This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(75)

“Please don’t kill me!” Karter pleaded.

“Us!” Dre shouted from Persephone’s grip. “Don’t kill us! Please!”

“I can’t think of one single reason why I shouldn’t,” Marie said. The growl of her voice made Karter’s eyes grow wide. “It looks like somebody already whooped your behind.”

Karter’s gaze flitted to me, and Marie smirked.

“I’ve been trying to help you!” Karter wailed. “Bri, I called you! I told you where we were going!”

“Are you kidding me?” I was so angry I wanted to scream. “You think that you’re helping me? You saw what happened to my mom! You were right there! You let it happen!”

“My mom would’ve killed me, too!” he shouted. Marie gripped his arm and he lowered his tone. “You have no idea what she was really capable of.”

I put my face so close to his I could smell the blood smeared across his face and I could feel the warmth of his strained breathing. “I don’t know what she was capable of? I know better than anyone.”

“She killed my dad!” Karter shouted as another rush of tears traced their way down his face. “She didn’t even pretend like she didn’t do it. He was in her way, and she cut him down like she does to every single person who stood up to her. She would have killed me, too, if she didn’t think I could have helped her get to you.”

I didn’t have a reply. I was shocked into silence.

“Your father was weak,” Dre mumbled. “She never should have—”

Persephone closed her hand around Dre’s neck, and his lips turned so purple they were almost black.

“You’re all related?” Circe asked.

“Uncle Dre. Auntie Viv. And—” he stopped short. He glanced over to where Calvin lay. He too was unnaturally still. “He was a cousin, but they were close.”

Persephone set Dre’s feet on the ground but kept her hand at his neck. He sputtered as he fought to catch his breath.

“You cut her loose?” Dre asked, eyeing my hands and then staring at Karter. “You would turn your back on your family?”

“Family?” Karter stared at the man with so much contempt I could almost feel it rolling off him. “Is that what we are? Family?”

He stepped toward Dre and Marie put her hands on his chest to stop him.

“Maybe your mother was right to try and get you out of the picture,” Dre said. “You’re weak, like your father. You don’t deserve the kind of power we’re about to possess.”

“You don’t deserve it and neither do I!” Karter shouted. “I don’t want it anyway. I never did.” He looked down at the ground. “I just wanted my mom to be proud of me.”

“She wasn’t,” Dre said. “I hope you know that.”

Marie eased her grip on Karter and he turned away from his uncle.

Persephone pushed Dre back. “You’re done talking.”

Dre raised an eyebrow. He was incredulous. “You think you can tell me what to do?” He drew his lips together and spit directly into Persephone’s face. She broke his neck and tossed his lifeless body into the forest so hard it splintered the bough of an elm tree as it crashed through.

Persephone stood panting, her teeth bared, eyes wide.

“Seph,” Circe started, but Persephone shook her head and stomped away from us.

Circe sighed and bit her lip. “Look what these people have become.” She nodded toward Karter. “Look what they’re willing to sacrifice to get to the Heart.”

“Y’all aren’t any better, are you?” Karter asked through a mask of pain. “How many family members have you sacrificed for that thing?”

“Shut up,” Marie said angrily. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re not hunting people down and murdering them.”

“They’re still dead,” Karter said. “And all for what? For nothing.”

“He’s right,” Circe said.

Marie and I both whipped our heads around to look at her.

She looked up, the full moon blazing in the nighttime sky. “We’ve lost too many. But no more. This is never going to be over if we don’t get in there and get the last piece. We have to end this.”

I searched Karter’s face for some trace of the guy I’d shared so much with, the person I’d trusted and laughed with and confided in. To my astonishment, I found something of the person I had found a strange and beautiful friendship with. Right there in his big brown eyes was the bumbling, awkward guy who loved horror movies and couldn’t do much in the garden besides rake and sip lemonade. He was still in there.

He turned to me, his eyes pleading. “Bri—”

“I—I can’t forgive you,” I said before he could finish. “I just can’t.”

His tears cut paths through the smears of blood on his cheeks. “I know. I’m still sorry. I just need you to know that.”

In that moment all I could think of were the Fates. They’d insinuated that we were all fated to follow a certain path. If that was true, then it meant Karter was meant to be there on Aeaea as the last members of his family treated him like he was expendable and left him alone in the world. It struck me as uniquely cruel.