To ruin an Omega - Chapter 363: Burn a bridge 2

Chapter 363: Burn a bridge 2

PAULINE

“No.” I set the moisturizer down. My reflection looked back at me with something sharp in the eyes now. “If Aldric is going to perish now, we can forget about her. She will not be a risk. It is not like she knows much anyway. We can coexist.”

“She has been living without any pills.” Valentine’s voice lost the lightness entirely. He was serious now. Focused in that way that made him dangerous. “And with the way her blood reacted when I tried to touch its matter, she is definitely awakened. She is different. I can feel it.”

I closed my eyes.

“Valentine.”

“I did my research. Even her mother, although she lived a decently long life, used her gifts clearly a bit too much and the side effects of it… it killed her. I have to have her, Pauline.”

“Skollrend is a giant pack that will burn the world if its Luna is touched.” I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection. “I will be caught in the crossfire. Again.”

“I’m not killing her. She will be returned. I just need to observe her. The girl will be safe.”

“Goddess, are you insane?” The words came out harder than I meant them to. “You are the reason I got caught in Aldric’s crossfire in the first place. And now that we are free, now that we are rid of that bastard, you want to shackle me again to a new prison?”

“I’m doing this for your sake too.”

I laughed. It came out sharp and ugly.

“For my sake?!”

“Think about it,” Valentine said. “Call me back when you aren’t so emotional.”

Then the line went dead.

I stared at the phone in my hand. At the dark screen where his name had been a moment before. Then I set it down very carefully on the counter and pressed both palms flat against the marble.

He was going to do it. I knew he was. He had that tone in his voice, that particular stubborn certainty that meant he had already decided and was just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. He was going to go after Fia. He was going to take her and study her and pull her apart to see how she worked, and when Skollrend came burning after him, I would be the one standing close enough to catch fire.

No.

I straightened up.

No, I was done. I was done being dragged into his messes. I was done paying for his mistakes. If he wanted to fly too close to the sun again, he could do it alone.

I had to put my foot down. I had to save myself.

I walked out of the guest bathroom and crossed the hall to the main bedroom. I did not knock. I just pushed the door open.

Marcus was still half asleep. He blinked at me from the bed with that confused, soft expression he only ever wore in the mornings before he remembered who he was.

“Come to apologize?” he asked.

“Over my dead body, Marcus.”

“Dimitri.” He corrected as usual. But I ignored it.

I went straight to the dresser. Third drawer down, all the way in the back, behind the scarves I never wore. My fingers found the pill bottle and I pulled it out.

Marcus sat up straighter.

“What are you doing?”

I did not answer. I just walked back out and shut the door behind me.

The guest room was exactly as I had left it. Bed still unmade. Phone still on the nightstand. I set the pill bottle down next to it and then I stood there for a moment, breathing slowly, thinking about what came next.

Then I called.

Not with my voice. Not out loud. Just the way I always did. The silent pull that Number Four always seemed to feel no matter where she was in the estate.

I waited.

One minute. Two. Three.

Then the door opened.

She crawled inside and closed it behind her. She was wearing a black hoodie, the hood pulled up over her head, but it did nothing to hide the way she looked. Her skin had gone the color of dead bark. Gray and rough and cracking at the edges. The lesions had spread up her neck and onto her jaw. I could smell it from where I stood. That sweet, rotten smell of tissue breaking down from the inside out.

I tried not to look disgusted.

“Your punishment is over,” I said. “I will have mercy on you. But I do hope you have learned your place in the grand scheme of things.”

She nodded immediately. Her head went down and stayed there.

I picked up the pill bottle and shook out two of the rosy-colored tablets. They gleamed faintly in my palm. I held them out to her.

She took them and threw them into her mouth without hesitating.

The change was immediate. The lesions began to fade, the gray color bleeding out of her skin and leaving something that looked almost normal underneath. She gasped. Then she started to cry.

I stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. She was small against me. Fragile in a way that made something twist uncomfortably in my chest.

“It is alright,” I said quietly. “Suffering exists for a bigger purpose. You have learned your lesson.”

She nodded against my shoulder. Her breathing was uneven.

“Now you just have to keep doing what you are doing,” I continued. “Earn your keep.”

She pulled back and looked up at me. Her eyes were red but clear.

“You have a new job for me?”

“Yeah.” I let go of her and stepped back. “It will be your last mission. Then you will be free of me.”

She went very still. That wariness came into her face, the kind you saw in animals that had been hurt too many times to trust kindness.

“What is it?” she asked.

I looked at her for a long moment. Then I said it.

“You have to kill your maker. Valentine.”

She stared at me. Her mouth opened slightly but no sound came out.

“Don’t you want revenge for what he did?” I kept my voice soft. Reasonable. “I know you do.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “But I won’t be able to hurt him. Just like I cannot hurt you.”

Fuck.

I had not thought about that.

“And if he dies,” she continued, “who will make the pills?”

I looked at her. At the fear in her eyes, the desperate calculation happening behind them. She thought the pills were her only lifeline. She thought Valentine was the only one who could make them.

“You must be way over your head if you think I didn’t make insurance regarding the pills.” I crossed my arms. “The man is a mad scientist. It would not have taken long before he flew too close to the sun.”

She blinked.

“Okay then,” I said. “Just watch him. And the day he tries to do anything to the girl I sent you to kill, the one you failed to finish, do it again. Kill her. Or try to. You have to make sure the blame falls on him. Then you will be free of me.”

Number Four looked at me for a long time. Something moved across her face. Hope, maybe. Or disbelief. They looked similar sometimes.

“You will give me my freedom?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You will not have to be in Nocturne anymore.”

“And the pills too?”

I nodded again.

She looked like she did not believe me. But she also looked like she had no choice but to believe me, because what other choice was there anyway?

“Okay,” she said quietly.

I reached out and touched her shoulder. Just once. Just lightly.

“Good.”

She left the same way she had come. Quiet and small and disappearing back into whatever corner of the house she hid in when I was not calling for her.

I stood there alone in the guest room with the empty pill bottle in my hand and the weight of what I had just set in motion sitting heavy in my chest.

Valentine wanted to drag me into another fire. He wanted to reach for Fia and pull her apart to see what made her tick, and he did not care who burned when Skollrend came for him.

But I cared.

I had survived too much to go down for his curiosity. I had buried too many things to let him dig them all back up.

If he came for that girl, Number Four would be there. And if Number Four failed again, at least the blame would fall on him. At least I would have distance. At least I would be able to look Skollrend in the eye and say I had nothing to do with it.

I set the pill bottle down on the nightstand.

Then I walked to the window and looked out at the garden. The rose bushes were still there. Isobel’s roses, stubborn and thriving despite everything.

I would do one good deed too. I would hand number four over to Lily of the Valley.

A win win at this point.