by Hannah Capin
and the thunder claps hard and trembling—
—and the rain pours down.
Defenseless
Mack takes the stairs so stalking-silent I feel my chest fill up with pride. He’s the warrior king and I’m his queen and together, we are fate.
I stand on the landing in front of the grandfather clock. My wings loom wide. The shadows bury me. The rain rushes and the thunder cracks—the storm only Jenny knew was coming.
Downstairs in the living room, Banks says, “Who’s there?”
And Mack says, “Just me.”
Smoke rises up to where I stand. “God, I’m tired,” says Banks.
“Drunk,” says Mack, and they both laugh.
“That, too,” says Banks. Thunder cracks again. “Why are you still up? Even Dunc’s in bed now.”
My claws dig into the railing.
“Your girl made his night. What did he call her—” His sneer turns it bright. “‘A girl to end them all.’ I think that was it. You know drunk Dunc.”
Mack doesn’t answer.
“Got him in a good mood, anyway. Maybe he’ll be off the martial law tomorrow. You know he’s got Porter outside his door? With his damn knife. This week is fucked.”
Finally Mack says, “So was last week.”
Banks makes a low sound deep in his throat. For a long slow moment they’re both silent. Behind me the clock ticks louder. The metal inside it groans and clanks.
Banks says, “I dreamed about those girls last night.” His voice edges darker. “Turns out they told you the truth. At least part of it. Right, golden boy?”
I think, All of it.
“‘Connor will fall,’” says Banks. “Have to wonder what they know. Have to wonder—”
I send my words to Mack without speaking: Let him say it. Let him believe it.
“Have to wonder if it was Dunc all along.” Banks is slurring deeper now. He’ll fight sleep—tonight and the night it’s his turn for the dagger—but he’ll fail. “And the posters. If he’s just trying to keep us under him.”
Mack waits. The clock creaks again. “If you’re right,” he says, careful but with meaning clinging to it, “can I count on you to stick with me when the time comes?”
The silence sags with everything they haven’t said.
And Banks says, “If that’s what it comes to.”
Their handshake claps together.
I slip away down the hall to the very end. Porter sprawls outside of Duncan’s suite, his mouth hanging wide and his head heavy against the wall. Behind him, the door is cracked just enough for the spirit-stillness to leak out.
It’s a dream, all of it, almost. I’m a wraith floating close and kneeling down. I’m a guardian angel who fell from heaven before I ever got inside the gates. He’s a stupid child with drool on his face and his knife sliding out of his hand.
He doesn’t stir when my thumb grazes across his eyelids like he’s the corpse and I’m the coroner. Or when I pick up his knife and tuck it into the back of my waistband, exactly where Duncan slipped his hand onto my skin.
Or when I pluck his phone out of his pocket and press his finger against it until it blinks unlocked.
I find Duffy’s name. Dead-drunk dead-asleep Duffy, who won’t look until the morning rips all of them apart.
I text him—Porter texts him, im scared. im seeing things. he said whos next—
Porter texts him, i think its me, i think hell kill me—
Porter texts him, i dont know what to do. its already too late.
I wipe my fingerprints away. I take Porter’s blue-webbed hand in mine and press it around the phone and slide it back into his pocket.
Poor Porter. Too drunk to remember. Too drunk to be trusted with the truth once the sun comes up.
It’s his fault.
I leave him where he lies. Lightning hits, and thunder, exactly at once. Singing along the knife-blade.
In Duncan’s room Lilia sleeps on the window seat with her breath so shallow I could think she was already dead. Her king splays out across knotted sheets. Strong arms limp. Bruising hands trailing harmless.
My hand finds Porter’s knife. I close in on him. I block out the door.
I look down at my prey and I say, You’ll like it.
My knife comes up. I’ll kill him here in his bed where he can’t fight back.
There’s a flicker of light. In my head and outside and all around. I blink it away and instead of Duncan I see my father when he found me holding my silver knife and looking for a boy to kill. Then it’s dark again and Duncan is back but my hand drops.
Mack will kill him. He’s sworn it.
He’ll be the guilty one.
He’ll do it if he loves me. And if he does it, I’ll love him, too.
Mortal Thoughts
I put the knife at the foot of Mack’s bed. When it leaves my hand all the energy pours out of my fingertips with it.
I’m shaking.
I lock myself in the bathroom. A light from outside shines in and turns the wide mirror to a movie screen.
The stage is mine. Vengeance Paid, starring Jade Khanjara—
last week Elle, pretty name, but not as pretty as you, platinum blond and dressed in white—
last week that little whore with the jade-green eyes, caught and clawing—
this week new girl, twisted bitch, we’d be power, revenge-black hair and a rosy pink flock-girl shirt and a skirt too short for Duncan to ignore—
this week partners in greatness, I’ve never loved anyone more, with a boy strung so tight around my fingers and my heart that he’ll kill for me.
Kill for her.
I’m not just a girl anymore. Tonight I’m only cruelty. No pity. No mercy. No fear of what comes next.
I bring the darkness close. It sifts smoky around me and clings to my skin. No one living and no one dead will find my heart tonight.
No one will see where the dagger finds its wound.
Not until it’s done.
Outside the door Mack paces. He whispers thoughts he shouldn’t speak—
thoughts I’d hear even if he didn’t say them out loud at all—
whispers, Is that the knife?
I say, yes.
He says, I see his blood.
I say, you will.
He says, The whole world’s asleep.
I say, The whole world is dead.
He says, I hear him breathing.
I say, His time is up.
The clock chimes out its death-knell. Two long cold clangs.
He says, I’m going now. It’s done.
Regicide
The liquor that made them drunk made me bold.
The night that left them full and sleeping has me lit on fire. I can feel it burning cold along my wings.
It’s happening, right now. The most beautiful moment I’ve ever felt.
I sit on the end of Mack’s bed, exactly where I left the knife for him. Ankles crossed and claws buried in the duvet.
Outside an owl cries. It’s so close I can feel its call in my teeth and hear the breeze shift when its wings brush down. The rain is over as strange and sudden as it started.
Then—
“Who’s there?”
I leap up. If it’s Porter—
The door swings open and Mack staggers in. The knife shakes in his grip. His hands are red with blood.
“Mack!” I cry out sharper than I should but I don’t care—
I don’t care who hears or what happens in the morning—
—because his hands are bloody and Duncan is dead.
“I did it,” he says, breathless.
I take his hands in mine. “I knew you would.” I try to kiss him but he pulls away.
“Lilia,” he says. “She was with him.”
I push him back against the door. Shut the world out. I don’t want his frantic grasping questions. I want his victory and his blood-sworn devotion. “Asleep. Half dead.”
His eyes fix on our ha
nds. Bloody and bound together. “God,” he breathes out. Praying. “This is hell. We’re ruined.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I say, and finally he lets me kiss him. His lips are prison-cold.
“She laughed.” He almost gags on the words. “Lilia laughed.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“She did.”
“It’s nothing.” I pull at his knife-hand. Try to pry his fingers away from the handle. “She was asleep.”
“What if she wasn’t?” His voice is rising and curling into itself. “What if she saw?”
I get my hand onto the knife, under two of his fingers. He still holds tight. “She didn’t.”
“What if she knows? And Porter—”
“Mack!” I push him hard against the wall. “Stop it. It’s done. Give me the knife.”
He lets go. His arms drop down to his sides and his eyes fall hollow on mine.
“Wash your hands,” I say. “Drink something. Don’t leave this room until I get back.”
When I step back he slides down the wall and sits staring at his hands. “I’m afraid,” he whispers. “I can’t go back in there.”
“Good,” I say, and I hate him for his fear, even now. “Don’t.”
“Jade—” he starts, but I step over him and pull the door shut behind me. I stand in the hall, in the dark, holding the dagger.
Smiling so hard my face sparks with pain.
Porter is still asleep. Crooked against the wall exactly the way he was when I left him. I crouch down with the knife and reach for his hand—
A choking rasping gasp tears through the silence.
Adrenaline spikes through me. More than I already felt and more than I knew I could feel. I should wait. I should leave the knife and warn Mack—
But instead I stand. My claws tap down on the door and nudge it just far enough open that I can slip into the room.
The light shining in through the windows is a pale sickly green. The room floats. Lilia is still rag-doll dead on the window seat with her skin blue-white.
But the bed is bleeding a dark red circle into the sheets. A circle that blooms out from good-king Duncan’s chest.
He gasps again. The sound shatters out of him.
I take three steps closer. The souring light finds my face in the shadows.
He sees me.
He struggles harder. Pulling at the air and pushing against the sheets. Dragging his other hand to the dark place below his heart where his blood drains out.
I come closer. To the very edge of the bed. His eyes are ripped wide open. He’s terror but still arrogance.
He doesn’t believe that he’s going to die. Not like this.
He gulps at the air. The wound on his chest whines and gurgles. He chokes out, “Jade—” and thin blood trickles out between his lips.
“Duncan,” I say. My lungs are full of life and my veins are full of blood.
“Call—” he rasps, “call—”
The word bubbles wet. His eyes flash fear and he chokes and chokes.
I sit down on the bed. The silk-white sheets are soaked through. I bring my legs under me and kneel low next to him.
“Jade—” He starts to choke again.
I put one finger on his lips. His blood stains it. I hiss, “Shh.”
His face changes even under the agony. He sees it now—not all of it yet, but some of it. Enough to know something isn’t right.
He’s afraid.
He tries to speak again but his lungs fight him and win. He grabs my hand instead—the hand on the bed. I break out of his grip without even trying—
hold my hand up to the light—
—show him the knife, dirty and dripping.
He gasps sharper than before. His lungs wrack but he gasps again. Not to speak. To live.
I bring the knife down torture-slow. Touch it down on his high proud cheekbone. Trace it to his jaw. Hold it against his throat exactly where I held the broken bottle.
I smell mint and aftershave and hot blood.
He chokes on one more word. A weak drowning mew: No.
I laugh. It ripples out of me like I’m a tiny joyful child again. Like nothing in the world could ever go wrong.
I slide my knife-hand down and lock it around his arm.
Shut the bitch up, said good-king Duncan one week ago. Cold eyes. Commands his whole pack followed.
And Banks said, Fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—
Duncan’s eyes hold onto mine now the way they did last week, when I danced and spun in the glossy St Andrew’s crowd with my long hair flying and my eyes shimmering drunk and green.
He chose me. Chose who made the drink and who caught me by the statues. Chose who dragged me down the hall and who guarded the door. Chose who came with him into the white-sheets room.
Chose what happened to that little whore with the jade-green eyes.
Tonight, I choose what happens to him.
I pull his other hand away from the wound between his ribs. Weave our fingers together and press his palm to his lips. He thrashes weak and desperate.
I bring my lips to his ear. His pulse rushes shallow at his temples.
I whisper, sweet: “You picked the wrong girl.”
He goes frozen.
I pull back so he can look into my eyes. He stays as still as his dead-king statues for five tripping heartbeats and then I know—
—he knows I’m her.
He knows I’ll kill him.
Now he fights. Hard, with everything he still has. His blood pours out faster. His lungs moan and cry.
He knows who I am and he knows why he’ll die here tonight.
I lean close again. I press his hand down against his mouth, against his nose, against the tide of blood that seeps between our woven-tight fingers. He fights. I fight back.
He won’t win.
His pulse climbs faster. Spinning white firecrackers pop all around us and last week and this week melt together but his blood washes everything else away.
I press his hand down.
His lungs rattle out a sound so twisted and broken I know it’s his last.
He goes still. His silver eyes are dull and fixed.
He knows.
I pull my hand free. His falls limp against the pillows.
I kiss him on the lips.
I say, “Sleep well.”
Clean
I walk dizzy out of Duncan’s room. There’s a spinning hum in my ears and the halls shift and breathe.
Duncan is dead.
I pull his door almost-shut. I kneel next to Porter and wipe the handle of his knife against my shirt. I wrap Porter’s hand back around his knife. My fingers linger on his—let Duncan’s blood paint guilt on his hands. When I step back he’s a ruined traitor slumped in the shadows. Broken under his fear.
They’ve fallen apart. The whole glorious ravaging pack.
Something creaks downstairs. I turn toward the sound: waiting, ready, listening with ears that can hear ten times better than they ever did before tonight.
Nothing else moves. Inverness is as quiet as a crypt.
“Who’s there?” Mack calls, a tremor in his voice.
I leave dead Duncan and dead-asleep Porter. I tap at Mack’s door and he calls out again—Who’s there?
I slip in and lock the door behind me.
Mack sits exactly where I left him. Folded against the wall. Shaking. “Every sound—” he says, and his eyes don’t waver away from the blood on his hands, and he doesn’t blink. “I think they’re coming. They know. God—”
And his whole body shudders.
My heart is still pounding, flying, soaring. I can still feel Duncan rigid and terrified and then limp. Still see the sharp silver light in his eyes going out. Still taste his fear when he knew that little whore with the jade-green eyes was the very last thing he’d ever see. That all his power was gone. That all his power was mine.
I don’t have time for Mack’s stupid weak doubts. I want to grab him o
ff the floor and kiss him and shriek triumph into the starless sky with him.
I reach out. “Mack. Get up. Go wash your hands.”
His eyes shift to my hand and he shudders again. “The whole ocean couldn’t wash this blood away,” he whispers.
“Mack,” I say, and it’s harsh and biting but I don’t care. I don’t regret one single second of this and neither should he.
Kings don’t flinch at the kill.
“Look,” I say, and a drop of blood drips off my hand and onto his. “My hands are just as red as yours. And I’m glad.”
Something stirs downstairs. I feel it more than see it, shivering up my wings.
Mack feels it, too. His eyes snap up. They’re wide with fear. “Who is it?” he whispers.
“I don’t know.” I pull at him until finally he stumbles to his feet. “But you need to get the blood off your hands before they come upstairs.”
The fear pushes him in front of me and into the bathroom. He reaches for the switch but I knock his hand away. “No light,” I say.
Together we walk to the wide sink in front of the mirror. We stand far apart but holding hands. Sealed together with Duncan’s blood.
“How can you smile?” His voice is doubt and horror.
“Because it’s done,” I say. “Because he deserved it.” I turn on the water and the handle chirps out a giddy cry. “Come on. We’ll wash it all away.”
The water is cold as ice and steady. It turns red under our hands and swirls in dizzy circles around the drain.
It’s beautiful. We’re beautiful. This night, dark and deadly and stained with blood, is a masterpiece too perfect for any museum in the whole world.
I bring Mack’s hands back out of the water. “See how easy it is?”
“No,” he says. “Look at us.” In one rushing burst he pulls his shirt over his head and holds it up. “Blood. There’s always blood. We have to burn it. Take it out to the balcony—” And he’s starting on his thoughtless stupid plan already. Ducking for the metal bin next the counter and sending it scraping across the tile.
I grab his hand again. “It’s nothing,” I say, and I drop his shirt into the sink. “You ran out before he even started bleeding.”
