Page 217 of Mud

And I couldn’t take her away.

“Basement, now,” Radock ordered, eyes up still, waiting for something that wasn’t going to come.

Kaid and Seth were by my sides instantly, waiting for me to move. I had no choice but to suffocate my anger, push it down, bury it deep inside me. Now was not the time to make mistakes. I needed to be calm if I was going to think straight—forhersake. For mine.

So I walked with them, with her still in my arms. I took her to the damn basement, even though I knew well what awaited her there, and I couldn’t stop it.

I couldn’t stop any of this right now, and it was okay.

You shouldn’t have come here, sweetness…

But I was going to take her out one way or the other.

“Apparently, she’sMud.”

Noise in my ears.

I continued to read the words on Kaid’s lips as he spoke, but those three words remained in my head.

Mud.

Rosabel,myRosabel—Mud.

It couldn’t possibly be.

“She got drained on the job. Escaped from the interrogation room where they put her when they came back from their mission. She got shot, too. They didn’t heal her.”

Radock’s eyes met mine.

The noise in my ears came to a halt. “Which meansyoudid,” my brother said.

To deny it would be stupid—he’d know. And if he didn’t, he’d asked the men who were there, who came to get me when she first came.

I nodded. “I did. She would havedied.”

“It was a wound on herleg,” said Radock with that little smile, playing with his shiny pen over his gigantic desk full of documents that he refused to sort out because he thrived in chaos.

“The infection was in her blood,” was all I said.

He’d practically raised me since Mom died, so I knew how much to say to my eldest brother to sound believable. The more I tried to convince him of something, the less he’d believe me.

“So now she’swanted,” said Seth, shaking his head, smiling. “By her own people.”

“They arenobody’speople,” Kaid said. On that, we agreed. The IDD was nobody’s, except its own. It existed to serve the council and the leaders—everyone else be damned.

“But Madeline Rogan’s granddaughter, though…” My hands fisted tightly. I hated that name with all my being. Hearing it always reminded me of the day I’d found out who Rosabel really was.

“She actually wants her dead,” my bother said.

When in prison, I’d had no choice but to learn to keep my feelings off my face quickly, but that skill was being tested today, in these very moments.

I looked at Radock as he spun his fancy pen between his index fingers and smiled at himself like he did when he felt superior.

It was all I could do not to ask,who wants her dead? Speak—now. Speak faster.

I didn’t, of course. That would be out of character for me. Radock could not know exactly how affected I was by this thing.

“Who?” asked Seth, which was accepted. Expected.

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