The Devouring Gray(82)

She rolled over, groaning, her eyes barely taking in Justin’s blurry form as he knelt beside her.

“Harper.” The planes of his face were stark with fear. “Shit, Harper, please be okay. Tell me you’re okay.”

She coughed, braced her hand against the floor. The crushed residue of red-brown stone pressed beneath her palm as she sat up.

“I’m okay,” she rasped.

They were close enough for her to see the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose. To hear each thin, ragged breath.

He reached for her. Harper was too stunned to even consider stopping him as his fingers traced the tender skin of her neck.

“Was he…” He worked the muscles in his jaw as he tried again. “Was he trying to kill you?”

It seemed right, that he should be touching the part of her that hurt the most.

Harper tried to feel some semblance of sorrow, of disgust, of regret. But there was nothing. She was blank inside, scooped-out and hollow. “I think so.”

Justin’s fingers were cool and gentle against her neck. But when her eyes met his, he pulled his hand away.

Behind Justin’s shoulder, Isaac was calmly and methodically tying her father to his workbench.

“Now, don’t struggle,” he said. “You know what I can do. It won’t be fun for either of us if you try and lash out.”

“You didn’t go watch Brett and Nora,” Harper said blankly. “You were waiting outside. In case.”

It wasn’t a question. She should’ve been upset that Justin thought she couldn’t handle this. But he’d been right.

And she wasn’t angry, wasn’t scared, wasn’t grateful, wasn’t anything anymore. She wasn’t even sure she was human.

Harper rose to her feet, her eyes fixed on the man sitting at his workbench.

He was still the man who had raised her. But he was not her father, not anymore.

He’d tried to strangle her. He’d almost succeeded.

The knowledge of that sent a dull, sick feeling through her, weighing down her limbs.

There was no place in this town for someone like her, betrayed and betrayer, no one’s daughter, no one’s friend.

“You know,” said Isaac, “what he just did is assault.”

Harper knew Isaac Sullivan didn’t like her. She could see it even now, in his body language. He’d helped her, but only because she’d been in mortal danger. He was only here because he’d been worried about Justin.

But there was a strange kind of understanding in his gaze now.

Broken things called to broken things.

Isaac was right about what her father had done. But Four Paths only had one real law: Founders handled their own problems, and everyone else pretended not to see the ugliness that lurked within the families who supposedly protected them.

She’d see no justice here unless she delivered it herself.

“I don’t care,” she wheezed. “I just want him to finish telling us what the Church is going to do.”

“Harper.” Justin took her hand and tugged her to her feet. The concern on his face had only deepened. “Are you sure?”

She forced her bruised throat to swallow so the words would come out clear. “I’m sure.”

She was Harper Carlisle. She’d survived the loss of an arm, her reputation, her friends, and, now, attempted filicide. She’d spent her entire life silencing the dark thing that lay coiled in her chest. The rage that swam beneath her skin.

Now she wondered why she’d tried so hard to ignore herself.

Why she’d decided, all those years ago, that being angry when people hurt her was a dark thing at all.

“Tell me what you’re planning,” she said, locking eyes with her father. Maurice Carlisle looked shell-shocked, clearly unsure how he’d ended up tied to a bench by three teenagers. “Tell me why you want Juniper. Why the Beast needed Violet.”

And when he answered, it was almost monotonous, mechanical. “We needed her to resurrect our leader.”

“Your leader?” said Harper. “Who is that?”

“Stephen Saunders,” said her father. “Juniper’s brother.”



Not-Rosie stood before her—flat-eyed, unsmiling, dead. Always dead. Even though Violet knew she wasn’t real, seeing her sister still reminded her how much easier it had been to deal with their fragmented family when Rosie was around. They had been a family of two; no matter what, they belonged with each other.

Rosie was the only other person who would have understood Violet’s fight with Juniper. And now Violet was being taunted with her, a cruel reminder that she could never have her sister back, that she would accept this warped version of her because she couldn’t let go of her for good.

“But I can’t bring you—her—back,” Violet hissed, clutching the journal close to her chest. “And I don’t want this. If you’ve been in my head, you know I never would’ve wanted this.”

“So ungrateful.” Frustration rasped beneath not-Rosie’s calm, high voice. “You came into this town with your mind wide open, full of vast, untapped potential, and I have sculpted you into something magnificent.”

“You used me.” Violet lunged toward it, but Not-Rosie chuckled and reappeared on her other side.