Page 59

I WAKE WRAPPED IN J ACKSON’S ARMS ON N EW Y EAR’S E VE. A DAY OF endings and beginnings. The day of the heist. Happy New Year, Olivia. Hope you get rich and don’t die.

The murmur of party planning noise drifts through my door. Footsteps in the hallways, the quiet chatter of staff carrying in decorations and furnishings for the castle’s ballroom, where the festivities will occur.

Winter sunlight, pure white like the snow outside, replaces the moonlight I fell asleep to, illuminating my room softly. Otto’s roses sit on my nightstand, their thorns peeking through the paper around the stems. While Jackson sleeps, I slip out from under the covers, reluctant to leave.

Leaving means facing reality. The plans I’ve put in motion. The designs I need to execute, or I’ll never forgive my own cowardice.

I steal into the bathroom. In the shower, I turn the faucet on cold.

While the water douses me, I don’t shiver. I don’t hyperventilate. I force myself to feel nothing . I let the cold numb my nerves for the coming day. Watching my skin grow pale, I imagine myself turning into ice. I envision the girl I need to become, carved out of flawless determination.

When I step out, my lips trembling despite my resolve, Jackson has returned to his room.

Efficiently and silently, I dress. With mechanical precision, I rehearse the coming hours. There are only a few things I need to do before the heist goes into motion tonight.

I continue down to the castle entrance to make necessary arrangements for the day. When they’re complete, I text Jackson, asking him to meet me downstairs in the parlor.

My steps slowing in the hallway, I linger over Volenvell’s features—the dark hardwood, the medieval flourishes, the narrow windows framed in iron. I recognize my new familiarity with the interconnected routes and compact corners. I walk them with easy intuition.

The labyrinth is starting to feel like home.

I use the distractions to shut off the whirlwind deep in my heart. When I arrived here, I was anxious about what could go wrong, but more than that, I felt myself coming to life.

I feel the opposite now.

Ice , I remind myself.

The dining room is closed off, party preparations underway. Instead, family members have breakfast in the parlor, making do with a spread of scones and English muffins. Hammond, Sofia, Dash. Everyone looks relieved for the peaceful morning following yesterday’s chaos.

Jackson is right where I requested him to be.

He smiles softly. The exact one he flashed me the moment we met— hey, new girl —his long stride reaching me in the echoing corridors of East Coventry High. Immeasurably far from the halls of my family’s castle.

When he notices my expression, his warm welcome falters.

“I’ve made arrangements with Otto,” I say when I reach him. “A car will take you to the airport.”

I can no longer meet his gaze. Swiss-chocolate sweet, once. Wounded now, I would guess.

“Just me?” Urgency leaps into his voice. “Olivia, what’s going on?”

No. If I let emotion in, I’ll falter. I’ll fail. My resolve is one score I won’t let Jackson claim. Not today.

“I—” Hearing the waver in my voice, I pause. Ice.

I recompose myself. Yes, it would have been kinder to discuss this in private. To explain. But if I had, Jackson wouldn’t have listened. He would have resisted. In dangerous matters, knowing your strengths is less important than knowing your weaknesses. Jackson would have worn me down.

I need to prevail. I need to win . To execute the plan I knew was necessary when I fell asleep in Jackson’s arms. I know what the Knives did to my grandfather. Once Otto forces me to join them, every day Jackson remains in my life is one in which I risk damning him to the same fate.

I need to force him out of my life. Forever.

“I think our relationship has moved a little fast. I want to spend this holiday with my family. We can talk when I get home,” I say. My mouth mechanically forms the words I rehearsed in the halls.

Emotions rip through Jackson’s expression. First surprise, then hurt, then—

Suspicion.

With understanding, he sweeps his gaze over the room. Noting our spectators.

The public setting was also chosen to protect me . To protect my heist. Here, he can’t press or pry into details, into the theories he probably has about why I’m doing this. Not without getting me and the whole crew caught.

It’s cowardly, I know.

But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the right thing to do. If I do it the dishonorable way, well…

I’m a thief, not a hero.

“What changed your mind?” he demands. His voice is gruff. Formal.

Nothing like the last time we broke up. The Jackson in front of me has no resemblance to the earnest boy who went to my father’s wedding in hopes of winning me back.

Who found me in the hallways of my former home, desperate to understand what happened.

Yearning for forgiveness. I remember his every word, his every expression. He was impassioned and so very hurt.

Now he’s cold. Just like me.

Right then, Leonie enters the parlor from the other door. She pauses, evaluating the scene.

“Time away with my family in Norway,” I reply. My feigned explanation, one having nothing to do with the Knives. “I… think I can’t keep living half in two worlds. Yours and… mine.”

Ever perceptive, Jackson understands me immediately.

“You mean theirs,” he says quietly.

His eyes flit to my family.

“It’s mine, too. I can’t escape all this.” I finally meet his eyes, feeling the horrible refuge of painful honesty within necessary lies. “Even if I could… I don’t know if I want to,” I say.

Jackson’s jaw clenches. Watching his expression close up, I feel the strangest sense of upside-down success. I really did it. I really was horrible enough to end us.

I did it.

The queen of endings, securing her crown.

“Anything else you want to say to me?” Jackson asks.

I hear his resentful hidden meaning, his reference to the crowd of Owens family I’ve forced us to perform for. Anything else you want our audience to hear while you’re using me?

Unflinching, I hold his gaze. I need him to know this is real. To keep him truly safe from the Knives I need him to hate me. To stay far away.

It’s why I let myself lose the fight with my own emotionlessness. He needs to understand what I’m saying isn’t only for show. I let the ice thaw just enough for real feeling to constrict my throat while I give him my final confession.

“I really tried, Jackson,” I say. “I tried to bring you into my world, but you don’t fit. We don’t fit.”

There. The reality I embraced under the icy water this morning.

I don’t mean just my family. He never should have joined my heist. I should never have let him. It’s not who he is. He can’t embrace these vengeful desires just for me.

Ending things now before he’s sacrificed his morals—before he’s lost himself—is what someone who really loves him would do. It’s not why I’m forcing him from my life… but it’s not a lie, either.

Jackson greets my judgment with rigid, quiet fury.

“You’re wrong,” he says.

“I’m sorry, Jackson,” I manage.

“I’m sure you are,” he replies.

Without hesitation, Jackson walks out of the parlor of my family’s castle, and out of my life.

I’m left fighting tears in front of my family. Dash catches my eye, looking, somehow, sympathetic. My windpipe feels slashed in half.

I used to believe souls were like diamonds.

No matter how many pieces you carved off, they never lost their sparkle.

But I don’t know. I think they might be more like machines.

Vault locks. Swiss watches. If you remove enough parts, they just stop working.

How many more pieces can this week take from me?

Leonie approaches, putting her hand on my shoulder in what I understand is endorsement of my damning decision.

“It will not take as long as you think for the pain to fade to nothing,” she counsels me.

I don’t reply.

Rejecting Jackson to release him was right. I know it was. I don’t need him to be mine. I need him to be safe.

Olivia Owens, the selfless heist mastermind. What wonderful irony.

I walk out of the room, holding in my tears. I don’t want the pain to fade to nothing. I hold it close to me—pressing it into diamonds, sharpening it into knives.