Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Sev gathers himself before I can. “Councilor,” he says with a nod of greeting, and he almost sounds like himself.
“Severin,” the Councilor’s mouth curves upward into a mocking grin. He’s seen it. Seen Severin wrongfooted. “How unexpected to see you again.” He turns his gaze to me. “You and your brother. Jethro.” I hear the distaste as he says my name. As he looks down his nose at me.
He stands, and I’m at least relieved to see he’s wearing a suit, not the ceremonial robes of a Councilor of the Tribunal presiding over a trial. I think Sev must be relieved, too. Because the memory of it, of Councilor Senna a decade earlier as we stood before him in the Tribunal’s court of the New York chapter and Sev explained the action we’d taken. Sev who took us back to The Society to ask for their help because there was no other way.
We were different then.
We were innocent then.
“Sit, please,” the Councilor says as if we’re simply old friends visiting. He gestures to the two uncomfortable wooden chairs that have been set before the stone table. Something in that gesture, in the way he moves his hand or maybe it’s the hand itself, I don’t know, but something has all the blood in me turning to ice, a sensation of utter panic taking root at my core.
That whimpering boy in my head wants to run. Fucking run.
This feeling is something I haven’t felt in a very long time. In years. A sensation of dread I thought I could somehow forget.
The Councilor waits until we each take a seat. Robertson remains standing to the side, the soldiers unmoving around us.
Senna resumes his seat, the leather of the enormous armchair creaking as he does. He doesn’t waste any time. Instead, from a box set slightly to the side, he lifts out the thing that got us here in the first place.
My grandfather’s watch.
I look at his hand, at the scar on the inside of his wrist. A small thing. Something I’m not sure is real because I see it for only a second before he turns his hand over and I’m looking at that watch again.
I imagine Amal somewhere in this castle now. Is she afraid? She must be. They won’t hurt her, I tell myself. Senna is here to deal with us, not her. She has nothing to do with The Society. We do.
We did, at least.
When Sev went to him it was because he knew he had leverage. He had something The Society wanted. Needed. Silence. He could expose our grandfather’s abuse. Expose The Society itself. And when I killed my grandfather, when I finally took the ceremonial dagger he used to keep me in line and drove it deep into his neck, I solved a problem for The Society. I didn’t know it then, not in the moment. No, in that moment, I wasn’t thinking. There was too much pain.
Too much shame.
And just like that, seeing that watch in his old man’s hands, I’m back there again. In that basement room. Naked and freezing and scared. So fucking scared.
Our grandfather was a member of The Society. He had deep pockets and powerful allies. Wherever there’s too much money and no soul, there’s no shortage of perversion. Of perverse men. Or women.
It started on my eleventh birthday. I still remember the first time. The party my grandfather arranged for me to attend, a secret between us. Everything was always a secret. It had to be.
The party where the guests were masked so no one saw the other. They only saw me. I wasn’t only unmasked, but I was delivered to them naked and terrified. The only thing I wore were the marks my grandfather put on me when I would not cooperate, when I would displease. When I would hurt those bastards worse than they hurt me.
That’s where my rage comes from. It’s how the evil in me was born. I am a Devil because I dealt with devils. Because devils killed any innocence in me and in its place left a burning unquenchable rage, a fury that burns hot and ever more violent. Never sated.
I realize in that moment that is what Amal is. My mercy. My absolution.
A cleansing of all that shame.
When Severin found me, I was covered in the blood of the masked man who lay shredded in the bed I hated. Drenching it. Blood seeping into every fiber of it.
I knelt on the floor, the expensive Persian rug ruined, my grandfather spluttering his last breaths, the ancient ceremonial dagger buried deep in his neck. I always wondered if the fiery tip of it burned him before the sharp edge sliced into his old parchment-thin skin, causing a different kind of burn. I remember that thought being the only one in my mind when my brother entered the room.