Chapter 9

"Adeline."

I reached for the knife. Sebastian's brow furrowed.

A shadow of something complicated crossed those sharp features of his.

Damien closed his eyes. A flicker of relief passed across his bloodless face.

"Master—"

A ripple of sharp gasps ran through the room.

The blade had just broken the skin of Damien's neck when a hand closed over it and stopped the knife dead.

Blood ran from between his fingers and onto the floor. My teeth clenched. "Let go."

Sebastian said nothing.

The pressure of his grip only tightened.

I watched the blood run from his hand. A few more inches of cutting and he would lose the use of it forever.

"Adeline."

"Anything you want to do to him—anything but kill him—I will not get in your way."

I stared at him. I didn't trust what I was hearing.

"Sebastian Sterling. Are you telling me you don't think he deserves to die? You want to save him?"

Sebastian looked at me. Held my gaze.

Those eyes of his, that saw through people, flickered once.

And when he spoke, his voice was low and absolute, and left no room for argument.

"The one I want to save. From the beginning. Is you."

Something in me broke and reset.

Without meaning to, I looked down at the face of the man at my feet.

Since I had clawed my way out of the Harrington estate, every day and every night, I had seen that face.

All those nights, I had hated Damien. I had hated Vivienne.

But the one I hated most was myself.

I was the one who had taken him out of the pit.

I was the one who had let the wolf in.

I was the one who had misjudged him.

I was the one who had buried the Harringtons.

For months, revenge had been the only thing holding me up.

Even the doctor who had kept me alive said it was a miracle that someone with as many near-fatal wounds as I had survived this long.

I hadn't taken vengeance for my family yet. How could I die?

How could I dare?

I didn't dare.

I was afraid.

The silence stretched between us for a few seconds.

Slowly, I let the pressure out of my grip.

The instant Sebastian eased his hand off the blade, I drove the tip straight for Damien's chest.

My wrist twisted. The edge peeled the branded skin—the Harrington crest I had burned into him ten years ago—clean off his ribs.

"This mark. You don't deserve it."

Damien dropped onto his knees, hollow.

That last cut felt, to him, like the last of his heart had been scraped out, and a cold wind had come rushing into the empty space.

I laughed until I was crying. "Damien. I'm not going to let you die easily."

"There's a long life ahead of you. What you owe me, you're going to pay back, drop by drop."

Sebastian looked once at Damien, his eyes cool.

"Take him out. Get him the best doctor in the city."

Then he closed his hand over mine on the hilt of the knife and spoke quietly.

"The Harringtons still need you to take the seat. The Ashford account still isn't settled."

"Point this blade at them."

. . .

In the end, I borrowed men from the Sterlings, called together what was left of the Harrington bloodline, and went home to Ravenport to rebuild the house.

I built a small private chapel beside the wall where the family's memorial portraits hung.

The day the new estate was finished, Sebastian flew down from Ashbury himself.

He stayed a long time in the portrait hall. He lit a candle before my grandfather's portrait and bowed three times.

I never asked him what he said.

After that, he looked around, as though searching for something.

"I heard the Blackwood one—you took him home, gave him a hundred lashes, and then he disappeared."

When the memorial hall was done, I had stood before every portrait on that wall and laid one hundred and ninety-nine lashes across Damien's back.

One lash for every Harrington he had murdered.

One hundred and ninety-nine counts of his crime.

I gestured, offhand, toward the chapel.

Inside it knelt a single life-sized figure, facing the portrait wall.

Sebastian studied it for a long time. Then he smiled.

"Good idea."

"Once we've finished the Ashfords, there will be a few more we can add."

I glanced toward the figure.

When my eyes met the small, stiff movement of its eyes, I smiled too.

He could not move. He could not speak. He could not die.

Day and night he would look at his own crimes.

He would be flayed by his conscience, over and over, and repent.

It was the only proper punishment for a traitor.

On my way out of the memorial hall, I turned and bowed to the wall of portraits.

I whispered a few words.

"Grandfather. Arthur. Everyone whose blood runs in mine. If the day comes that you forgive him, take his life."

"And if you do not. Let him stay this way, and keep paying."

I pressed my forehead to the floor in final respect.

There was one thing I had never, once in my life, wavered on.

Betrayers die.

Those who break faith deserve nothing.

[THE END]