lifeless form swinging as the Blues jeered below.
So I avoid my suite.
I stay out late until my body is so worn down that I crash the instant the door closes behind me. Out here, in the public eye, there’s no room for tears, breakdowns, or nightmares. Instead, I exist in the quiet space between, as if the world has exhaled, and I’m left drifting in the breath it left behind.
I’m quiet when I give my statement to the Coppers. I’m quiet when I walk Mom and Dad through the attack over a video call. I’m quiet when I sit through my lectures, working hard to expel the violent memories, locking them out with the thought that should’ve been my last before I thought I’d die. The only hours I find reprieve are during gymnastics training, too exhausted by new floor routines to consider anything beyond exercise. Or when I lock myself in my suite, with the curtains drawn, and practice with my dull fencing stick.
No one would understand how I feel, even if I tried to explain it.
No one except Hillaire.
I understand her now in ways I never did before. She’s stood here too, on the line between living and dying.
Three years ago, Vivian and I convinced Hillaire to take a boat out on the river with us during a storm. The river is always choppy, but it’s even wilder in a storm, with foam-tipped water rushing down from the mountains past Waldsten Mansion. Hillaire didn’t want to go with us; she hates risk. Every decision must be carefully planned, and every activity scheduled and logged in her daily routine. But Vivian and I begged, laughed, and teased until she finally gave in.
The river was brutal, its cold, angry waves rocking our boat as if in warning. Currents twisted beneath like unseen hands trying to snatch us. We hadn’t been out five minutes when a wave struck our boat broadside, flipping the hull. Vivian and I surfaced, coughing and shivering, clawing our way to the dock. But Hillaire… she was nowhere.
We screamed her name as we searched, our voices swallowed by the storm. Terrified, we called our Pinkies, then Dad and Mom, then the Coppers. They organized a search party. Vivian and I stayed rooted at the dock, shivering and sick with guilt. We thought we’d killed our sister.
An hour later, the Coppers found her. She was a mile downstream, not far from our tree fort in the forest, trudging along the shoreline. Her body was caked in mud, her clothes torn, and her face stiff with shock, as if she’d seen something horrifying beneath the water. Hillaire was cradling her arm, which was wrapped in a bloody tourniquet made from a scrap of her pants.
Her hand was gone.
Only a jagged, bloodied stump remained.
To this day, we still don’t know how she lost it. She never told us what happened, even when Vivian and I begged her to explain. Her behavior didn’t change, at least on the surface. She was the same Hillaire in almost every way.
