I’m lost in thought, cracking my knuckles as my father tries to stop his nosebleed beside me with the back of his hand when I hear Elijah barking my name.
“Maverick,” he snaps again, clapping his hands as he does.
I jump, sit up straighter. “Yes, Dominus?”
“Where. Is. Ria?” he snarls, as if he’s already asked that question a few times now.
I swallow down my anger, trying to get myself under control. Ria. I need to think about Ria. Something I’ve been doing my best not to think about. “I don’t know.”
Elijah arches a thick brow. “You don’t know,” he repeats, but it’s not a question.
“You heard me,” I snap back. Wanting to fuck Ella’s brains out again and blow out my father’s is making me antsy. And angry. What is going on with me?
Elijah looks displeased. I don’t give a fuck. “You need to find her. We need to be absolutely certain she is not going to talk to anyone, about anything she knows.”
I see Atlas glaring at me and my thoughts go to Natalie. To his admission they got in a fight.
“Right,” I mutter to Elijah.
“And in the meantime,” he continues, “you’d do best to consider…branding her.” He clears his throat. “Coagula.”
I nearly break my neck, I look up at him so fast. “What?”
Elijah laughs, a deep rumbling sound that is totally at odds with how I’m feeling. “Oh, you had to know this was coming, didn’t you, Maverick?”
My entire body is tense. I clamp the edges of my chair to keep myself from standing to my feet and saying something very stupid. “No, actually, I fucking didn’t.”
“Watch your tongue,” Elijah scolds me. “I’m giving her a reprieve, considering she got into this through no fault of her own.” It’s clear, the way he’s looking at me, that he’s suggesting this is all my fault.
Don’t I fucking know it. If I hadn’t gone to my father with what she found, this could’ve all been avoided. I’d been trying to be loyal. Now I don’t know who deserves that loyalty.
“But in the end, she cannot leave AU without being…dealt with.” He leans back in his chair. “One way or another.”
I clench my teeth together, determined not to say it. To let it go. Because the more I push, the more we’ll have to talk about her, and I don’t want to. I also don’t want them to know where I’m hiding her. But despite my very best efforts, I can’t keep quiet.
“Weren’t you just saying my father deserved to be fucking hit in the face for what he did to Sid? To Brooklin? And now you’re calmly discussing killing another girl because she knows that we’re all a bunch of fuck ups?”
Lucifer is staring at Elijah. Atlas is staring at me. Ezra has his head buried in his hands, and Cain is looking at the table, like he’s bored.
Elijah looks like he wants to kill me. Be my guest, I want to say, but I guess I’ve said enough.
“The 6 cannot have interferences. You know that. Ria Cuevas is an interference.”
“We’ve threatened her entire family. Unlike us, she actually gives a shit about her relatives. I don’t think she’s going to speak.”
Elijah shakes his head. “Oh, Maverick. I know what it’s like to be young and idealistic. But that won’t do. Consider what I’m asking you. From what I know of her, Ria would make a fine wife, and she would be allowed to live out the rest of her life in peace—”
I push to my feet, my fist against the stone table. “Do you fucking hear yourself?”
His mouth presses into a line and Ezra picks his head up, hisses my name. I ignore him.
“We’re going to kill an innocent girl because she knows we’re fucked?”
“Maverick, sit down. Your juvenile attempts at morality are amusing, but we both know you’re just as fucked as the rest of us.”
My skin crawls. My back aches. I think of Ella. How I want to hurt her. How it gets me off. How it gets her off.
We’re all fucked.
“Sit. Down.”
Atlas’s and Cain’s fathers are staring at me with hard eyes and I know I’ve crossed a line. With effort, I force myself to sit, wanting the entire time to turn to my father and bash his brains against the table.
“After Noctem, we’ll make a final decision regarding this,” Elijah says, warning lacing his tone.
That means I’ve got eight weeks to think about what sort of sadistic punishment they’re going to give me at the Night ceremony. Three nights of torture, and in the end, I’ll probably be begging for them to kill me. It’s like how the military takes soldiers apart to put them back together, so they’re all freakishly bonded. That’s Noctem. A dismantling of our minds, to make sure they stay under the influence of the 6.
Lucifer clears his throat, breaking the tension for a second. “Now,” he says, his eyes on Elijah, “let’s talk about when you’re going to burn this place to the fucking ground, Dominus.”
Elijah is quiet a moment, and I watch the two of them carefully.
Finally, Dominus speaks. “We can’t just burn it down, Luce—”
“That’s exactly what you said you were going to do.” Lucifer’s voice is calm, but I know him better than that. We all do. He’s pissed.
Elijah sighs, sinks back into the red leather chair. “There are centuries of traditions in here—”
“You told me that you were going to level it,” Lucifer says through gritted teeth. “And I told her.” He’s staring at Elijah in a way that makes me nervous, and a little giddy, too. Another show that doesn’t involve me.
Elijah sighs again, scrubbing a hand over his face like he’s momentarily forgotten that as Dominus, you don’t do shit like that. “Lucifer, the sooner you get used to disappointing your wife, the easier you’ll find your time here in the 6.”
He should not have said that.
Silence rings out.
Lucifer stands to his feet.
“What?” he asks, giving Elijah a chance to try again.
But Elijah obviously wants to die. “Fuck, Lucifer!” He slams his fist on the table. “Listen to what your brothers and your uncles are telling you!” he roars, standing to his own feet. He’s shorter than Lucifer, but not by much, and Elijah is built. I’m not sure who would win in that fight, but it would be pretty brutal. “You are lucky!” he hisses, leaning over the table, his palms pressed down onto it. “You’re lucky that Sid is your wife, and not buried behind this cathedral, where your father is!”
Lucifer looks like he’s going to combust into flames, but he doesn’t move, he just stares down Elijah like he’s marked him for death, too.
“You are lucky that we didn’t kill you for that offense. In light of the circumstances, we thought your actions were justified. But that does not mean you can do whatever the fuck you want and get away with it!” His voice only rises in anger as he slams his hand against the stone table again.
They’re punishing us. It’s why Elijah said he’d burn this place down and backtracked on it. It’s why my father is here, and still breathing. It’s why they keep pushing Noctem. This year’s is going to be brutal.