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There’s no way to resist Lyssa when she sounds like that. I back up a few paces with her.
As for Hadria, she leaves her chair and walks toward us, stopping about halfway down the room, where she bares her teeth in what I think is supposed to be a smile. “Well, aren’t you just full of demands tonight?”
“I’m not demanding anything,” Lyssa replies calmly. “I’m just telling you how this is going to play out.”
Every muscle in my body goes rigid as I brace for the inevitable explosion.
But then Aurora rises, too, and walks with determination to Hadria. “Please don’t do this,” she says softly, looking up into her fiancée’s face. Hadria doesn’t even look at her. She’s too busy glaring at Lyssa.
And then Aurora does the most extraordinary thing. She sinks right down to the ground at Hadria’s feet, curled up before her in a position of total obeisance. I’m not the only one who’s surprised by it, either, judging by the murmurs around the room.
She looks up again and says, “Please, Hadria. Let them go. For my sake, if nothing else. I can’t bear to see any more violence.”
A flush of color is climbing up Hadria’s neck, and she bends to pull Aurora to her feet—gently, reverently, but firmly. “Sunshine, they?—”
“Please,” Aurora begs, cutting off whatever protest Hadria intended. “I know these aren’t easy choices, but Lyssa has never hurt the Syndicate. She’s done everything you ever asked. It’s time for you to trust her. To let her do what she needs to do. Like she says—everything else can wait.”
For an endless stretch, the entire room seems to hang suspended as the two women simply look at each other, caught in some silent, private discussion. Then, almost imperceptibly, Hadria’s expression softens.
“I would do anything for you,” she says in a low voice to Aurora. But then she turns to the rest of the Syndicate. “But this isn’t about me. This is about the Syndicate.”
Aurora immediately turns to face them as well. “Hadria is right,” she says. “So I’m asking all of you to trust that Lyssa is acting in our best interests, despite the…confusion we might feel about her actions. But she would never betray us—you all know that as well as I do.”
Hadria’s side-glance at Aurora suggests admiration, although only a beat of stunned silence greets the impassioned plea. “Alright,” she says decisively. “Since we’re a Syndicate, let’s put it to the vote. All those in favor of my immediately executing this assassin, Scarlett—make it known.”
A startled murmur ripples through the gathered people as they exchange uncertain glances and weighted looks. They begin to rise from the table one by one, until perhaps a third of them stand, committed to my death.
I can hardly blame them.
Hadria doesn’t seem happy about it, though. I think she was expecting more of them. “And those against?”
There’s another noticeable pause, a beat of hesitation, but I see Aurora staring at the man called Mario, the one with the knife. He makes a small face, then gets warily to his feet. Slowly, gradually, a smattering of other Syndicate members follow suit until the numbers stabilize at a rough third as well.
“What about the rest of you?” Hadria asks impatiently.
“Abstaining,” grunts one of them, and the rest of the undecideds nod their heads.
“Well,” Hadria says at last. “This is quite the impasse we find ourselves in.”
Lyssa’s fingers lace through mine again, her warm palm contrasting with the clammy chill of my own skin. She gives my hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Looks to me like the Syndicate has spoken, Hades. So Scarlett and I will handle Grandmother, just as I swore we would. Once that’s done…well, we’ll return here to face whatever justice the Syndicate deems fit. And maybe a few of the abstentions will have made their minds up by then.” She smiles, that scary look that I’ve seen directed at me more than once, the one that means she’s dead fucking serious about whatever she’s about to say. “But until we return to Elysium, anyone who gets in our way, anyone who thinks they might take justice into their own hands, will answer to me. Keep your distance if you value your lives.”
That threat settles over a silent room as Lyssa turns to leave, pulling me along in her wake.
At the door, I hazard one final look back at the assembled Syndicate. At Hadria, standing stock-still with Aurora clutching at her. At the collection of men and women sitting somewhere between disbelief and indignation as they process the events of the last few minutes.
Then the heavy doors shut behind us with a dull thud, and I stop looking back.
I look forward, to Lyssa, let her pull me with her down the stairs and out of the front doors. Within minutes, we’re back in the car, going just a little too fast down the winding drive toward the gate, which opens for us without Lyssa having to stop.
Only when we’re back out on the highway do I finally dare to say anything.
“What the hell have you done, Lyssa?”
CHAPTER 19
Scarlett
