Page 22 of Of Angels & Absolution

“It’s not bullshit,” Saint growls, righting the chair. “We have to wait until the Master—”

“Why?” I demand, wheeling on him. “He chose her. We all drill the fuck out of the sacrifice—all twelve of us. Why is she special?”

“Because she is,” Angel says.

“Because she’s my sister,” Saint says at the same moment.

They stare at each other.

“You better stop that shit,” I yell, grabbing the edge of a painting on the wall. I lift it down, almost toppling backwards when the weight shifts towards me. I tip it forwards before it can and hurl it sideways across the floor. Saint takes a step back, so it doesn’t take him out at the knees, and stumbles over Angel’s legs. Angel steadies him.

“Calm the fuck down,” Saint snaps, striding toward me.

“You calm the fuck down,” I bellow, charging him. I barrel into him, tackling him around the middle. Instead of falling, he hooks his strong hands under my arms, dragging me back. When his legs hit the edge of his bed, he lets me plow him down at last, and we wind up in a tangle on his neatly made bed, courtesy of a goddamn maid who comes to clean his room every day like he’s a fucking king.

“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down,” I rage at Saint, pummeling him with my fists. “You have no fucking idea what it was like in there. Cocksucking rich bastard, they never laid a finger on you!”

“Come on, cuz,” Angel says, trying to wrestle me off our friend, our brother.

“Fuck you too,” I scream at him, wheeling around and whaling on his shoulder. “You don’t know either. You have Frederick and the wholeorganizationbehind you. Then you want to sit here and look at each other like I’m fucking crazy for wanting to get one goddamn thing? One fucking time, I want to be first.”

“Damn,” he says, gripping his shoulder and giving me a wounded look, which is funny, since the guy is twice my size and could snap my neck with his bare hands if he wanted. “You don’t have to hit me. I looked out for you, bro.”

“When you were there,” I seethe. “And even then, you were a fucking prince among thieves, so don’t act like you were some asshole guards’ little bitch just because you got sent to juvie.”

Saint wraps his legs around mine, trapping them, and flips me onto my back, looming over me. “You’re no one’s little bitch, so stop acting like one,” he snaps. “Got it?”

I wrestle to free myself until I tire myself out. There’s no way I can ever overpower him or Angel the way they can me, the way the guards did. But then, I wasn’t armed. Now I flail and twist sideways, yanking the blade from my boot in a second flat. I hold it at Saint’s throat, staring up at him as he holds me pinned.

“What now, pretty boy?” I taunt. “Should I give you a nice big Joker smile to match mine?”

I grin wide, showing all my teeth, and turn the blade so the sharp side presses into his skin, just shy of hard enough to draw blood.

“Fucking psycho,” he growls, but he doesn’t move away. His amber eyes flame with a strange heat, and I stop straining. For a second, we only gaze into each other, some flicker of understanding too deep for words moving between us. I drag the sharp edge of the blade down his skin, scraping his stubble, and his Adam’s apple bobs. My breath comes quicker, and the rage burning inside me turns into a different kind of burn.

After what happened to me, I should want to murder any guy who comes within two feet of me, but because I’m a fucking psycho, that’s not what happened. My body has other expectations, like it knows something it can’t forget, something that should have stayed a question forever.

“Hot as this is, if you’re not going to fuck and get it out of your systems, can we figure this shit out, so he stops acting like a heathen and you stop acting like a caveman every time Mercy comes up?” Angel asks, lounging back on the pillows beside us with one arm folded behind his head.

Saint grabs my throat, shoving up off me and forcing me deeper into the soft mattress at the same time. He rolls up and shrugs his shirt straight on his broad shoulders.

“No one fucks her until the Master gives the okay.”

“You mean untilyougive the okay,” I mutter, pushing myself up on my elbows.

Saint swallows, his gaze raking down my body and then away, toward the window. He frowns. “Yes,” he grumbles. “Until I give the okay. She’s my sister.”

He doesn’t say the other part, that I had to give the okay for my sister. That I knew what they were doing, and that’s why I was up on the road with Mercy while they went under the bridge, to the bank of the river. I couldn’t watch.

But this is different. Mercy’s not his blood.

“What does it matter?” I snarl, pissed at the reminder of my failure, the one that started everything. “Are you going to fuck her?”

“No,” Saint says, scowling at me.

“Then why can’t I?” I demand. I remember the way she shrank away when he asked if she wanted me to punish her. It should make me hard, but it only twists the blade deeper in, one I’ve carried around in my back since the day she told the judge what I did to her on Eternity’s floor. “Angel already went down on her. Today he got to finger her. I’ve barely touched her, and I’m the one who deserves to punish her.”

“Hey,” Angel protests lazily. “Trust, when I go down on a girl, it ain’t a punishment.”

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