Page 95 of The Final Cut

He’s quick. Good enough to hear the change in air and reach for Delia instead of me. His hand wraps in her hair, yanking her head back as his blade comes free.

Delia’s eyes meet mine.

There’s no fear. Recognition, yes. Fury. Pain. A flash of something too old and too tired to name.

I throw my knife.

It buries itself in the man’s shoulder before his blade reaches her throat. He staggers back with a curse, taking a handful of Delia’s hair with him for one brutal second before she twists, letting the prayer books fall as she uses his grip to drag him off balance. The rosary on her wrist snaps. Red beads scatter across stone.

Nash has the woman pinned against the altar, one hand over her mouth, gun under her jaw. His other hand has already ripped the phone from its stand and crushed it beneath his heel. He looks calm. I know better now. Calm is only the shape Nash gives violence when he wants it to obey.

I cross the chapel in three strides.

The man with my knife in his shoulder swings at me left-handed. Sloppy. Desperate. I catch his wrist and drive my elbow into his throat, and he drops hard. I put him out before he can make another sound.

When I turn, Delia has not moved from her knees.

Her arms have fallen to her sides. Red marks ring both wrists. One palm is bleeding where a broken bead cut into the skin. Her breathing is controlled so tightly it looks like discipline rather than pain.

I crouch in front of her.

“Delia.”

Her eyes move over my face. She doesn’t respond.

“We’re leaving.”

A laugh slips out of her, small and razored. “That easy?”

“No.”

“Then don’t say it like that.”

Behind me, Nash binds the woman’s wrists and gags her with a strip torn from a choir robe. Sabine waits at the door, face pale, eyes fixed on Delia’s knees.

Nash stands, sees Sabine, and looks back at the woman he just bound and gag. Something moves over his face, and he crouches beside her, smoothing her hair back from her face.Then, with a dispassionate expression, he found the soft recess behind her jaw and drove his blade upward at a sharp angle.

“No witnesses,” he says. He tips his chin toward Sabine. “For her sake.”

I nod and hold out my hand. Delia shudders and looks at it, but she doesn’t take it.

Her gaze moves past me to the door, the shadows, the corridor where Isabel’s house and Isabel’s lessons and Isabel’s punishments have taught her nothing comes free.

“What’s the price?” she asks.

Nash steps beside me. For once, he doesn’t sound like a man giving an order when he speaks. He sounds like a man offering the only truth that matters.

“Your sister is waiting.”

Delia’s face changes. Barely. It’s a crack in ice. A breath taken too fast. The smallest betrayal of all the years she has spent training Reva out of her voice.

“She sent you?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “She only stayed behind because we made her.”

Delia closes her eyes. When she opens them, she places her hand in mine.

I lift her carefully. Her knees buckle on the first attempt. She catches herself before I can steady her too much, pride locking her spine even as blood spots the stone beneath her feet.