Page 45 of Waters that Drown Us

“Watch your mouth,” she warns, staring down the barrel like she doesn’t fear it at all. My Emily, who fears heights and depths, the unknown and the uncontrollable, is stalwart in the face of certain death.

“Or what, you’ll cut my tongue out, too?” Ilya spits, releasing the safety of his gun with a definite click. Emily doesn’t flinch. “I know your work well, Emily. Carlo may be the hand of that sanctimonious matriarch you serve, but you have a legacy all your own. The Snake of The Syndicate, they call you. Did you know that?”

I can’t process what’s happening in front of me. None of their words make sense. He can’t know her.

“Cut off my head and three will grow back.” She swears it like an oath, like a curse.

Whoisshe?

“We’ll learn if that’s true tonight,” Ilya promises, tapping the barrel against her forehead.

“I don’t…” I whisper, not really meaning to say the words aloud. Emily whips her head toward me, but Ilya keeps his eyes on her.

“Alice, I’m so sorry?—”

The crack of Ilya’s gun against her cheek silences her. I lunge forward, my chair nearly tipping over in my effort to get to her. A scream—her name—rips from my throat, but she says nothing at all. When she looks up again, she’s licking away the blood dripping from her lip and coating her teeth. Her face doesn’t reflect an ounce of pain or terror.

“Who are you?” I finally ask aloud.

“A pest,” Ilya responds on her behalf, yanking Emily by her hair so she’s further from me again. “And a deadly one.”

“I wanted to explain,” she says, staring at me like she needs me to know the truth of her words. “Last night?—”

“She’s a spy,” Ilya cuts in, pushing the barrel of the gun, now spotted with her blood, against her temple again. Emily closes her eyes and breathes deeply through her nose. “A daughter of The Syndicate of Fate, a family of morally superior, meddlesome fools who imagine themselves superheroes. They believe themselves to be the only righteous villains in our world, and use their overblown sense of influence to dictate how our world operates.”

“Influenced your brother right into an early grave,” Emily mutters, earning another crack across the face. This time she smiles through it, but I can see the flicker of pain in her eyes. He might have broken her cheek, with how deep the gash is there.

Is Lev…did Emily kill Lev? My synapses are firing too fast to make any real sense of the words coming out of their mouths, but I know one thing for certain. I’m the least dangerous person in this room by a mile.

“I imagine Emily hid quite a bit about herself,” Ilya taunts, somehow breaking my heart and making me feel unbearably naive at the same time. “She likely didn’t mention that her fearless leader and aunt was nearly killed by your father a few years ago. Or that her little band of vindictive vigilantes have been trying to find ways into Konstantin’s stronghold ever since.”

Emily’s gaze is locked on mine, and I know he’s telling the truth, because they’re filled with an apology she can’t voice.

I feel another shard of whatever ice lives inside me now lodge into my lungs, making it even harder to breathe.

“She probably never mentioned that you two have met before.”

Everything inside me feels cavernous. I’m empty, like a shell abandoned by its host on the sand. Losing my mother filled me with indescribable grief, which existed like a living, breathing thing for so long. But this? It is hollowing me into nothing at all.

“That’s not possible,” I say, the words broken from my lack of oxygen. I can’t inhale. It hurts too much.

“You must remember Lucia Costa,” Ilya chides, like I’m a forgetful child. Which is what I am to him. The name rings a distant bell, but I can’t place it. “It was what, fifteen or so years ago, Emily? Konstantin invited her into your home to discuss a partnership. Short lived, those negotiations. But Lucia brought her niece with her.”

I search my memory for Emily’s face, but I come up empty. I would have been in my early teens, and I remember my mind was consumed with making my father proud. With earning his favor, and waking up to shiny new gifts as a token of his approval of my behavior.

I rarely looked around the rooms I was in. At the time, the only indulgence I provided myself was sneaking out to play?—

“You brought it here?” I ask, certain she knows what I mean. Emily is silent for a few moments, but eventually she gives me the smallest nod.

She brought the viola to Nesika Beach. She sold it to the pawn shop so I could find it in the window. And she bought it back for me.

And I can’t decide if it’s the kindest or cruelest thing anyone has ever done to me.

“I imagine if you had given it a few more days, maybe a week or so, you would have found yourself in a very similar position to your current one, but with a different hand holding the gun,” Ilya says, shrugging. I mean nothing to him, except the power I can bring him. My heartbreak is inconsequential to him.

“How could you?” I plead, not fully understanding if I mean the words coming out of my mouth. She looks equally anguished, her face crumpling under the weight of my words.

“Because that is who she is. That’s who all of the Costas are,” Ilya answers when Emily is silent. Finally, I break her gaze, looking up at my fiancé. He looks victorious.