Page 152 of Queen of Volts

The gun sprang back, the recoil so strong and unexpected that Sophia nearly lost her balance.

The Chancellor fell.

But Sophia hadn’t damned them. The other Dove—Sophia had forgotten the hostage, in the chaos of it all—staggered to his feet. Before Scythe could snatch Roy’s cards, the Dove picked up Scythe’s own blade and leveled it at Scythe’s neck.

Scythe let out a bitter laugh, blood dribbling onto his lips. “You’d kill me...” he started, wheezing “...without your namesake? Pathetic.”

“Pathetic was giving my name to you in the first place,” the Dove growled. “I’m taking mine back—and yours.”

And he dragged it across Scythe’s throat.

When it was all over, when their enemies and their friend were dead, when Sophia saw Luckluster red everywhere she looked, she slumped against Harrison’s bedside. She suddenly thought she understood what the Chancellor had been talking about. They’d made history in this room. They’d soaked in it.

HARVEY

Harvey and Narinder crouched in the stairwell of South Side General Hospital, each panting, each stricken. They’d escaped the recovery floor shortly after Scythe arrived, but even so, Harvey had never seen so much blood. When he looked down, he noticed several speckles of crimson dusting his dress shirt. Nausea shook through him, and he squeezed the metal stair railing to ground himself.

“You don’t get to vomit,” Narinder snapped at him, sitting on the steps and hugging his knobby knees against his chest. “If anyone gets to be sick, it’s me. I’ve never seen anyone...”

A rush of anger washed over Harvey. “I’ve never seen anyone die, either,” Harvey gritted out, fingers shaking as he unbuttoned his dress shirt. While Narinder gaped, Harvey shrugged it off and threw it in a heap at the edge of the landing. His flimsy cotton undershirt reeked from sweat and smoke, but at least he wouldn’t be wearing some whiteboot’s blood. “I’m not a monster.”

“But the day I rescued you, you’d killed her, didn’t you?” Narinder asked. “You murdered Zula Slyk. Did you do it for Bryce?”

Harvey let out a strained, delirious laugh. “You know what I am to...” He choked on Harrison’s name. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Narinder’s already grim expression darkened. “Therewasa choice. There’s always a choice.”

It shouldn’t bother him what Narinder thought of him. After all, Harvey had betrayed him. He’d betrayed all of them. The only reason Narinder was still with him now was because they’d fled Scythe together, and because everyone else was gone, and someone needed to watch him. Someone needed to make sure he didn’t escape and run back to Bryce.

But it did bother him, and he didn’t have the words to defend himself. And so he defended Bryce instead.

“Bryce was as horrified as you are now!” Harvey said, pacing in the cramped stairwell instead of doing the rational thing—lunging for the exit, for freedom. “He didn’t want to do any of this! But he’s trying to save Rebecca—he’s obsessed with saving her, with being a hero. Even if that makes him a villain to all of you.”

“I don’t care what he is to all of us,” Narinder shot back. “I care what you are.”

Harvey stopped pacing and swallowed hard. “You shouldn’t.”

“You’re not a villain, Harvey.”

Harvey hated the way Narinder said his name. Not because he cursed it, but because he didn’t. It reminded him how much he hated that Narinder had converted his old church into a nightclub, how he still somehow looked holy in it. He was the kind of good and honest that didn’t take effort. Didn’t take second-guessing or sleepless nights or terrible mistakes.

Narinder was afraid, he knew. But his fear didn’t twist him the way it did to Harvey. Harvey was more scared of being alone than he was of being loathed.

“It’s my fault,” Harvey whispered. “If I hadn’t stopped you all, maybe they could’ve killed the Bargainer. And then Scythe would be dead, too. And Roy—”

Narinder stood up. “They couldn’t kill the Bargainer. They couldn’t have even with your help.”

That was probably true, but Harvey still said, “You don’t know that.”

“I don’t know much, but I know you took Harrison’s omerta to save Bryce’s life, and Bryce kicked you out for it.”

Harvey hadn’t told Narinder that, but he supposed he could’ve guessed why Harvey had shown up at the Catacombs in the first place. Why someone who would sacrifice everything for someone still had nowhere else to go.

“I was a threat!” Harvey said, his voice strangled. “If Bryce had let me stay, I could’ve ruined everything.”

“Then what’s changed, Harvey?” Narinder asked sadly. Harvey cursed him for using his name again, for making him feel like this: breathless and pathetic and weak. “Omertas are unbreakable. If Harrison dies, you die. And once the game is over, once Bryce is no longer protected as the Gamemaster, what is to stop Harrison from ordering you to kill him?”

Harvey opened his mouth to respond, but he didn’t know how. He hadn’t thought of that. But even Harrison wasn’t that cruel.