Darker Than Night - Amelia Wilde Page 0,32

close enough to feel the heat. He let her get close.

“So you made her food.”

“I taught her to read.” Demeter would whisper the words to herself, one of the three children’s books we had propped on knobby knees. I don’t recall learning how to read but I must have because I taught her. “I taught her how to write.”

“You weren’t much older, were you?”

“No, but she needed me to be older, to be stronger and more sure, so—” A spike through the throat, through the heart. “So that’s what I became.”

“Other people need you now. The women need you.”

The walls I’ve so carefully tended bow inward, the pressure intense. I’m dying from it. I’m dying, and at least when I’m dead this will be over. Brigit takes a last, calculated step forward and tucks the note into my pocket. Then she puts her hands flat on my chest and I can’t fucking help it, I can’t help but put my hands over hers. It takes the restraint of a hundred people not to bend her over the desk for this. I laugh in her face instead.

“Sweetheart, you’re out of your mind. You’re out of your fucking mind.” The foundations of the world are falling away. It’s a miracle I can stay upright.

“What happened?” she whispers. “What happened to make her go so wrong?”

“The same thing that happened to all of us.”

“Your dad?”

“Don’t call him that.”

She blinks. “Your father?”

“He corrupted everything he touched, and she—” Her eyes followed him wherever he went. “She idolized him. All she ever wanted was for him to be proud of her. At any cost.”

“She turned on you?”

It hurts and there’s no pat explanation for why it hurts so much. It’s a planet-sized wound, and it aches, it fucking throbs. “Demeter was jealous. She hated the fact that he would take me with him when he left. Hated it. She wanted to be his favorite, and she thought it was a prize worth winning.” It was Demeter in the hall the night Katie died. It was her poison on Katie’s lips. “She killed Katie,” I whisper. “And I hate her for it. I hate her so much.”

“You’ve had lots of chances to take your revenge,” Brigit says softly. “You haven’t yet.”

The last cornerstone in the wall blows apart into a thousand fragments, burrowing into skin and bone. My jaw snaps shut, teeth grinding, and it’s the most wretched moment of my life. “I hate her.” The truth tastes bitter and sweet, like poison. “And I still love her.”

Brigit’s even closer now.

“I don’t want to kill her. I can still see her eyes—” The words twist themselves up and refuse to come out. “A hero would kill her and end this. A hero would shoot her between the eyes. But I’m not a fucking hero, sweetheart, I never have been.”

Her eyes shine. “That’s not true.”

She rises on tiptoe and kisses me, and everything stops. The agony subsides, the wound closes, the bleeding tapers off. My mind clears. Brigit knows all of this and her mouth is still warm and yielding against mine. Her body responds to mine like I’m someone she needs.

I am someone she needs.

I’ve been playing a decades-long chess match against my sister’s worst impulses. And I can’t stop now. I’ll play our old game and bring my sister back from the brink.

“Not until I’m finished with you,” I murmur into Brigit’s mouth. “You still haven’t learned your lesson. You need to be punished, sweetheart.”

13

Zeus

We’re halfway across the living room when someone knocks at the door. Someone—James is the only person who can get in. What the hell is he doing here in the middle of the night? I set Brigit down on her feet with a furious kiss. “Wait in the bedroom. I’ll be right there.”

I try to settle my heart back into its customary place and stop my cock from throbbing and fail at both. I need to fuck Brigit. She’s mine, and I need to remind her of that—need it like I need air.

James is shouting now.

His fist is in midair when I pull the door open with a sharp jerk. I know intellectually that he would never do this unless it was urgent. He shoulders past me into the living room, not seeming to notice or care that he has interrupted me on the way to an essential engagement.

“—go in through the back, but we would need more people. Morris has his in shifts, so that’s a problem, but we can