by Olivia Ash
She lifts one eyebrow skeptically. “Side effects? You call these side effects?” She points at her brilliant green eyes that nearly glow, a beautiful contrast to the dark hair that pours over her shoulder.
I shrug, searching for an alternative word. “Uh… complications?”
She laughs and nudges me with her elbow. “Shut up.”
“It’s good to have you back, Irena.” I loop my arm in hers and lean against my big sister’s shoulder. “I missed you.”
The hardened assassin chuckles. “Who are you, gooey fiend, and what have you done with my baby sister?”
“Oh, shut up and enjoy the moment.”
She laughs and leans her cheek against the top of my head. “You’re so damn bossy. You get one little hit of god magic and suddenly you’re in charge, huh?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, pretty much.”
After a while, I feel her slowly begin to stiffen beside me. It’s a gradual thing, like the heavy weight in the air that builds before a storm, and I eventually lean away so that I can study her face.
She’s staring at her hands, frowning, her eyes glossed over with deep thought.
“What’s wrong, Irena?”
“Is there a safe place to talk?” She casts a wary eye around us at the dragons on nearly every ledge.
“Is it, uh, mentor talk?”
She nods.
Ah.
“Yeah, follow me.”
I lead her expertly through the halls, already familiar with every route thanks to the number of times I’ve stolen through the corridors. I’m not entirely sure where we should go to discuss such a sensitive topic, but I have a pretty great spot in mind.
As I hoist myself onto the roof where I like to sit and think, Irena deftly follows. As her hands grip the black stone shingles, however, she crushes a few of them in her palm. Black dust billows into the air as a gust soars past us. Irena frowns, a confused look on her face, but she pushes through it and follows close behind me.
We sit together in the warm daylight, our arms around our knees as we look out over the forests beyond the embassy.
“I’m still not on board with all the dragons,” Irena admits. “But I see why you like it here.”
“All the hot men?” I ask with a teasing grin.
She chuckles. “You sure know how to pick them, Rory.” She whistles softly. “Kinda jealous.”
I smirk, giving her a playful sidelong glare. “Well, don’t get any ideas.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. Sisters don’t double dip.”
I laugh. “That’s just crass.”
Chuckling at her own stupid joke, she blows me a sarcastic little kiss.
“So what did you want to talk about?” I ask. “I’ve told you pretty much everything I know about Zurie’s current plans. She’s still after me, and she told me you were dead to her. She told me…” My smile falters as I trail off. As I absently fiddle with my nails, I don’t even want to finish that sentence.
“What?” Irena presses. “Tell me everything.”
I brace myself to dig into the memories I want to ignore, but I can’t avoid this. She needs to know. “Zurie told me you betrayed us.” I laugh humorlessly and shake my head in disgust. “The very idea. I knew it was a lie.”
To my surprise, Irena is completely quiet. I expected an indignant huff, or at least a humorless laugh at the news. When I turn to study her face, she hangs her head in shame, her shoulders tense. There’s a grim frown on her face.
I know that look.
It’s… guilt.
“Irena…” I don’t really know where to start. For all intents and purposes, it seems kind of like she just admitted fault here.
But… that’s impossible.
“I have a lot to tell you,” Irena admits, staring off into the forest. “You might hate me for it, but I need you to promise me you won’t leave this roof until I’ve told you everything. And if you hate me—” Her voice breaks, and she roughly clears her throat to recover. “Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you hate me for it.”
I can’t speak.
I have no idea what to say.
My heart thuds in my chest, the sinking dread tumbling through me like a cold fog as I wait for her to continue.
“We’ve been in the Spectres for our whole lives, Rory,” Irena says softly as she stares out at the forest. “You were too young to remember life before Zurie, but I remember our mother.”
I impulsively stiffen with surprise. She’s never told me this before.
“It’s just little bits,” Irena admits, studying the crisscrossing lines in her palms as she speaks. “A voice here, a face there. Her smile.” The ends of Irena’s mouth tilt upward briefly, but she sighs as she looks back out over the woods. “She was a good woman, Rory, and a brilliant fighter. She and Zurie were both mentored by Marcus Anderson, one of the most brutal Ghosts to ever live.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” I ask.
“Because I didn’t know much of it,” Irena confesses. “Not until Zurie was preparing me for my final initiation a few months ago. I was about to have everything. Power. Wealth. Control over the assholes who made our lives hell. When Zurie died, I would be Ghost. After a lifetime of preparing me for it, I felt ready.” Her nose wrinkles as a look of pure loathing passes across her face. “But then I found the files.”
I watch her cautiously, fairly certain I’m not going to like where this is headed.
“I found out what they did to our mother,” Irena says. “She just wanted a better life for us, Rory. We were young, and they were already training us to follow in her footsteps. The tests they put us through, and so young…” Irena squeezes her eyes shut as if she’s trying to scrub the images from her mind. “I found footage of some of the tests they gave you, Rory, and they made me so furious that I shot the screen.”
“I don’t remember any of it,” I say, as if that’s going to make it better.
“You do,” she says. “That kind of thing burns into your subconscious. Deep down, it’s there, and nothing I can do will ever heal it.” She shakes her head sadly. “Deep down, they scarred you. They scarred us both.” She rubs her face. “Our mother wanted a new life for us. All she did was try to smuggle us out, but she was caught. Marcus ordered her to hand us over and kill herself, but she refused. She disobeyed the Ghost. The notes on the fight itself are fairly brief, but she ended up killing Marcus, and Zurie dealt the final blow to her. She didn’t die on a mission, Rory. She was killed trying to give us a better life.”
I frown and stare off at the distant mountains, my eyes slipping out of focus as I process this new information. To think, we were so close to escaping the Spectres—so close to never having lived this life. My imagination toyed with where our mother would have taken us. A cottage somewhere distant, maybe, or hiding in plain sight in a busy city.
But from the very start, Zurie was always trying to drag us back to her.
“And then I found your file,” Irena says, her voice tense. “I found Zurie’s plans for you.”
I frown in confusion. “Plans?”
Irena nods, the look of loathing now bleeding into one of utter fury. “Who do you think betrayed us to the Vaer, Rory? If you had to guess?”
“Diesel,” I admit without a pause. “If Zurie, you, and I die, he becomes the Ghost.”
“Yeah.” Irena nods. “That’s what I wanted everyone to think.”
I watch her for a moment in horror as I process the deeper meaning of what she just said.
“You…” I can’t even form the words.
“What Zurie did to our mother was horrible,” Irena says, not really answering me. “But what she wanted to do to you was unforgiveable.”
I can’t speak. I just gape at my sister, utterly astonished at what I’m hearing.
“There’s a little known program in the Spectres called the Gold Ones.” Irena runs a hand through her hair. “In the Spectres, initiates are sometimes primed for the program with
brainwashing and obedience so they can be sold to the highest bidder to fund the organization.” Her jaw tenses. “An assassin for sale, basically, alleged to be utterly obedient to whomever owns them.” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “The younger they are when they’re brought in, the easier they are to indoctrinate.”
“Zurie wanted to sell me?” I ask, still not quite able to process all this.
Irena hesitates, still as a statue, but eventually nods. “That’s why you never got an ounce of freedom, Rory. Zurie didn’t want you to develop a taste for it. A Gold One, trained by the Ghost herself? She could have asked any price for you. You were supposed to become a mercenary to be sold off, and if she had gotten away with it, I never would have seen you again.”
The surreal shock of this news hits me hard in the chest, and for a few moments, I can barely breathe. I stare at the tiles beneath my feet, my eyes slipping in and out of focus as my brain races a mile a minute.
“My world imploded,” Irena says softly. “I couldn’t bring myself to work for these people anymore. If I waited until I became the Ghost to change things, I would lose my chance to save you. She was months away from selling you off, Rory. Months. Zurie already had three buyers lined up.” Irena shakes her head, furious and wounded. “I didn’t have much time, but the only people who can take on the Spectres are dragons.”
“So you made a deal,” I finish for her. “With the Vaer.”
“They were the only contacts I had,” she says softly. “I didn’t know they go back on their deals. I didn’t know they couldn’t be trusted.”
My eyes shift warily to her. “What was your deal?”
“I give them Zurie and the Spectres,” she says. “You and I were to be pardoned and allowed to disappear. Mason became my point of contact, and he helped me orchestrate a fake mission to steal a bio-weapon from the Vaer. Just me and Zurie. I would lead her into a trap, and he would let me walk out of it. Zurie was practically salivating over the bait. It was almost too easy to lure her in—she trusted me so completely. But when I led Zurie on that fake mission, I learned the weapon was quite real.” She rubs her eyes, sighing in disappointment and anger. “Mason promised he would wrap up the loose ends. After he injected me, when I was quickly losing consciousness, he told me he was going after you. I did everything I could to get out of there, but…” Her eyebrows twist upward, and as she squeezes her eyes shut in shame, she tilts her head toward the clouds above.
For several minutes, we sit in silence. It’s almost too much to sort through. Too much to hear.
“Why didn’t you tell me all of this?” I ask softly, a knot in my throat. “I could have helped you.”
To my surprise, she laughs. It’s a quick little sound, more surprise than humor, and she absently rubs her neck. “I knew it was risky, and I wanted to save you no matter the cost. If you were involved in any way, if they found out we were plotting something like this together, they would have killed us both.” She sighs shakily. “If I was discovered, I wanted to at least know you would be absolved. That you wouldn’t be hurt. Worst case, you would take my place and become the Ghost—and while life as a Spectre is hardly glamorous, at least you would’ve been alive.”
As I sit on my roof, sifting through everything she just told me, I wonder if there’s more to it than that. If she didn’t trust me to handle it, much like Jace seems to think he needs to protect me from the world.
I hang my head as a tremor of betrayal rocks through me, shattering my heart.
“You must despise me.” Irena says softly as her eyes scan the forests. “I won’t blame you if you do. I caused this. All of it.”
Do I hate Irena?
How could I?
I’ve done everything in my power to save her. To bring her back. To right a wrong and protect the big sister who has saved my ass more times than I can even count.
I could never hate her.
“You’re my sister, Irena,” I say softly as I battle the bone-deep hurt I’m feeling after her confession. “That means I love you, even when you do stupid shit.”
She laughs and, without another word, wraps me in her arms. This time, I don’t care that the hug is too tight. I hug her back, and we sit there in silence for what feels like hours.
“Don’t you ever try to save me again,” I add with a weak chuckle. “We do this together from now on.”
“Okay,” she says with a shaky laugh, somehow making the hug even tighter. “I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
With Irena situated in her new suite two doors down from mine, I collapse into my bed.
Alone.
The soft comforter lumps beneath me as I stare at the ceiling, eyes drifting out of focus. I need to think. To spend some time by myself and sift through everything I’ve learned.
Irena betrayed the Spectres.
Irena.
The golden child.
And she did it to save me.
She gave Mason everything—houses, codes, secrets. The only things she kept to herself involved the two of us, but he somehow managed to get his hands on those on his own. He was never supposed to touch me, but the Vaer don’t leave loose ends.
That’s all I was to them—a loose end to tie up. They never expected the situation to spiral as it has. They didn’t expect me to rise up against them.
As much as I hate the Vaer, I can’t be angry with Irena. Not really. Not now that I understand why she did it and what Zurie had in store for me. But the whole situation is still so surreal—to finally get Irena back, only to discover her darkest, most brutal secret in the same day. Only to discover the traitor in our midst was none other than the person I had spent so much time and effort to save.
My mind buzzes like a hive, and I can’t just lie here. I stand, pacing my room, looking for something to do. The gauze still wrapped around my torso itches, and I debate ripping it off—but Jace explicitly asked me not to, and I just don’t feel like fighting him on this one. With the dojo master, I really do need to pick my battles, and a bit of itchy discomfort is not worth an argument.
To keep myself busy, I unpack one of the bags I took with me to Reggie’s castle. A few shirts. A handful of modified pistols. Ammo. Some cargo pants. A few daggers.
The essentials.
When I’m done emptying the bag, it still feels suspiciously heavy. Like I missed something in one of the pockets.
With a curious frown, I throw it on the bed and rifle through the zippered compartments.
Empty.
Empty.
Em—whoa, not empty.
My hand brushes the cold metal of a tablet that was definitely not there when I originally packed my bag.
For a brief moment, I’m excited at the prospect of a mystery to sink my teeth into. How did it get here? Who does it belong to? Why did they want me to have it?
But if this made its way into my bag after the meeting with the Bosses, it probably came from one of them. After the high-stakes tension of the last few days, I have next to no patience for crap like this.
With a few tugs, I wrench it free and study it. Silver casing. Large screen. Camera embedded in the top. No branding. No markings. No notes. As I study the casing, it’s easy to tell it’s never been fiddled with. No explosives could be in there, so that’s at least worth a sigh of relief.
This is just a normal, unremarkable tablet. If not for the fact that it was definitely put in my bag with intention, I wouldn’t even bother myself with it.
My thumb taps lightly against the power button, and I wonder what will happen if I turn it on. Irena and Tucker are fast asleep. Drew—well, he should be sleeping, but who knows where he really is. Levi is out hunting. Jace is probably out cold, and I don’t want to wake him up. The man needs to recover.
With a huff, I sit on my bed and turn the thing on, my thumb carefully covering the camera.
Just in case.
It’s empty, without even the basic apps installed on this kind of model, and I wonder what purpose
this could possibly serve. The only app is used for video calls, but the account has no contacts.
Weird.
After a few moments, a data connection pops up in the notifications tray.
Instantly, the tablet rings as an incoming call hits the device.
Nope.
Not in the mood.
I press my thumb against the power button and hold it, trying to turn the tablet off, but the device auto-answers the call on the second ring.
Damn it.
Out of morbid curiosity, I quickly glance at the video to see who this is before I turn the device off completely.
An elegant woman with dark hair and bright green eyes reclines in an elaborate leather chair with silver inlays along the edge. She wears a dark dress with shimmering silver metal scales sewn into the shoulders. Thin, silver chains embedded with green jewels weave across her hair, draping over her head like an expensive scarf.
Though I know she can’t see me with my thumb covering the camera, her expression is still eerie. Her green eyes are piercing, and it’s almost like she can see right into my soul.
“Hello, Rory,” she says, her voice dark and sultry. “I believe it’s time we had a little chat.”
Wait—I know that face.
Kinsley.
The Vaer Boss.
A pop up appears on the screen, covering Kinsley’s face as it asks if I want to end the call and power down the device.
I lift my thumb off the power button and sigh in frustration. After a brief deliberation, I click cancel.
“Don’t I get to see your face?” Kinsley prods, a slight smile on her ruby red lips.
I don’t answer. This is one of the most powerful women in the world, and easily the most vindictive. Everything I say needs to be calculated, and I’m tempted not to say anything at all.
“Fine,” Kinsley says with a lazy flick of her wrist. “I prefer to keep these things short, regardless. Rory, it seems like we got off on the wrong foot. You and I don’t have to be enemies.”
“You’ve sent two of your best men to kill me,” I remind her.
