How could he?
How could he talk about dying as if it was his choice whether to extinguish his life?
Don’t I have a say?
Don’t I have a right to disagree?
He shouldn’t have to die. None of this was normal or acceptable. There had to be another way.
Anger devoured my panic, snapping my back straight and balling my hands. “I won’t let you do this.” I wanted to jump on him and tell him what an idiot he was being. I wanted to waste every breath and pay every tear if it meant I could somehow change his mind. “You can’t.”
Even as I shouted in his face, I knew it was pointless.
I knew Elder.
I knew he was stubborn.
And I knew he was proud and loyal and old fashioned in his role as protector. My and Selix’s arguments would fall on already decided ears. Elder wouldn’t listen. He’d stay steadfast to the plan he believed benefited everyone.
“Elder…please, please don’t do this,” I begged quietly, relinquishing my anger as quickly as it’d arrived.
He flinched, swaying toward me as if every molecule and heartbeat demanded he obey and grab me. His fingers fluttered in my direction, his eyes turned glossy with bone-deep need, and he bit his lip so hard he drew blood, fighting the connection, the link, the emotional rope binding us together.
“I…I’m sorry.” With balled hands and stiff joints, he backed away from me instead of succumbing to the blistering bond between us. He back-stepped toward the black Town Car Q had pulled up in when I’d first seen him holding Lino. “I’m so sorry, little mouse.”
“No!” I dug my toes into the grass to run after him, to glue myself to his side if need be, but a booming French voice silenced the night-time chorus of cicadas, freezing all of us. “Arrêtez. Stop. For fuck’s sake.”
Leaping down the front steps, Q kept his hands balled as Tess trailed after him, her blonde hair the only thing light in the black night.
Stalking to Elder, he growled. “I hate you for this. I hate that you’ve brought death and decay straight to my door.”
Elder vibrated with hostility. “I know.”
“What will happen to my family?” Q paced in front of him. “What will happen if they come and you’re not here?”
“I’ll cut them off before they arrive. They won’t—”
“But if you don’t.” Q slipped into dangerous darkness. “If you’re not here? If you don’t find them in time?”
Elder stood taller, accepting blame but unwilling to buckle beneath his enemy. “They will kill everyone. As a message…” He pinched the bridge of his nose, visualising the carnage. “Fuck.”
“Exactly.” Q dragged fingers through his hair as if trying to keep his hands busy so they didn’t punch Elder in the face. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Elder’s head snapped up. “I don’t bow to you, asshole. This isn’t your fight. It’s mine.” Stalking toward Q, he shoved him back. Rage cloaked him, overflowing from the well of emotional pain he always carried. “I ought to have killed them fucking years ago. I know that. I blame myself every goddamn day that I still haven’t faced what I should’ve faced the day they made me into what I am.”
His features turned brittle and black. “They took from me and I still haven’t taken from them. Don’t you know the fucking guilt I carry? Don’t you get the depth of shame that I haven’t fucking fixed this? That I continue to put those I love in danger? That I haven’t delivered the revenge I swore I would deliver?”
He pointed at me with a shaking hand. “Don’t you think I’d rather stand and slaughter every bastard in order to deserve her? I’ve failed her time and time again and it fucking rips me to shreds that even now—even now, on the eve of finally ending a lifetime of regret and misery, I can’t do anything to save her.”
Silence fell as Elder stormed away, masking his limp with sheer temper. Whirling around, he snarled, “You might not get honour, Mercer, but I’ve lived a lifetime being cast from it. Dishonour is the only thing I know anymore and if it means I have to leave the one thing I love most in the world to finally earn a smidgen of self-fucking-respect. Then, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever it goddamn takes to fix this. To end this.”
Q didn’t speak.
No one did.
Elder’s outburst faded from shout to soul.
Breathing hard, Elder shrugged as if he had nothing left—no other way to prove his dedication to this disaster. “I’ll find them before they come here. I’ll stop them before they kill anymore—”
“You’ll die so others might live.” Q backed down, his fury beaten into submission by Elder’s.
Elder stiffened with loathing. “Exactly. It’s the only thing I can give and I’m willing to give it. I’m willing to die…for her.”