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“I’ll command them to swear to you,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder at Hale. She doesn’t bother looking me in the eye. “I’m giving the coven back.”

“You think I want it back?” I ask, deathly quiet. “You can take your illusion of power and choke on it. You wanted it, you’ve fucking got it.”

“Take it or I’ll make each and every one of them kill themselves,” she says, equally furious. This time, she meets my gaze. Her threat holds weight, and I swear. Her chin jutsforward, confident and unyielding. I wonder if killing everyone had always been her plan. “I’ll still bring you Agnarr’s heart. To give you…the power won’t be an illusion if you have his heart.”

“Why bother when I could just have yours?” I say, taking a step closer and crowding her. Her body does the opposite of what it should. Her limbs loosen, and she leans close. Her full lips are parted, just a bit, and the corners tip up as if I’m about to kiss her. As if I’ve offered to give her the best night of her life.

And maybe I have.

Sex and self-loathing are a match made in hell for Gwyn Parsons. Every part of me wants to indulge her. I can imagine reaching between her perfectly rounded tits as she bounces on top of me, every jiggle of her flesh bringing me closer to the edge. I could finish inside her before burying my hand beneath her skin and taking from her what I should have stolen from the start.

But somehow, I resist.

Lifting my phone to my ear, I call Margot. Telling her where to meet me, I step over my uncle’s corpse, and walk away from the woman who keeps me teetering on the edge of madness.

13

GWYN

After Roman leaves,I call Margot. I think she’s the one he was speaking with as he walked away, but she answers my call anyway.

“I need a disposal crew for Emile’s body,” I say.

“Yes, Your Majesty. As you wish, Your Majesty.”

I debate whether or not to say what I’m thinking. I’m uncertain it’s my place, and I’m not sure they’ll even listen to me. This will open up an opportunity to dissect my choices to find weakness. But all anyone will find on an autopsy is that all my bits and pieces have cared for Roman against my will. Despite the fact that some of this is certainly my fault, it’s information they need to know.

“Remy needs to be observed when you take him home. He’s… we had to take precautions to keep him?—”

“You’re telling us how to properly take care of your prisoner?” Margot asks, and I wish I would have listened to my gut and kept my mouth shut. Roman’s suicidal brother isn’t my business. It doesn’t matter that we’ve had him living a pretty fucking cushy life. Hale had even arranged for him to have weekly video calls with a therapist. Sure, he’d placed a tongue trap on him, so he couldn’t talk about being held captive, butRemy was held captive by his own mind more than anything we put him through.

We kept him safe, regardless of everything he’d done. And hadn’t Roman done the same thing for me eventually? I bite my tongue though, because he’ll know what to watch for. He is a good brother, after all.

“The wards will be down by the time you get there, I’m sure. I don’t think Hale’s magic will…” I trail off, knowing that my friend will be heartbroken. Hale has spent most of his life fine-tuning his gifts and fostering a relationship with his ancestors within the spirit realm. This is going to be painful.

“Someone will be there shortly to deal with your mess,” Margot snaps, and then she hangs up.

Slowly, I turn to face my sister, my friend, and the vampire Ascending him. “We need to take him to the compound,” I order, and Nico merely raises his brows.

“I heard your conversation with Roman. I didn’t hear his approval. You sure that’s the best place to take him?”

“Where the hell else is he going to find a bunch of vampires to fuck? Unless you plan on doing it all yourself?” I ask.

Hale stops drinking, his green eyes bright in the moonlight. He pants against Nico’s wrist, out of breath, but he has remarkable control—similar to my own when I was turned.

“That explains it,” Hale says to Sasha, and she tilts her head back and laughs. It's a relief that he’s speaking to her like normal.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We couldn’t figure out how you’d let things get this out of control with Roman, and we totally forgot about this part.”

“That you probably fucked him senseless,” she says, looking at me over her shoulder with a soft smile. Perhaps she thinks it’s a truce. Between our argument in Bjorn’s library and the way she just snapped at me, I’m not sure if going back to treating melike everything is normal is going to work this time. Besides that, Sasha has always judged me for my sex life, and it feels an awful lot like that—even if I couldn’t help it. “Did she fuck you too?” Sasha asks Nico, and Hale growls. He adjusts in Nico’s grip and sits up, and then the fangs I’d been dreading to see peek out from beneath his top lip.

“Sasha, you should get back,” I warn, knowing that Hale is about to become very possessive of Nico. She doesn’t listen, only placing a comforting hand on Hale’s thigh. We didn’t know every thing there was to know about Ascensions before I infiltrated the coven, so she might not know about the possessive instinct to kill anyone who can be viewed as a threat to the one they want to fuck.

Desperately and wholly cannot help butneedto fuck.

I’m kind of surprised Nico agreed to this, considering I thought he was straight. He gives off vaguely threatening mafia boss from the 1960s vibes, toxic masculinity and all.