Page 52

From the moment our eyes first met, the whole world has felt as though it’s leaning towards her.

My angel.

I may not deserve a lifeline, but I will never let her slip away. Even if keeping her means marking her as mine. Ruining her for anyone else. Teaching her so thoroughly that there is no life outside the one she’ll have here.

She belongs with me.

I watch her start down the steps leading off the bluff with her little group clustered around her. I hate that she lives in that house, tucked in among people too ordinary to understand what she is. She won’t stay there long.

I’ll see to that.

At last, I turn away and head home through the woods.

The trees are quiet. The ground is soft beneath my shoes. But each step drags me back to a life filled with noise. The manor is overflowing. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. People I grew up with and now barely tolerate. My family gathers when death circles close. They fill every room, every hall, every doorway. There’s nowhere left to think.

I find Uncle Keith on the back steps, staring out over the property like the memories are hitting him all at once.

“When I was a kid, I swore I saw the Grim Reaper standing out there,” he says, keeping his eyes on the yard. “I ran inside and Grandma Anna had passed away.”

I glance over and see only the garden, its quatrefoil-shaped fountain staged neatly at the center.

“Are you looking for him again?”

“Oh, he’s here. Waiting like the rest of us for Harold to let go.”

Uncle Keith is losing his brother. His closest friend. The bags under his eyes carry his grief. It makes me wonder if my own brothers would look this distraught over my death.

I sit next to him on the step to pull his attention to something else. My problems.

“What was it like to leave this place?” I ask.

He raises a brow as if the question has crawled out of a crypt, but he humors me with an answer.

“A wake-up call. This isn’t the real world, Edwin. You’re a god here, but you’re in a bubble.”

“The Order gives you power anywhere you go.” I look out across the grounds. “How’s that acreage treating you?”

He scoffs. “The Order is a collection of rich men performing rituals because the theatrics make them feel important. It was built by a man who figured selling bootleg liquor would earn him influence and a full bank account.”

“Strength in numbers.”

“A hive mind.”

I angle towards him. “Is that why you left?”

“You never truly leave.” He pushes up his T-shirt sleeve and shows me the brand of the Serpent that was burned into his shoulder when he was twenty-one. “You can skip the rituals. Dodge the meetings. Pay your annual fee and stay out of sight. But membership is for life. If they ask something of me, I can’t refuse.”

He drops his sleeve. His face hardens.

“I left because being Sovereign twisted your dad into something he was never meant to be. He started believing every word whispered in his ear. The rituals got stranger. More sadistic. Meant to keep out the weak. I wanted no part of it.”

“Seems like it worked.”

He gives me a sidelong look, thoroughly unamused. “You’re going to be Sovereign?”

I lean back on my hands and watch as the clouds move shadows on the ground.

Birth order is not a qualification. Expectation is not destiny. But the thought of the other option in my father’s place makes bile rise in my throat.