Page 157 of Fool Me Twice

“You saybrotheras though it means something.”

Arin moved to my side, instantly chasing away some of the cold trying to fill my veins.

“It does… to me.” Emotion clogged Razak’s voice. “You were always mine, my whole world. I did all of thisfor you—for us!”

All the times he’d chained me, made me dance until my feet bled, choked me to within a gasp of life, the times he’d cut me, used me, fucked me… And this wasn’t even about me. His father had hung my mother from this tree. And on that day, I’d vowed to do the same to Umair. But he’d died, far away, never knowing me, never facing justice. This was justice.

“Please…” Razak begged. “I don’t want to die.”

In the past, when I’d hurt people, when I’d killed, I’d felt nothing. But I felt something now, seeing my brother slung up in the hanging tree.

Satisfaction. Peace. Relief.

“Please,” he begged. “I love you.” Tears fell from his remaining eye, but as he searched each of our faces for a shred of empathy and found none, his tears stopped and his snarl returned. “So be it, but I have killed you too. I have killed you, Zayan! Just like I said I would!”

I placed my boot on the stool. “Dance for me, Razak.” And kicked it away.

He dropped, the rope snicked taut, and he danced, choking, writhing. I absorbed the sight of his every twitch into my memory, soaked up his every splutter, and reveled in every single one of his final heartbeats.

Until there he hung, limp. Dead.

And it was done. The story told. The nightmare over. And I was done too.

I let out a sob and dropped to numb knees in the mud.

Arin’s arm came around me. He said something about peace, asked about Razak’s final words, claiming I was dead too—then Arin noticed the blood on his hands, my blood, and he called my name.Lark, he said. Lark, like the bird. And I heard my mother tell me that one day, I’d be as free as a lark. Today was that day.

I closed my eyes. It was finally over.

I was free.

CHAPTER56

Arin

“There is nothing to smile about.”

Lark’s sleepy smile grew while his eyes remained glassy from sleep. “You’re mad.” He tried to sit up and winced as his abdominal muscles bunched beneath the bandage.

“Mad?” I asked. “Not at all.” I shoved him back down into his pillow, perhaps using a little too much force since he hissed and blinked wide eyes at me. “You didn’t think to tell me you were stabbed? It didn’t cross your mind?” All right, I was mad—furious, in fact.

He arched an eyebrow. “If I had, you’d have whisked me away, and Razak would have writhed off the hook again.” He relented and sighed, staring at the ceiling, likely thinking of his brother swinging from the rope, then peered at me from the corner of his eye. “If I said I was sorry, would you believe it?”

“Some.” He believed his actions had been right. But by Dallin, in those final moments, as Razak swung and I saw the blood on the ground, Lark’s blood… It was only by luck we’d been able to bundle him back into the carriage and get him to War’s healers before he’d bled out. Razakhadalmost taken him to his death.

“I am, you know? Sorry.”

“I know.”

“Where are we?” he croaked, looking about the room with its sandstone walls and rippling drapes. “Is this War?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s no longer War. Ogden abdicated and surrendered ruling powers to his elected council. The Court of War changed its name to Bozra, by the vote of its people. The formalities are still being processed. Many meetings, lots of documents. It’s a good thing you slept through it. You’d have hated every moment.”

“Sounds horrifying. How long was I out?”

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