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“Sarah. I hope you’re feeling more like yourself now,” Hadria says, her voice cool but not hostile. “Your information played out.”
“You got shot,” she points out bluntly.
“Yes, but not because of your information.” Hadria sends a quick glance my way, but then keeps on talking. “To thank you for your help, and for Mrs. Graves’ sake, the Syndicate will offer you protection as long as you need it.”
Sarah lifts her chin defiantly. “I don’t want protection. I want to join the Syndicate.”
Hadria’s eyebrows lift only a fraction. “Your mother doesn’t want that.”
“My mother does not own me. If I’m—if I’m really free, if being out of Grandmother’s house means I can do what I want with my life, then I…I want to join the Syndicate.”
“I’ll speak to Mrs. Graves. And I’ll put it to the Syndicate,” Hadria says finally. “We’ll see what they say.”
“So Sarah gets a free pass?” I say. “She hasn’t even been out from under Grandmother’s thumb for more than a few days.”
Hadria turns her piercing gaze on me, but when she speaks, it’s not in direct answer to what I said. “It will be very difficult to kill Scarlett now, Lyssa. She saved my life, after all. I fear some in the Syndicate might object if I were to execute her now.”
“But you’ll find a way?” I ask ironically. Aurora, still sitting beside Hadria’s bedside, has not said a word since Sarah and I entered. But she’s also not taken her eyes off me. It’s a little disconcerting.
“Well,” Hadria says, a slow, humorless smile spreading across her face. “Scarlett is also very capable. Almost as skilled as you, in fact.”
I’m taken aback by the rare praise. But I don’t miss the calculating gleam in Hadria’s eyes.
“She could be an asset to the Syndicate,” she goes on.
Is she seriously suggesting that Scarlett join us? “Are you?—”
“But of course, she can’t go unpunished,” Hadria continues, her voice hardening. “An example must be made. And so I find myself at an impasse.”
“What about a gauntlet?” Sarah pipes up. We all turn to stare at her. “Grandmother used to do it as punishment. If a trainee failed badly, she’d make them walk between two lines of the other recruits. We’d beat on her as she passed. If she made it to the other side alive, she was forgiven. Her sins washed clean in blood. If not, well…” She shrugs. “She got what she deserved.”
I feel sick. Not just at Sarah’s description of such a barbaric practice—so like Grandmother, to cloak her sadism in the guise of justice—but at Sarah’s unfeeling, blank recounting of it. “Absolutely not,” I snap. “We’re not in the business of torturing our own.”
But Aurora lays a hand on Hadria’s arm, her pretty face pensive. “Actually, I think it’s a fitting suggestion. A way for the Syndicate to release their anger. Scarlett did kill some of us, after all. And it would give her a chance to prove her loyalty. Her worth.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Sweet, gentle Suzy Sunshine advocating for violence?
“What the hell?” I say. “No. No way.”
Hadria, who looked as shocked as I did at her fiancée’s sudden bloodlust, is about to speak, but Aurora leans in to whisper something in her ear.
A lover’s murmur, intimate and secretive. Aurora might put on a gentle facade, but she’s obviously learned how to pull strings. How to get what she wants.
After a moment, Hadria nods, looks back to me. “We’ll put it to Scarlett. Let her make the decision. Join the Syndicate—via the gauntlet—or…” Hadria shrugs, leaving the alternative unsaid. “Her decision will be final.” Hadria tips her head to one side. “Or are you making her decisions for her now, Wolf, in lieu of Grandmother?”
It’s a fair blow, even if I don’t like it. I’ll give her that.
“I won’t let you kill her,” I say at last. “But I will put it to her.”
CHAPTER 30
Scarlett
I wake the next morning in Lyssa’s arms, and the whole world seems to have changed. Turned good. But then I see the look on Lyssa’s face, and she explains to me Hadria’s proposal—made after Sarah’s suggestion.
A gauntlet.
A brutal tradition borrowed from Grandmother that could absolve me...or kill me.
