“I’d never betray my brothers by taking someone without them,” he tells her.
I really hate the way he calls them his brothers. It’s confusing. Which in a sense, they are. But not in the blood-relation sense.
“The Kincaid brothers only share,” she says on a sigh, as though she’s repeating something she’s heard too much. “I remember well.”
“All quads share,” he says dismissively.
We’ll have to circle back to the Kincaid brothers thing. That’s the first I’ve heard of that, and again, they’re not really brothers.
Her eyes close, like she’s relishing a memory. My phantom fists clench.
“You being turned on by her definitely makes you my least favorite,” I mutter under my breath.
Pettiness is my new shade of personality lately.
His eyes dart to me as his jaw tics, but he immediately looks away, unable to say whatever it is he wants to say, since she’s here.
I like that I’m making him want to talk. I need this siren gone before she sings her song and I lose him completely.
“You four don’t have the same last names if you were born to different families. I’ve not even been able to uncover your last names. So why does she refer to you as the Kincaid brothers?” I muse aloud.
“Are we going to hell or not, Lake? Time is very precious right now, and I’ve been separated from my brothers too long. You know how quad bonds work,” he reminds her.
I’m not sure why my stomach unsettles, but it’s not envy this time.
I look back at her as her eyes open, and she gives him a small, sympathetic smile.
“You’re hurting for their presence. Sorry. I really did expect them to be here with you, or I wouldn’t have made you wait for so long. The truth is that I was trying to get out of my latest assignment, which is the main reason I’m so late.”
He cocks his head.
“What do you mean?” he asks as he stands.
She takes a step back, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“This culling is terrifying everyone. Lucifer hasn’t stopped it yet. Forty more escorts were killed this morning. He wants nothing but devout loyalty, and you know where I stand on that fence if I’m willing to break the rules to take you under,” she says, smiling sadly up at him.
“You think you’ll be in the culling?” he asks, sounding concerned.
There’s that damned envy again.
“All of the participants of the trials survived, sans the two you and your brothers killed,” she tells him.
“Everyone survived those trials?” he asks incredulously.
She nods, a huff of a breath escaping her. “Lucifer retrieved the others before their deaths. They never made it past even one obstacle. But he needed them to start a change. To replenish what he’s recycling, because there can be no vacant jobs, obviously. Everyone has a task to be fulfilled to preserve the balance.”
“I don’t understand. No one gets out of the trials without completing them,” he goes on, confused.
Her watery smile doesn’t sit right with me.
“I’m afraid you have no idea what you stirred up by surviving that third trial. It was impossible to complete every task in the three days allotted. Even in a month, no one could have done that. I never believed them. They tried to tell me, but I refused to believe it could be true, because I really like the four of you.”
I step closer, tilting my head. What does she think is wrong with them?
“She thinks something really bad, but she doesn’t know I helped. Tell her so she’ll stop believing whatever it is,” I tell him, not liking the way I’m now worried about her damn opinion of him.
After all, I want her gone.
“What’s going on, Lake? Do you know what Lucifer was trying to achieve?” he asks, not telling her about me even though I’m giving him permission.
She nods once, then meets his eyes. I step in front of him, trying to inspect her look closer.
“I’m afraid I do. And I’m sorry I have to be the one to do this,” she says.
I see it too late. She’s incomprehensibly fast.
The glint of the blade is barely recognized before it’s halfway through my body. It’s so fast that I barely even register the fact she’s slicing through me.
I don’t even hesitate to turn whole, pain lancing through me as the blade gets jammed in my upper stomach, slicing through my spine as I shove power out of me.
She’s launched backwards, cracking the wall and hitting the ceiling, pinned there but not dying. Because it hurts too much to strain for the acid.
Two arms catch me before I collapse, and I choke on the blood I feel gurgling in my mouth, tasting like acid on its own as the black streams of it trickle down.
It’s like a heavy drumming happens in my ears. I can’t hear what Jude is saying, but I feel his power flowing through me as ashes flit around the room.
His eyes are feral and wide as he hovers over me, and I cry out when he jerks the dagger out of me. Pain. All consuming, burning, excruciating, agonizing pain has me almost blacking out.
The trickles of a cold sweat break out across my skin as I start struggling to breathe, coughing. I still can’t hear much, but I do hear him shouting on the phone.
In the next instant, I’m in our house. He siphoned us…
I try to go phantom, hoping it can heal me, but a scream is ripped from my throat as it only makes the pain worse, leaving me unable to leave this dying form.
All four of them are hovering over me, panicking, working tirelessly to save me. My head lulls to the side just as Ezekiel gets my dress ripped open, exposing the proof there’s no coming back from this.
The black veins are climbing up me from the poison on the blade as black blood pumps out through the cracks of Gage’s fingers. He presses down harder, and I scream in pain as he tries to keep me from bleeding out.
“Devil’s poison!” I hear someone shout loud enough to just barely cut through the continuous drumming in my ears that is increasing in tempo.
This weak, pathetic form I coveted and craved so much is poisoned.
But this form is what saved them when the phantom couldn’t.
“Run,” I tell them on a gurgle. “She…wanted…to…know…where you…were,” I manage to choke out.
Kai is suddenly cradling my head in his lap. I can’t hear what he’s trying to tell me, but I can see the grief already shading his eyes.
I’m not going to survive this.
Something is getting shoved into my mouth and slathered over me in the next instant, but I choke on it and spit it out when it makes it feel like my mouth is about to explode and pain shoots through my head.
Four gazes swing to me as the veins only slither up farther, stealing my breaths and causing me to convulse.
I never even got to tell them why I’d give everything to keep them safe.
Maybe they know.
Chapter 12
Agony.
No, not agony.
Torture. That’s what the burning sensation feels like when I open my eyes.
Next feeling?