Page 51 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

POE

“Fuck.” I dropped onto the sofa and put my head in my hands.

It had taken me a full minute to move after Maeve left the room, shock and horror seeping through my body as her confession echoed through my mind.

“No wonder she’s on the edge,” Remy said, taking the opposite end of the sofa.

Bram walked to the big windows overlooking Main and stood there in silence, his back to us as the sun set behind the mountains in the distance.

“Was she trying to kill him?” I asked Remy.

It was easier to focus on the events of the day than on Maeve’s pain, which felt weirdly like my pain too.

“I don’t know,” Remy said. “She said no, that she wasn’t going to do anything, but she was at the front of the crowd when I got there.”

I thought about Whit, about all the people I blamed for what had happened to him, and therefore what had happened to us. Because family tragedy never just happened to one person. “I don’t blame her for wanting him dead.”

“Same,” Remy said. “Fucking pathetic excuse for a man.”

“We could do it,” I said.

Bram turned, his eyes flashing in a rare display of emotion. “No.”

I didn’t flinch. “Why not?”

“She lost the Hunt.”

“So? We could do it as a favor.”

“What you’re suggesting is dangerous,” Bram said, his voice low.

“Everything about our lives is dangerous,” Remy said.

Bram folded his arms over his chest. “Where will it stop if we start killing random people just because we want to?”

“It’ll stop here,” Remy said, “because we’ll make it stop here.”

Bram shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

And the thing was, I knew what Bram was saying: that we liked killing too much for it to stop here, that if we removed the guardrails, eliminated the rules we’d established to keep us in line, we’d fall into the void of darkness that had been taunting us since we were little more than kids.

“It would be for her.” I didn’t need to say anything else. Bram could deny that he liked Maeve — could deny that she was different — all he wanted, but deep down he knew it was true.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bram said. “She lost the Hunt. This isn’t our problem.”

“She’s in pain,” Remy said.

“Don’t care,” Bram said.

But he did. I knew he did.

“Then we have to keep her from being reckless, at least while she’s here.” It was my least favorite option: Maeve in pain, us doing nothing to stop it, just biding our time until she walked out the door forever.

“Fine.” Bram stomped from the room, leaving Remy and me sitting in silence.

What you’re suggesting is dangerous.

Bram had been referring to the slippery slope of our moral low ground, but I couldn’t help thinking he’d meant something else too, that deep down he knew our moral boundaries were the least dangerous thing about having Maeve Haver under our roof.

That a lot more was at stake than the guardrails on our morality.