“Missing?” he asked his servant.
“Stand the fuck down,” Lucas warned.
Both alphas had their eyes set in the crosshairs of the weapons. The trigger was well-thumbed with no hesitation. “It’s going to feel real good killing you,” Vash said.
But Severin allowed for a smile. He was not worried about dying tonight, it seemed. “Virgil, I’m going to need you to close your eyes. Can you do that for me?”
“I can, sir,” he said, confidently.
“Fuck this, let’s cap this asshole!” Lucas shouted.
Severin held out his hands and closed his eyes. At the same time, he inhaled through his nose, triumphantly. “Then, allow us to pray for a moment. Will you not join us, alphas?”
“To obey is better than to sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams,” Virgil said.
“Louder!” Severin yelled, gritting his teeth with undeniable new strength. “Scream it toward the heavens! I want to feel those words, glory, glory, hallelujah!”
And, like a shot to the heart, Virgil obeyed, even smiled through the prayer. “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as queen,” Virgil said.
“Okay. Time is up,” Vash said. He tightened his finger and, there was the silence before gunfire and the power it usually offered from the kickback. Only, this time, there was nothing, spare the cold clicking noise from the trigger.
Lucas quickly removed the magazine and gulped. “Vash, it’s empty.”
Severin suddenly opened his eyes and lowered his hands, even kneeled before them without fear. He finished Virgil’s passage. “I have sinned. I violated the lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men, and so I gave in to them.” He laughed to himself. “Notice how it is the lord’s command? It is not up to women to rule. Even Ruby knows this.”
“You are wrong about everything,” Rae said, hurt but not destroyed. They could never destroy her completely. “In time, you will realize your errors, but it will be too late. By then, a blade will have ended your worries.”
Quicker than the alphas could act, Severin shot them with tranquilizers. They fell numb almost instantly. “Nothing will end my worries,” he said.
“Why don’t you just end us? Surely, that would help your cause,” Rae cried.
“I keep my enemies in my back pocket for a reason, princess,” he mocked.
Rae did not stop staring at Virgil. She wanted him to feel the weight of his betrayal. The devil would get him soon enough if she didn’t first. “Is Virgil an enemy, too? Or was this all a coincidence?”
“Coincidence might be too strong a word. There was a moment where I worried you might not show, but it turns out that I’ve hired the most loyal servants over the years. My judgment is better than I considered,” he said.
“What will you do to my husbands?” she asked.
“Husbands?” More laughter fell from his mouth. “They will be kept in the prison, mixed in with the alphas. And eventually, they will come to die here.”
Rae lowered her head and screamed. This conversation was far from over, and she needed to say one more thing before they turned the lights out on her, too. This time, her words were for Virgil only. “I thought of you as a father figure. Stupid, I know. Shallow, too. People are not supposed to choose their leaders, I suppose.” She relaxed her body for a moment, pausing to remember the glitter of light that reflected from the green of the forest Ruby showed her. “You said you would take me to my children. If you are a man of faith, you must know how wrong it is to remove three innocent creatures from their mother. You have acted as God yourself, and that is the most egregious sin of them all. Is it not?”
It was almost like she was begging, but she was ready to claw his throat out. Virgil’s eyelids tightened, and the resolve she saw within him when they first met could be seen again. “Run,” he said. “Run as fast as you can. He will not kill you. He needs you.”
And then, oddly enough, he took Lucas’s hands. “When you find The Furnace, you’ll know… all of this… oh God… Forgive me.”
As soon as Severin reached into his holster, she knew he would bring out the bigger guns, bullets that spelled out only one type of path. Virgil shut his eyes and smiled, but Rae leaped back and started to run. She nearly tripped when she heard the sharp and ringing sounds of bull
ets.
Nearly.
She jumped into the black water, the bitter lake from whence her darkest dreams manifested. She swam and did not turn back.
Chapter Twelve
“Father, can you hear me? Well, I’m speaking, regardless. I never believed in prayers. Never believed in right and wrong. Hell, I never fucking believed that I’d ever find a woman who could change my evil ways, so maybe it’s time I lift my head up to something bigger than myself. No, not you. You’re just the man who spilled his seed in exchange for a possible legacy. Who knows who my mother was? I probably won’t ever reach that level of knowledge… my mind is running circles, and my time is running out.”