Page 148 of Veil of Death and Shadow

“Suppose we could find out the slow way,” someone else said, their tone taunting. “See how far her body can be pushed before it finally breaks.”

“Human,” I said, my voice cracking on the word. “I’m just a human.”

There was a chorus of laughter, then the first voice said, “We can’t afford more issues with Claude. Just kill her. But don’t waste a bullet. Then, when the moody prick inevitably shows up to fetch his car, we can offer her body as proof we’re not working with her, that we don’t want any more trouble.”

For a moment, my mind went blank at the simple directive.

Kill her.

He’d spoken the demand with the same arbitrary conviction my customers often used when choosing between breakfast options—like, in the grand scheme of things, it hardly mattered.My life came down to a decision less meaningful than over easy or sunny side up.

Someone, Kieran, I think, yelled a deep, menacing, “No.”

His voice was loud and desperate as it pierced through the strange calm, though no one else appeared able to hear him.

Another figure walked towards me, a large blade in his hand as the guy at my back locked my arms behind me, holding me still.

When the reality of the situation sank in, I tried to shake loose from my captor, to fight, but he was much stronger than I was.

Keiran stepped between me and the person approaching. When he tried to punch them, his fist simply passed through the guy’s face. When he tried again, this time going for the knife the guy held instead of the guy himself, nothing happened. He didn’t have a strong enough foothold.

It was a ridiculous thought to have in that moment, but I couldn’t help but think that Thorne had a point. If Kieran’s only job was to hasten my death, he most definitely wouldn’t be earning employee of the month any time soon.

When I caught sight of Thorne, standing just outside the circle of Wrath recruits, he watched on with only a vague interest, though his eyes were locked on mine, the emotion in them unreadable.

“I’ll make it quick,” the man with the knife said as he reached me. And when he lifted the blade to my neck, I stopped fighting, closing my eyes only when the metal pricked against the sensitive skin of my collar bone.

“Wait!” a woman called, from somewhere beyond the circle. “Hold the order, I know her.” The knife’s cool metal stayed where it was, though the pressure lessened slightly. “I mean it, Jack. Drop the blade. Now.”

My pulse thrummed an impossible rhythm against my neck, as I opened one eye, then the second.

“Bloody hell,” Thorne grumbled, “this girl’s got nine lives.”

Jack stepped back, and I sank against the guy still holding me, my knees weak with relief.

No one spoke as a figure climbed down from a roof across the street, a gun strapped to their back, the circle of recruits parting to let them in.

They were short, dressed head-to-toe in black, like the rest of them.

And when they pulled off their mask, the breath emptied from my lungs.

The same dark eyes, button nose, and face I saw every day.

“So Claude was right. Sora is with Wrath?” Kieran asked, his mouth bent in surprise as he studied her.

Her dark hair was shorn off in a pixie cut, and there was a scar through her lip that I’d never seen before.

And then, for the second time in twenty minutes, my entire world turned upside down.

“Rina?” I stared at her, unblinking, half-convinced that if I closed my eyes for even a fraction of a second, I’d open them to find this all a dream. “You’re alive?”

“Hey, Mareena,” she said, her lips curving into a harder version of her twin’s smile, “good to see you, too.”

27

MAREENA

Approximately Seven Years Ago, Nine Months Before The Undoing

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