Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,89
thought of her irrational behavior like it was some kind of character flaw, but maybe instead of hating her and being angry with her for her behavior, I should have been trying to get her to seek professional help. Maybe if she’d been put on meds shortly after she’d emerged from the pond, she wouldn’t be what she was today.
“It’s not fair to blame her for being crazy when it was your own father’s decade of torture that made her that way,” I told Cyrus, deciding it was best to ignore Emma’s wild accusation. “You always said you were sorry for what he did to her. Prove it!”
“What caused her to do it is irrelevant. I told her what would happen if she disobeyed me, and she did it anyway. I might have spared her if Anderson were willing to claim her as his own again, but that seems not to be the case.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow at Anderson, who shook his head.
I was still scrambling for an argument that might work. I supposed I could try throwing something at Mark and giving Emma another chance to run for it, but I couldn’t risk breaking the treaty. If my choices were to let Emma die or to trigger a war we couldn’t win between us and the Olympians, I had to let Emma die.
I practically jumped out of my shoes when Blake put his arm around my shoulders, giving them a firm squeeze while whispering in my ear. “There’s nothing you can do, Nikki.”
“Proceed,” Cyrus said to Mark.
Emma started making gasping, gurgling sounds, and I saw that Mark’s forearm was across her throat, muscles bulging as he choked her. Emma kicked and flailed, but she was no match against Mark’s brute strength.
“You could stop it,” I hissed at Blake. He could use his power to distract both Cyrus and Mark with uncontrollable lust. That might interfere with their plans, but it wasn’t technically breaking the treaty.
“I suspect it would annoy Anderson almost as much as it annoyed me if you tried it,” Cyrus said to Blake. I guess my whisper hadn’t been as quiet as I’d thought.
“Don’t even think about it,” Anderson said. He was looking at Emma now, and his face wasn’t quite so impassive anymore. His Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times in quick succession. Emma’s lips were turning blue, and her struggles became even more frantic.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said lamely, my eyes blurring with tears. Yes, I was crying over the impending death of a woman who’d tried to have me buried alive.
“Yes, I do,” Cyrus answered, showing no signs that he felt any regret over ordering Emma’s death. “You’d better grow a thicker skin if you’re going to hang around with Liberi for the rest of your life.”
If Blake hadn’t clamped his arm around my shoulders harder, I might not have been able to resist the temptation to go slug Cyrus. I’d reminded myself time and again that he was one of the bad guys.
After today, I knew I would never forget it again.
Cyrus didn’t chortle or rub his hands together with glee as someone like Konstantin might have done, enjoying the suffering of others. But his callous indifference was almost worse. At least if he’d reveled in it, it would have told me the death of a fellow human being actually meant something to him.
Emma went limp in Mark’s arms. Unlike Cyrus, he looked like he was having a great time, but then he was in the process of becoming Liberi, stealing Emma’s immortality so that he could live forever himself. I guess that could be quite a rush for someone who was raised believing in the Olympian ideal.
Mark didn’t let Emma’s body fall to the floor until long after she stopped moving.
Before that awful day when my car crashed into Emmitt and changed my life forever, I’d never once seen anyone die. On the way back to our car, I tried to figure out how many people had died in front of me since I’d become Liberi. The fact that I had to think about it before I could be sure freaked me out.
There was Emmitt, of course. Then there was Alexis and his two cronies, who had died when Anderson and I rescued Emma from the pond. There was Justin Kerner, and one of his victims, whom I’d tried unsuccessfully to save. And now there was Emma. That brought the death toll up to seven, if