Reckoning (Sacrifical Duet Book 1)

by Riley Ashby

  Maddie gasped, jerking upright and bumping my chin a little. I stood straighter, letting her go for a moment to rub my jaw.

  “Do you see that?” she asked excitedly, leaning out over the edge.

  “What is it?” I asked, alarmed, ready to summon security. But she grabbed my hand and pointed my finger into a nearby tree. I dropped my cheek next to hers once more in order to get her vantage point.

  “It’s a little far back, and there’s a branch, but—”

  “I see it.”

  Tucked away among the branches of a nearly bare maple tree was the snowy face and chest of a barn owl. It hooted again as if sensing our gaze. I threaded my fingers through Madeline’s and wrapped around her again. We both watched the owl as it sat nearly motionless, only moving its head from time to time. Once, it twisted nearly all the way around, before seeming to look at us again. Without warning, it swooped toward the ground in a noiseless dive. We heard the distressed squeak of some unlucky animal and watched the bird as it took off deeper into the trees.

  “Silent but deadly,” she mused. “You.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “You broke my heart. That’s close enough.”

  Moving as little as possible to keep the lights from turning on again, I spun her in my arms to face me. “I’ve never needed anything in my entire life. Until you came along.” I could barely see her face in the darkness.

  “You’re supposed to hate me.”

  “I wanted to; I really did. You showed me what I was missing. I hate you because it reminds me that my world isn’t as complete as I thought it was. I can’t even do that right.” I lowered my forehead to hers, letting her breath warm my skin. “Do you hate me?”

  Her voice was quieter than the wings of the owl. “Not right now.”

  I sighed and nudged her hair with my nose, breathing in that vanilla scent once more. I’d have to buy as much of that shampoo as I could to ensure she never ran out. I wanted to bathe myself in her essence and carry her with me all the time. “It really could. Be like this all the time, I mean.”

  “You said that before, and what I said is still true. Only if we stayed here. Only if we never saw your family again. Only if we forgot everything you’ve spent your life building.”

  Couldn’t she pretend just for a minute? “We could leave.”

  Her laugh was mirthless. “You’d never quit the business.”

  “I would. We could disappear.” Why was I so intent on making her believe this?

  “I’d never quit my business.” She put her hands on my chest, curled her fingers, and grabbed handfuls of my shirt. Her breath was shaky. She bit her lip as she stared at my chest, tears shining in her eyes. She wiped them away before looking up at me. “Would we go with my parents?”

  I touched our foreheads together again. Our skin rubbed together as I shook my head. “He’d find us.”

  “What does he have on you? Why wouldn’t he let you go?”

  My heartbeat picked up. “He doesn’t have anything on me.” My voice cut through the cold air like ice, shattering this illusion of camaraderie we’d built.

  “Then why are you so afraid of him?”

  We were not going to have this conversation. I tried to push away, but she held tight to my shirt.

  “Maybe it could be like this if you really wanted it.” She sounded pleading now. Our roles reversed—her intent on finding a way for us to make this work against all odds, and me convinced it would never happen no matter how far or how fast we ran.

  “You don’t think I’ve tried to get out?” I didn’t want to touch her anymore. I tried to push away, but she pulled me back against her.

  “I don’t know, Meyer. I’ve yet to see you fight back. But when you get a few days’ distance, you’re different. You make me happy, no matter how hard I try to hate you.” The sound that came from my mouth wasn’t really a laugh, just a harsh exhalation. “And you bought me a horse.”

  “You bought the horse.”

  “Stop it, Meyer.” I was aware of how she kept saying my name. Each syllable made my stomach roil. “I don’t remember a ton about that night, but there was only one horse in that auction. And you specifically told me that you had crossed it out. You tried to mock me when I thought you were actually trying to do something nice for me. But I think you were—even though a second later, you tore me away from my mother.”

  My stomach clenched at the memory. “She was trying to take you.”

  “I belonged to her before I belonged to you.”

  “You belong to me now?” My hand cupped her cheek as my heart leaped.

  She frowned as she placed her hand over mine. “I belong to myself.”

  We stood in the quiet cold, our breath warming the space between us. Behind me, I could hear drunk partygoers yelling, but they stayed far from where we were.

  She licked her lips. “You’re not going to argue with me?”

  “I don’t want to argue anymore.”

  She sighed. “That’s the other thing that goes when you get your distance. You stop fighting to own me.”

  “I want to own you all the time.”

  “Not in the same way. You stop being all angry alpha male and go soft on me. Indulgent. Sweet.”

  “I’m not sweet.” I pulled her closer and nuzzled her neck. She laughed, and it was like birdsong.

  “You’re right. Where did I get that idea?” She lifted her head away from mine and put her hands on my face so gently, my entire body tensed. “Do you think you could love anyone, Meyer?”

  The nipping tendrils of my anxiety started to rise again, smoldering anger licking at my pulse. How dare she ask me this question? She ought to know better. “I have before.” I was too warm. My back was damp with perspiration, even though Madeline still trembled slightly in the cool air. I broke away from her long enough to pick up my jacket and slide it around her shoulders. She didn’t remove it this time. I moved slowly, not wanting to trigger the lights and ruin the spell.

  It could be like this. I could make it work, somehow.

  “You know what you need to do if you want any chance of this.”

  I was shaking. “I know what I need to do, yes. I don’t think you do.”

  “But you wouldn’t do it? Even for me?”

  One tear rolled down her cheek. I wiped it away with my thumb. “No. Not even for you.”

  She sniffed and turned her head slightly, looking over my shoulder. When she spoke next, her voice was resentful. “I wonder if you’ll ever stop making a fool of me.”

  “Fuck, I hope not.”

  I kissed her.

  It was nothing like our previous embraces—the frantic, forbidden, stolen moments hiding our emotions from paparazzi or each other. Neither of us was injured, and we were safe from Conrad. It was the way our first kiss should have been if things had been different. I sank into her slow and deep, wrapping that smooth hair around my wrist and tugging her neck back. She responded by sliding her fingers up my temples into my hair, not grabbing it but simply running her fingers through the strands ceaselessly.

  I tried to pour everything I could into that kiss and tell her the things I was too afraid to say out loud. But even though I wanted to say so much, I got lost in her too easily. Kissing her was like slipping into deep water, all soft ripples and unbeatable gravity. My hands tightened, grew bolder, and I pressed her against the railing behind her. I could taste her hesitation, but she didn’t pull back. She laced her fingers together behind my neck and held me, not giving me a chance to pull away and speak or do anything else to ruin the moment. She whimpered, and it sounded like defeat. Not giving up but acquiescing to something. Something we both wanted.

  I was seconds away from breaking and carrying her out of there on my back when the motion sensor lights kicked on.

  At first, I thought we must have moved too much, but I heard the sound of a door opening as Maddie ducked out from under my arms. I ran a hand through my hair and then over my li
ps, tasting her lip gloss. My jacket still rested around her shoulders as she braced herself against the railing with one arm, the other over her chest, facing away from me.

  “There you two are! I hope my brother isn’t doing anything untoward.” Anita walked over to Maddie and hugged her, blind to her body language that screamed to be left alone. I knew she was drunk when she kissed Maddie on the cheek, but she was steady in her heels. She’d had plenty of practice. “I have something to show you. Come with me.” My jacket fell to the ground as Maddie rolled her shoulders to drop it. She didn’t look at me.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I said, trying to sound authoritative, but Anita stuck her tongue out at me as she pulled Maddie back inside. Maddie, for her part, didn’t bother to turn around. She straightened her back and held her head high, shoulders stiff and hardly moving as she walked. The door swung shut behind them, and I was alone.

  I bent to pick up my jacket and brushed off the debris, draping it over one arm rather than back around my shoulders. The door opened again, and Joshua stepped out into the cold with me. I stiffened immediately, still unsure how much I could trust him. He hadn’t said much except to apologize for leaving her, but I’d hired someone to look into his finances to see if he had some other stream of income with my father’s name at the end of it.

  “She’s up to something,” he said, stopping a few feet from me. “Anita. She’s not as drunk as she’s acting.”

  “Hmm.” I couldn’t focus. I was too focused on not murdering my sister. “What could she possibly want from Madeline?”

  “I don’t know. But Meyer—you should follow them. She’s acting too much like your father.”

  He hopped from foot to foot, breath forming clouds around his head. I didn’t much care if he was cold. I felt fine. Fine, except I was trying to figure out if he was being serious or trying to lure me into some sort of trap.

  “I know you don’t trust me right now, Meyer, but I’m being serious about this.”

  The inside of my cheek was raw from my teeth. I shouldn’t trust him. But he stepped toward me with hands outstretched, looking for all the world like he was truly concerned.

  “Something is wrong. We need to be vigilant.”

  The way he was looking at me, I didn’t think he was lying. He almost looked … worried.

  “Okay.” I shrugged on my jacket and walked toward him. He sighed in relief. “Let’s go.”

  Madeline

  I felt drunk, more intoxicated than I’d ever been at college frat parties or weekend-long birthday celebrations, despite rationing my alcohol intake. Meyer had been slowly cracking open before me for days, but tonight, I’d finally hooked my fingers on the sharp edges of the framework he’d erected to hold himself up. I stared at my hands, half expecting to see blood where I’d cut myself, but there was nothing.

  Was I willing to keep prying, knowing that doing so could destroy me more thoroughly than anything Conrad had planned for me?

  I stumbled and fell into a wall, breathing heavily. This was too much for me to think about right now. I needed time alone, but Anita hooked her arm around my waist and pulled me upright.

  “Did you decide to mainline the alcohol tonight?” she asked but didn’t wait for a reply. She dragged me across the sparsely populated dance floor and through the dining area littered with chairs and teeming with staff setting about the arduous cleanup. Most of the guests were gathering coats, calling valets, or throwing back last drinks at the bars. They’d head home in cars driven by other people to fall into bed drunk, but together. I guessed I’d fall into Meyer’s bed myself. Was there a point in holding him off anymore? Was it worth it to try to find some happiness with him in this twisted game we were playing when I knew he wasn’t really in charge?

  One woman in a midnight blue gown ran barefoot through the room, pulled a matching clutch from beneath one of the tables, and then sprinted back to her scowling husband. I heard him whispering to her harshly as he led her outside by her elbow.

  “God, can you imagine? My husband is going to have to accept that I’m a social alcoholic if we have any chance of being happy together. I don’t need to be lectured every time I lose my phone at one of these events.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to avoid talk about the future. Husbands. Happiness.

  “Surprise. I had to wait until most everyone else had taken off.” We walked out some side door, and I braced myself against the cold. Why didn’t I keep Meyer’s jacket? I was beyond chastising myself for letting him kiss me again. And I was done fighting him off. If he came for me, turned on that alpha male charm, and told me to fuck him in the back seat of his car, I would. It was too painful to fight. Which was why it was suddenly so much more important to get out of this cage and be distracted for a few more minutes.

  Anita steered me through cars, ducking us down as valets ran back to retrieve new vehicles as quickly as they could. We could hear the chatter of the guests as they waited for their cars—Audis, Porsches, and Maseratis by the dozens. I trailed my fingers along paint jobs that cost more than my house. Anita slapped my hand down.

  “You’ll set off an alarm and get us caught.”

  “But what are we doing?” It was even darker out here than it had been on the porch with the lights out. I squinted, trying to see better, but it made no difference.

  “You’ll see.” We scrambled down the road until it met the water of the reservoir where the air felt close to freezing. The dirt that led away to the dock was hard from the cold, but my heels still caught along the rocks in the ground. Anita was faster on flats. When had she changed her shoes? I was aware that we couldn’t hear the other party guests anymore, and it was deathly quiet by comparison. The water lapped softly against the poles of the metal dock. We stopped at the edge, and when I looked over my shoulder, I couldn’t even see the house. We were out in the open but totally alone.

  “I always thought drowning would be an excellent way to die,” she said, looking at the moon. Like her brother, she didn’t seem cold at all. “But then I watched a few too many TV shows. Have you seen how bloated the bodies always are? Not pretty at all. Though I suppose that if they didn’t find your body, everyone would just remember what you looked like before you disappeared. That’s why it’s important to always look your best.”

  “What’s the point, Anita? I’m freezing.” The cold had chased away the mild intoxication that had plagued me minutes before. Without the shelter of houses or trees, or Meyer, the cold wind bit through the insubstantial fabric of my dress to chill my entire body.

  “The point is, Madeline, that it’s a perfect way for you to die.”

  I was shaking, rubbing my arms, but Anita was totally still as I turned to face her. “What?” Did I hear that right?

  “You’re going to die, Madeline. Drown. Or at least come close. I guess you might be able to swim back to shore before you freeze.” She pointed at the waterline, far below the dock. “The water’s so low right now, there’s no way you’re hauling yourself back up. And I’m going to hit you pretty hard before you go in, anyway.”

  She was so blunt and straightforward that I couldn’t take her seriously.

  “Are you high? You sound like a Bond villain.”

  She shrugged, facing out into the lake again. “I kind of feel like one. I’ve been wondering what it would be like to actually kill someone, and you present a perfect opportunity. It’ll perform the additional purpose of pissing off Meyer and Daddy, even if they never know it was me. I know that Daddy has been hoping that Meyer will fuck up so badly that he’ll get to take you for himself just to prove a point, but he’s being particularly patient. He never would have put up with this kind of insolence when Meyer was younger.” She laughed, and it echoed. “I remember when Meyer tried to get out after he graduated. Daddy beat him with that baseball bat he loved so much until his arm broke in two. He showed me how Meyer’s elbow touched his wrist while we waited for the doctor.”

  I was
sick to my stomach, very aware that everything Anita was saying was true. No wonder the scarring on Meyer’s arm was so bad. The bone must have punctured the skin. And Anita was the child that Conrad always wanted—cold and psychotic, but unfortunately female.

  He’d try to tell me; they both did. I didn’t listen.

  “You’re insane.”

  “I’m my father’s daughter.” Her teeth glinting in the moonlight looked like fangs. She took a step toward me, closing most of the distance in one stride. “And I’m sick of waiting around to prove myself. You’re the perfect opportunity for me to make a statement. You don’t matter at all. No one misses you now, and they won’t when you’re gone.”

  She swung at me, but I was expecting it. I jumped back, but my heel caught between the metal slats, sending me tumbling to the dock. My elbow rang as it hit the funny bone. I scrambled to kick off my shoes, but Anita landed a kick to my ribs that forced the breath from my lungs.

  “Stop,” I wheezed breathlessly, remembering how ineffectual that word was against the other members of her family. She fell on me and grabbed my head between her hands. Her fingers were as cold as the air as she slammed my head into the dock. She didn’t have much room to work with, and though I felt pain, it didn’t do the damage she had hoped. I swung out with my own arms and caught her tiny ribs, but she just laughed.

  “This is fun,” she said, cackling maniacally. “I’d love to have some battle scars. Hit me a little harder.”

  She sat back, giving me room to move, and I attempted to roll her onto her back. She drove her knee into my chest.

  “Not good enough, Madeline.” This time, when she swung, it landed right between my eyes with enough force to jar me on its own. My head jammed back against the dock again, harder this time, and my vision swam as pain radiated down every inch of my spine.

  “Better,” she said, sounding pleased, and hit me again in the same place. Vomit rose in my throat. I stopped trying to fight and started trying to crawl and free myself from her, but I didn’t know which way to go. My senses were obliterated by the pain pounding behind my eyes and ricocheting through my skeleton. My hand fell off the edge of the dock and dangled toward the water. I managed to scream when Anita brought her foot down on my ankle, but it wasn’t nearly loud enough to do any good. She brought her fists down in the small of my back, and then I was falling into the water.