Page 27 of Thrown to the Wolves

Scarlett

The icy kiss of my own blade presses deeper into the vulnerable skin beneath my chin as I stare into Lyssa’s pitiless eyes, chips of dark amber. Fear is sticking into my throat as much as the stiletto, but I force the words out. “Wait! Please—at least tell me what you meant when you said you killed Grandmother!”

Lyssa’s gaze remains eerily detached, as if she’s discussing the weather instead of cold-blooded murder. “Grandmother bought me when I was a baby, along with a few others. Raised us to be perfect killers. I was her favorite, if you can call it that—but by the time I was ten, I did what she’d conditioned me for. I killed her and walked away to carve out my own life.”

Shock ripples through me, leaving me lightheaded. “Grandmother’s never mentioned knowing you…personally,” I manage.

A mirthless smirk twists Lyssa’s lips. “No, I don’t imagine she would. Not if I’m living proof of her failure. Her own little killing machine, turned against her.” She cocks her head, eyes narrowing. “So…seriously, the old crone is still breathing? Because I sliced her up something wicked.”

“Sh-she has a scar. Around her throat. Like it was cut open.”

“Someone must have found her before she bled out on the floor like the dog she is.” Lyssa’s tone is colder than the Chicago wind whipping through the construction site. She studies me with unsettling intensity, as if she can peel back the layers of my being.

And that’s what makes me believe her. Because Grandmother has the same look, sometimes. I wonder which of them learned it from the other.

“Listen carefully to me, Scar,” she says, each word precise and diamond-hard. “Get out from under Grandmother’s control while you still can. That anger simmering in your veins? You think it gives you strength, but it’s a lie. It’ll burn you to ashes from the inside out. Believe me, I know. And it makes you so very easy to manipulate. Grandmother isn’t holding a hose to that fiery rage. She’s holding a fucking gas pump.”

Abruptly, Lyssa steps back, flipping my stiletto over in her fingers and extending it to me hilt-first. I take it from her slowly, tentatively.

“Hadria ordered me to kill you,” she says bluntly. “And you deserve it, for the kills you made among my people. But if you leave Chicago tonight, if you run and don’t look back, I’ll give you a pass. Just this once.”

She turns to leave, but before I can think, I’m lunging at her again, dagger raised. In a heartbeat, Lyssa has me wrenched to my knees, arm twisted to the brink of snapping, stiletto vanished once more.

“Why do you keep doing this, you silly bitch?” she snaps, genuine frustration bleeding through her stony facade. “I’m giving you a chance to walk away, to live! Why are you so determined to die at my hands?”

“You killed my brother!” I hurl the words at her, scream them out. The agony radiating from my shoulder is nothing compared to the soul-deep anguish ripping me apart.

Lyssa makes a harsh sound of exasperation. “Grandmother has you all twisted up in the head, filling your mind with lies and half-truths. It’s what she excels at. Poisoning your mind until you’d cut your own heart out if she told you to.”

“I saw it!” I snarl. “I saw a video of you murdering Adam in cold blood!”

Lyssa goes almost preternaturally still, the very air seeming to freeze around us. “If I killed your brother,” she finally says, each word cold as ice, “then he was no innocent. No saint. I don’t kill good men, Scarlett.”

Something fractures deep in my chest and I scream again, thrashing mindlessly against her hold until she picks me up and slams me against the bricks again. “Shut up! Shut up! Adam was good and kind and—and he looked out for me, protected me! He only got mixed up in things to take care of me! He didn’t deserve what you did to him, you soulless monster! He didn’t deserve to die!”

I crumple to the filthy construction floor as Lyssa releases me, curling in on myself as I wait for her to just do it. Just kill me.

The cold is seeping into my bones, the last vestiges of my furious strength leeching away.

But I still don’t cry. Can’t cry. I haven’t cried since the night he died.

At last, I hear Lyssa exhale slowly. Sense her crouching beside me, a dark void with death in her hands and shadows in her heart. “You really believe I did this.” Her voice is almost soft. Almost wondering. “This video—I want to see it, Scarlett. If Grandmother is playing you, using what happened to your brother to break you and rebuild you as she sees fit...I need to know. We both do.”

I raise my face to stare at her. “Why do you even care? If you’re so innocent, what does it matter?”

“I never said I was innocent. I just said I never killed your brother. Or if I did, I had a good reason.” Lyssa’s smile is sharp and humorless. “As for why I care…” Her eyes go a little unfocused, as though she’s remembering something. “Because if Grandmother has risen from the grave, if she’s got her hooks in you this deep—and others, I assume?” She takes my blinking surprise as an assent, as I think about Ariadne and the other trainees. “—then that’s going to be a problem for me. For the Syndicate. And I solve the Syndicate’s problems, Scarlett. Thoroughly and with extreme prejudice.”

She straightens, stands over me, and I flash back to Ariadne in the shower, standing over me and laughing.

But Lyssa isn’t laughing.

“You should listen to me, Scar,” she says, serious and low. “Because if Grandmother sent you after me…well, she basically threw you to the wolves.”

“She didn’t want to send me—not yet,” I bite out unwillingly. “She wanted to train me more, but I…I thought I was ready. She said I wasn’t.” See? I want to cry out. She’s not all bad.

“Well, she was right about that,” Lyssa retorts. “You’re not ready.” The sting of truth makes me clench my fists. But her tone changes as she goes on. “So what do you think? We’ll have ourselves a little movie night, and you can try to convince me I’m the Big Bad Wolf of your nightmares. And if I am…well, hell, I’ll give you another shot at taking me down. Out of respect for this brother of yours. What do you say?”

I waver for a suspended instant, trying to find some trick in the seductive offer Lyssa dangles before me. Finally, I give a jerky nod.

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