Page 9 of One Shattered Crown
Inside, the ballroom looks unchanged. Champagne pours. Music flows. I spot Thorn near the cake table, surrounded by men in suits who pretend not to carry knives. He turns the second I approach. “What was that?”
I lift a shoulder and keep my voice low so his bride doesn’t hear. “Best guess? Ella hacked into the servers.”
His gaze sharpens, and the air tightens. “Should we shut it all down?”
“Not yet,” I say. “I’ll dig later to see what I can find. She’d never hurt Alana, so I’m not horribly worried.” Curious, though.
Alana appears beside him, fingertips brushing his arm, and effectively halts our conversation. She leans in and whispers something. He bends his head to listen.
I watch. The moment is private, and I shouldn’t care, but I do. There’s something in that kind of closeness that makes the rest of the room feel fake.
Alana looks at me, soft and confident, like she sees more than she should. “That was a lovely speech, Justice. I have to tell you, I’ve missed my brother so since his untimely death. It’s nice to have a brother again.”
I exhale. Some of the fire in my chest cools. That’s Alana’s gift. Her voice lands like a feather. No bruising. No sparks. It doesn’t hurt to listen to her. “I’m proud to be your brother.” It’s true. I’d easily die for her … and now kill for her, if necessary.
Ella, though?
Her voice ensnares and caresses, and I’d love to have her mouth around me. Can already see it in my mind. I feel the broken heel in my hand. The citrines on the shoe hum in my pocket, and I don’t have a connection to citrines. But she does, and I sense it.
Alana moves to speak to other friends, and bodyguards shift positions subtly in every corner of the room.
Thorn looks around, back to business. “Should I be concerned about Beaumont’s servers?”
“No.” I follow his gaze, scanning the ballroom. The security’s solid, the perimeter holds, but I can still feel the static under my skin. Ella’s out there. Loose. Brilliant. Unstable.
“I love Alana,” Thorn says, and his voice drops just slightly when he adds, “She’s mine. And her father does own this company.”
“I’ll look into it,” I say. “You’ve earned this six-week honeymoon. You need to take it.”
His brow creases deeper. The scar down the side of his face tightens when he frowns like that. It runs from temple to jaw, a permanent reminder of our difficult childhood. It makes him look just as deadly as I know him to be. “I don’t know,” he says. “If something’s going on …”
“No,” I cut in. “I’ve got it. I can charge our servers, run Malice Media, and handle our people. Seriously. Go.”
He watches me. I feel him weighing it, the responsibility, the risk. Then he says, “I know you’re capable. But if we’re facing another attack …”
I shake my head. “Why? Ella doesn’t want you dead. Not any longer.”
Thorn snorts. “Maybe not me, but she looked ready to spit fire when you made her dance earlier. She might want you drowning in your own blood right now.”
That makes me laugh. “Yeah. She might.”
“I don’t want to harm Alana’s best friend,” he says, softer now. His gaze drifts to where she ran. “But if Ella keeps pushing, someone’s going to get hurt.”
“I’ll handle it,” I say. “She won’t get near to hacking our servers.”
Not again. Somehow she snuck code into the garnets and infected our entire platform with a computer virus.When Thorn laid his hands on the crystal to charge the system, he caught the virus and started to freeze from the inside. The thing morphed from energy to rewriting him. She didn’t create it, but she managed to get it uploaded. The code almost killed him.
She didn’t mean to nearly murder him. At least, that’s what she said. She also assisted in bringing him back from the edge and helped us find a way to undo the damage.
That doesn’t make her safe. She could still cause damage if she chooses.
Thorn’s attention shifts to Alexei Solokov, who is dancing with Rosalie Mooncrest, Alana’s other best friend. The Russian moves like a panther on a leash, his gaze always somewhere else, like the music is just an excuse to stay within striking distance.
Thorn doesn’t say it, but I can feel the thought between us.
Alana’s best friends are ticking clocks. Brilliant. Dangerous. If either Ella or Rosalie gets hurt, we’re the ones who will bleed.
I know something else, too. Ella is a threat. A beautiful, burning threat with code in her blood and secrets in her eyes. But God help me, after her voice rippled beneath my skin, I don’t want her erased.
