I’m not too late. I’m not.
To my astonishment, Wedderburn must’ve asked her to put him on speaker. His voice snapped from the intercom. “Yes, send her up. There’s something I want her to see.”
If it’s Kian’s body … the careless cruelty of it would unmake me. But then, that was Wedderburn’s specialty. Ice doesn’t care who it harms. My knees quivered and I locked them, holding on to the reception desk for support.
Kian, you ass, I don’t need a hero. I just want you.
Wearing a deep frown, Iris scrawled a code. Like before, she warned, “This will get you to the proper floor and nowhere else. It will only work once.”
The elevator was spooky in silence, no tinny music today, but it moved so fast I heard the rushing air beneath it, as if I had been sucked up into a monstrous maw. I half expected teeth to crunch down and smash me like a bug in a can. At last, the car stopped and I got out. Wedderburn strode down the hall toward me, unusual. I had never seen him out of his office. When I realized Kian wasn’t with him, I choked down a tide of angry questions.
“How delightful of you to come,” he said. “I was starting to worry that you’d overslept and we’d have to start without you.”
Without another word, he led me back to his office and threw open the door. I braced for the sight of Kian in a pool of blood; my brain was ready for it, Dr. Oppenheimer whispering in my ear, The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true. But it was the best of all possible worlds. Kian whirled, alive, breathing—breathing and glaring—but alive. His jaw tightened, and his eyes went livid with a ferocious blend of fear and anger.
Wedderburn shut the door behind him with a restrained snick. Displeasure radiated from him like frost snapping from winter-withered leaves. He paced, so that his movements reminded me of the back-and-forth sweep of a blade across a weighted trap. Sooner or later, the axe would fall.
“You’re here to bear witness to his judgment?” he asked. “Brave of you.”
“Not exactly,” I started to say, but Wedderburn wasn’t listening.
“There is no doubt. Kian Riley serves you now, not me. And a tool that cannot be trusted to its purpose is irrevocably broken and must be discarded.”
Shit. I knew exactly what that meant.
I said desperately, “He doesn’t serve me. He cares about me. Surely you can understand the difference.”
“I gave him an order … and he did not follow it. Instead, he told you the whole of my plan and tried to help you escape, using my resources. I have the report here.” With icy irritation, he tapped the page on his desk. “That is … disloyalty. I saved his life, you know.”
Kian didn’t say a single word in his own defense. By the set of his shoulders, he was ready to accept the consequences. Though I didn’t blame him for it, he carried the weight of what the Teflon crew had done to me, the last day before winter break, and he regretted not giving his life for me then. I could hardly breathe for the pain tightening my chest. I had lost too much already.
Wedderburn turned to his desk and pushed a button. A tone sounded, then an inhuman voice said, “What do you require?”
“Send in the clown.”
At first, I thought it was a hideous, macabre joke, another of Wedderburn’s evil games, until the door banged open and a clown stood in the doorway. I narrowed my eyes on the smudged, faded “makeup,” then realized the cracked and flaking skin was imprinted with a huge red mouth with a white oval around it. The thing’s nose was bulbous and tinted red, and it had frizzy orange hair sticking out in all directions. Baggy clothes and giant shoes added to the disturbing picture, but that wasn’t even the worst part. In his hand, he carried a black case, and at Wedderburn’s nod, he opened it, revealing a shining variety of knives in all shapes and sizes: curved, straight, serrated blades, some more like scalpels, others for skinning or boning.
“Which one?” When the clown-thing spoke, it revealed sharp yellow teeth and a long pink tongue that snaked out to wet its mouth as it glanced between Kian and me.
Wedderburn inclined his head with an icy crackle. Kian held his silence, imperturbable in the face of death. In fact, a faint smile curved his mouth, as if he were glad to do this for me. Only this wouldn’t solve anything, and I wanted him with me, not as a martyr whose picture I could clutch and weep over.
“Wait,” I blurted.
“You have no cards to play,” Wedderburn said.
Inspiration struck; epiphany finally clarified into certainty. “That’s not true.”
Kian’s eyes widened and he shook his head, frantic. He tried to intercept me, but the clown wouldn’t let him.
You know me so well. But you’re not stopping me.
“I’m ready to ask for my final favor. Since Kian isn’t allowed to fulfill it, as you’ve disavowed him, then that falls to you, right?”
Wedderburn fixed on me an enigmatic look, steepling his fingers. “Correct.”
I hesitated, thinking about my dad and Davina, who might need protection down the line. But those were maybes. This was Kian’s definite death, here and now. I could not watch him die when I had the power to save him.
For someone like me, there could only be one choice.
“Edie, don’t. Let me go. It’s better this way. If you’re with me, you’ll never achieve what you’re meant to, and you’ll end up indentured. I told you in the note—”
“Then I want Kian set free, now and forever, truly free, untouchable by any immortal in the game. No tricks, no shadows on his timeline. Free.”
As I spoke, Wedderburn nodded, and a final line appeared at the bottom of my infinity symbol. Just like the first two, it burned as if someone held a soldering iron to my skin. I hissed as the sting faded. Asked and answered, now Kian and I have matching ink. Curling my left hand into a fist, I reached for Kian with my right. He looked as if I’d died for him, and I just didn’t know it. Yet he stepped to my side and laced his fingers through mine.
“Your services won’t be required,” I told the clown-thing.
“Today,” it corrected. “Ultimately, my services are always in demand.”
“You may go.” Wedderburn didn’t watch as his executioner strolled out. Instead, he was focused on me. Incredibly, he was smiling. “You’ve just won me a great deal of money, Miss Kramer, along with a fair amount of prestige.”