Page 173 of Devoted

Giovanni had both of them now.

He believed he’d sorted out which was which.

He was wrong, which was the only thing about tonight that had gone right.

CHAPTER 65

EMBERLINE

Iwas close enough to count the pores in my uncle’s nose. Every line fanned out around his eyes.

To wrap my hands around his throat or stab my knife into his heart, but no matter how badly I wanted to kill him, Giovanni had the advantage—Luca.

I was close enough to tell something else.

My brother was a shell with nothing left inside.

Ever since he’d appeared, I’d been trying to reach him, trying to batter down that mental wall between us, to rip it apart with my nails, but the shield was impenetrable.

“Your brother was on his way to Rome with Lord Blackwood when I intercepted them,” Giovanni said pleasantly.

I kept my face blank, my mind empty.

Had Romulus been found out?

Did they know everything?

“Since we are family, I have him on loan, shall we say?” Giovanni inched closer, keeping the knife at Luca’s throat, long lines of reeking blood streaking down his pale throat, soaking his collar black.

“After this is over and you are all dead, Luca will go to Rome, of course. Serve Blackwood and anyone who has need of his skills. I expect not everyone will be as kind as me, but you only have yourself to blame for this, don’t you, Emberline?”

I tore my attention from my brother’s face and stared at Giovanni, picturing him dead in a hundred gruesome ways.

“You could have left him out of this, and now look at him. Ruined, good for only one thing.” His malice was like a living thing, thick on every word. “Can you guess all the ways your sweet brother will be used in Rome? I’ve heard their corruption exceeds even my own. Hard to believe, but there it is.”

It took everything I had to pinch my lips together and let anger rise like a poisoned tide. To swamp me with hate and the unflinching will to consider the unthinkable.

I had to kill my brother.

There was no coming back from this transformation.

A permanent, painful existence, Nico had explained. Hours and days and weeks filled with pain, body slowly decaying until death finally claimed him. And once he was fully under Blackwood’s control…

Without Nico to torture and only my brother as his target, Luca would suffer.

Suffer in ways I didn’t want to imagine. In ways I couldn’t imagine. And right now—this very second—was the closest I’d ever get to ending all that impending, horrible suffering.

I was many things, but I’d never had Luca’s big heart.

I’d inherited Ottavia’s pragmatism instead. And logic told me Luca couldn’t be saved now.

“I’m sorry, Luca.” Grief was a heavy weariness in my bones, a weight I’d drag behind me as long as I lived. “I tried… tried so hard to be a good sister. This is my fault. None of this is on you, I just… needed to say that out loud.”

Gio chuckled, shaking his head as though that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. His knife hand trembled—unused to holding that position for so long—and I was shifting my feet, grinding my heels deeper into the dirt, thighs tensed to spring…

Light sparked in Luca’s eyes—recognition, face changing into old, familiar lines as he gazed down at me, mouth forming one word.

The same word that rang so very clearly in my head as the mental bond between us opened wide