I pulled my collar closed.
"Dante Griffin. On your wedding day, you knelt before God and the heads of every family on the Eastern Seaboard. You looked Chiara in the eye and swore you would trust her, protect her, never doubt her. That you would be hers alone, for the rest of your lives."
"All those vows dripping with devotion. Did you feed every last one of them to the dogs?"
I didn't wait for his answer.
My gaze dropped to the strands of his hair still tangled between my fingers, torn loose only moments ago.
"No matter."
"Every wrong done to her, I will repay in full."
Dante's brow furrowed. "You—"
Lucrezia wrenched herself free of his arms and threw herself at my feet.
She flashed me a taunting smile, but the words that left her mouth were a tearful wail:
"Sister, whatever grievance you have, take it out on me! Don't hurt him!"
I was happy to oblige.
Without a heartbeat's hesitation, I swung my hand and slapped her across the face.
Then I hurled the entire bowl of heart's blood over her.
Lucrezia screamed.
The blood was still warm. It dripped from the diamond pins in her hair, ran down her temples, soaked through the black silk of her gown until the fabric clung to her skin.
She raised a hand on instinct and wiped at her face, smearing the blood into a grotesque mask.
Dante stared at Lucrezia, drenched and trembling.
As though she were the one who'd been bled. As though she were the one who'd been hurt.
Every ounce of tenderness in his eyes belonged to her. Every shred of his pity, his bias.
"Chiara, you've bullied Lucrezia since you were children. And now you use whatever affection I still hold for you to humiliate her again and again!"
"Since you drew heart's blood and still refuse to save her, then I will have every last one of those wretched spawn dug up and ground to dust. Let's see you use them to terrorize Lucrezia then!"
He turned to the soldiers standing along the walls of the room. Not one of them had moved. Not one of them would move without his word.
"Dig up the remains. All five. The firstborn. The second son. The daughter. The fourth. The fifth. All of them."
"Burn them. Douse them in lye. Then bring Alaric in to do whatever needs doing so there's nothing left. Not a bone. Not a name. Nothing anyone can pray to."
A savage pain detonated in my chest.
It wasn't mine. It was my sister's.
I froze.
Was Chiara's soul still inside this body?
Then why, no matter how many times I called for her, had she never answered?
With every word Dante spoke, the pain deepened, as if something were being ripped apart inside me, slow and alive. The room was silent except for the faint settling of the compound around us, the old walls holding their breath the way walls do in houses where too many orders have been given.
Lucrezia sat crumpled in the pooling blood, biting her lip, sobbing as though each breath cost her dearly.
"Don Griffin, my sister truly despises me beyond all reason!"
"But... but Alaric himself said those five children died because of the elder sister's wickedness. That her sins brought it down on them..."
"That's why they were smothered one by one, run down, thrown from the balcony... I grieve for those poor children so deeply..."
Dante's chest heaved violently. He erupted.
"Even after you've humiliated her to this degree, Lucrezia still weeps for those children! That is a heart of pure sincerity!"
"And you? All you do is use your own children as weapons for revenge! You don't deserve to be called their mother!"
Two lines of blood-red tears spilled from my eyes, beyond my control.
Those were my sister's tears, shed for her five murdered children.
I clenched my fists until the strands of hair bit into the flesh of my fingers.
I laughed. The sound was jagged, ugly.
"Sister Chiara! Your five children are barely cold in their graves, and you... you can still laugh?!"
Lucrezia's tears flowed without end, her expression the very portrait of unbearable grief. Three fingertips rested against her collarbone, trembling with practiced delicacy.
But I saw it clearly. The triumph glinting in her eyes.
The same look her mother had worn, all those years ago, when the two of them had wielded their fragile, pitiful act to steal Father's affection and driven Mother to weep alone every night.
"I'm laughing," I said, "because you fools don't know what you've done. You woke me up."
I raised my hand and pressed a finger to my own chest.
"Dante Griffin. Do you know what the Traitor's Brand is?"
"It is a punishment designed to destroy a living soul. They burn it into the body in stages, stripping away everything that holds a person together, until there is nothing left. No memory. No name. No self."
"I was trying to save you, and you threw it back in my face!" Dante's eyes were full of bitter disappointment. He rubbed the scar on his left palm without seeming to know he was doing it. "That ritual was meant to purge the darkness festering inside you. And it didn't do a damn thing!"
