The descent into the catacombs beneath Paris was a descent into Lena’s own personal hell. The air, thick with the damp chill of ancient stone and the ghosts of the forgotten dead, clung to her skin like a shroud. She led the way, her movements precise, her expression a mask of cold resolve she had spent years perfecting. Behind her, three of the Order’s finest hunters—Kael, a hulking brute with a zealot’s fire in his eyes; Anya, lithe and silent as a viper; and Tomas, a pragmatist who trusted Lena implicitly—followed with unwavering confidence.
They believed they were marching toward an execution. Lena knew she was walking toward a vivisection of her own soul.
Voronin’s orders had been simple, delivered with a paternal hand on her shoulder that now felt like the grip of a jailer. “End this, Lena. Prove to them, and to yourself, that your allegiance is singular. Cut out the infection before it spreads.”
The infection. He had called Rhysand an infection, a sickness of the mind. But the memories, the scent of charcoal, the phantom feel of a velvet gown—they felt more real than the cold steel of the silver-core blade at her hip.
Make it look real, she commanded herself, each step a hammer blow against her heart. Make them believe you. Make him believe you. The last part was a bitter pill. For this to work, for him to escape with his life, Rhysand had to believe she had chosen the Order. He had to believe he had lost. The thought was a shard of ice in her gut.
They found the entrance to his lair behind the false back of a wine cellar in a long-abandoned patisserie, the scent of phantom sugars warring with the earthy smell of the tunnels. Rhysand had chosen his haven well. It was a labyrinth of vaulted stone chambers, filled not with coffins and gore, but with the quiet dignity of history. Books bound in cracked leather were stacked from floor to ceiling. Canvases draped in white cloths stood like silent sentinels. A massive, ink-drawn map of 15th-century Paris was spread across a heavy oak table.
He was there, standing in the soft glow of a single lantern, as if he’d been waiting. He wasn’t armed or armored. He wore a simple linen shirt and dark trousers, looking less like an ancient predator and more like the scholar she’d seen in her fleeting memories. His eyes, pools of deep violet sorrow, found hers instantly. They held no malice, only a profound, questioning hurt.
“Lena?” he said, his voice a low vibration in the tomblike silence. He didn’t call her Isabeau. He used the name she wore now, a quiet offering of acceptance.
It was the cruelest kindness he could have shown her.
“The target is confirmed,” Lena said, her voice devoid of all emotion. It was a stranger’s voice, hard and flat. “Fan out. No escape.”
Kael grinned, cracking his knuckles. Anya drew her twin silver daggers, melting into the shadows along the wall. Tomas raised his crossbow, its bolt tipped with the faint, ominous blue of a diluted Helios compound.
Rhysand’s gaze never left Lena. The confusion in his eyes was a physical blow. He had offered her the truth, shown her a life she couldn’t remember but could feel, and here she was, leading his executioners to his door.
“I don’t understand,” he said, taking a half-step forward.
That was her cue. “You don’t have to,” she snarled, and launched herself at him.
The fight was a brutal, desperate ballet she had choreographed in her mind a hundred times on the journey here. She moved with the lethal grace Voronin had honed in her, every strike aimed to maim, to cripple, to sell the performance. Her blade sang through the air, a silver arc of death.
Rhysand met her attack with a reluctance that tore at her. He didn’t strike back. He only parried, his movements economical and impossibly fast, turning her deadliest blows aside with the flat of his hand or a subtle shift of his body. He was trying to defend himself without harming her, and it was that gentleness that fueled the ferocity of her public assault. She couldn’t afford his restraint.
“Fight me, you coward!” she screamed, the words tasting like poison. The squad was watching. Voronin was watching through them.
She feinted left, then spun into a low sweep aimed at his legs. He leaped over it, light as smoke, and for a fraction of a second, their faces were inches apart. She saw the anguish in his eyes, the dawning horror as he began to believe the act. He was starting to see not Lena, not Isabeau, but the soulless killer the Order had raised.
Good, a cold part of her whispered. It has to be this way.
Kael charged in from the side, a war cry tearing from his throat as he swung a heavy silver mace. Rhysand moved with blinding speed, deflecting the blow with his forearm. The silver sizzled against his immortal flesh, and he hissed in pain, but he used the momentum to shove Kael back into a rack of books, sending a cascade of crumbling paper and dust into the air.
While he was distracted, Anya struck from the shadows, her daggers flashing. Rhysand caught one of her wrists, his grip like iron, and twisted, disarming her. But the move left his flank exposed. Tomas fired the crossbow.
“No!” The word was a choked gasp inside Lena’s head, but her body was already moving. She threw herself in the bolt’s path, not to block it, but to alter its trajectory, striking the quarrel mid-flight with the pommel of her sword. It clattered against the stone floor, the vial of serum shattering in a puff of acrid blue vapor.
“He’s mine!” she roared, turning on Tomas with a fury that was utterly convincing. “I will finish this!”
Tomas and Kael exchanged a look of grudging respect. They saw a territorial predator claiming her kill, the pinnacle of a hunter’s ambition. They fell back, content to form a perimeter and watch her work.
Now it was just the two of them again, circling each other in the heart of the chamber. The air crackled with unspoken things. Rhysand’s breathing was heavier now, a thin line of blood trickling from the burn on his forearm. The hope in his eyes had died, replaced by a devastating emptiness. He finally seemed to accept what was happening. His stance shifted. The scholar vanished, and the ancient warrior emerged. He would not attack her, but he would not make it easy.
“So this is your choice,” he said, his voice hollow. “After everything.”
“I have no choice,” she wanted to scream. Instead, she said, “My choice is to do my duty. To exterminate monsters like you.”
She attacked again, a relentless flurry of strikes. This time, he moved with her, their bodies a blur of motion. It was a dance she remembered from a forgotten dream, the steps twisted into a violent, heartbreaking cadence. He knew her rhythms, her feints, her favorite combinations. He anticipated her moves not as an enemy, but as a partner. She used that against him.
She initiated a complex sequence he’d seen her practice, one that always ended with a high thrust. He prepared to block it, his body already moving to counter. But at the last second, she broke the pattern. Instead of thrusting, she dropped low, spinning on her heel and driving her silver-core blade upward in a vicious, tearing arc.
It was a move he never would have expected from her. It was a betrayal of their shared rhythm.
The blade bit deep into his side, just below the ribs. It wasn’t a fatal blow, but it was grievous. Silver in the bloodstream was agony for his kind, a fire that burned from the inside out.
He gasped, a raw, strangled sound of shock and pain. His eyes locked on hers, wide with a hurt that went far beyond the physical wound. The strength seemed to drain from him, his body slumping forward.
This was her moment. Her one chance to say what needed to be said. As she leaned in, her body obscuring the view from the others, her lips brushed against his ear. Her voice was a ghost of a whisper, a single, desperate prayer breathed into the space between them.
“Forgive me.”
For a heartbeat, a flicker of comprehension crossed his face. It was immediately swallowed by a wave of pain and a despair so profound it threatened to drown her. He looked at her, at the cold-faced killer holding the blade that was torturing him, and his expression shattered. He didn’t understand the whisper, or if he did, he couldn’t reconcile it with the brutal reality of her actions. He saw only betrayal.
He shoved her back, a desperate surge of strength, and stumbled away from her. He clutched his bleeding side, his face pale and drawn in the lantern light. The hunters raised their weapons again, but Lena held up a hand.
“Let him go,” she commanded, her voice cracking just enough to sound like battle fatigue. “He is mortally wounded. The silver will finish him.”
Rhysand staggered back into the deeper recesses of the catacombs, his retreat not a tactical withdrawal but the flight of a broken thing. He spared her one last look over his shoulder, a look that stripped Lena bare, that saw every lie and every truth and condemned her for both. Then, he was gone, consumed by the shadows.
Silence descended, broken only by their ragged breaths.
“A masterpiece, Petrova,” Kael said, clapping her heavily on the shoulder. “A clean, perfect kill. Voronin will be proud.”
Anya nodded, retrieving her dagger. “He never stood a chance.”
Lena stood frozen, her sword arm trembling, the weight of it suddenly unbearable. She looked at Rhysand’s blood on the silver blade, a dark stain that felt like her own. She had done it. She had saved him by destroying him. By destroying them.
The praise of her comrades was a discordant noise, grating against the screaming silence in her soul. She had proven her loyalty. She had secured her position. And in doing so, she had severed the final thread connecting her to her own heart. She was completely, utterly alone, an island in a war she no longer believed in, haunted by the ghost of a man she was forced to condemn. The victory was hollow, a mouthful of ash.