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Adrian saw the look on my face and choked out a laugh. “You didn’t honestly think it’d be that easy to get rid of me, did you, child? Those markings down there might have stripped you of your magic while down there, but they also did so much more. What did you think cleansing meant? You were always supposed to drown down there, but it was never supposed to be permanent. Nothing ever really dies down there. It’s just the way it is.”

No.

That was entirely unacceptable to me. Adrian did not get to live. I would never be safe. My family would never be safe. There was too much at stake here to just let this man get up and walk away.

My hand slid through the grass, my fingers searching for anything that might be able to help me. My fingers encountered a rock the size of my palm. I curled my fingers around it, and I picked it up. I didn’t want to hear anything else Adrian had to say. We were done talking, and I honestly didn’t even understand how he could be so calm after what I’d done to him. The man was crazier than I’d given him credit for, and that was saying something.

My limbs didn’t want to work, and my movements were jerky and awkward as I lunged forward and swung that rock at his head. He was too smug and too stupid to see the move coming, even though he was looking right at me.

I cracked him across the temple, and he made a sad, whiny noise. Before he could strike back, I dragged my sorry, exhausted body over to him and climbed on top of him, straddling his beach ball of a belly.

I gripped the rock with both hands as if I had plans of never, even letting it go. I raised the rock above my head and brought it down, my aim swift and true. The blow landed right above his eye and across his brow. He made a strangled noise as the rock split his skin open and blood began gushing.

“Fuck you, Adrian,” I growled as I swung the rock back down on his face again. “Fuck you and fuck your stupid, bullshit Council.”

I brought the rock down again, smashing him in the eye. There was a disgusting popping noise I decided to ignore.

“Fuck your sick and twisted creepy ways, and fuck the way you treat people, you pig.”

I hit him again.

And again.

And again.

He stopped moving and stopped making noises as I bashed his skull in with my rock. His face was a messy, bloody pulp as I raised the rock again. My chest heaved and my arms shook. I thought I might have been crying, but I couldn’t tell for sure, I was so out of it.

I grunted words between each strike.

“For Annabell.

“For Quinton, whose father tortured him as you watched.

“For Marcus’s sister. I didn’t have to know her, and I don’t have to like him to know she didn’t deserve anything you dealt her.

“For Dash and Romero.

“For those dirty boys Finn brought around.”

For… myself?

I was losing it and making noises that were more animalistic than they were human. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew I needed to stop, but something had snapped inside of me and was left unhinged, wild, and very much out of my mind.

“Um, Ariel,” a small, hesitant voice said from my side, breaking through the fog my mental breakdown had sucked me into. “He looks pretty dead to me. I think you can stop hitting him with that rock now.”

I looked down at Adrian’s face and had to swallow several times to keep my stomach from revolting. Not that I had anything left inside of me to throw up, because I did not.

I let go of the rock. It landed on Adrian’s face with a solid but wet thud that made me flinch.

Again, he hadn’t put up much of a fight for his life. I didn’t think he’d ever really had to fight for much of anything before. With the Council’s backing, he’d just bulldozed his way through whatever he wanted, and he’d always had others to do his dirty work for him.

“Ariel?”

“How do you know my name?” I asked without taking my eyes off of the mess I’d made of Adrian’s face.

I didn’t have it in me to feel sorry for what I’d done. I’d killed a person twice, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t so sure I liked what that said about me, but it wasn’t like I could change it now. Not that I would if I could, because I wouldn’t. Some people deserved to die, and Adrian had been one of them.

I’d have to keep telling myself that.