D E L P H I N I U M

I leaned against the wall in Jake's room, watching the world outside turn golden with the sunset. My grandmother's house was on an incline, so it had a beautiful view of both the green landscaping surrounding the house and the city in the distance. Even farther, the ocean was barely visible, glistening gold under the sun.

There was something I wanted to know, but I didn't know how to ask. I wasn't sure if Jake would even tell me or just shut down even further.

But I was curious and didn't want to give in to my own darker thoughts, so I asked, "Did you really go to prison?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation, no shame. He didn't even look up from whatever he was working on—the details of which he refused to tell anyone.

A thousand more questions swelled up. "Why? How?"

"You've always asked me why I hate Hundsen so much." He paused to lean over and write a note. "Connect the dots, Tesla."

"He sold you out?" I asked, mind reeling from this new realization. "He's the reason you went there?"

"Yes. He set an ambush for me after weeks of turning the Club against me. Law enforcement had been searching for me for years, so he gave them exactly what they wanted without giving himself away."

"And you...didn't anticipate this?" That was extremely uncharacteristic of him, even if he had been younger then. "You lost against him?"

Then he did look up at me with a glare. "Don't be ridiculous, of course not. I let myself be taken away and locked up; I was protected from him while in there. It was a place to lie low while gathering my resources. And I had time to devise a plan to take everything from him without interference." I wasn't surprised. Only he would choose to go to prison. And as a place to lie low, no less.

"That's where you met Jaxon? And you escaped after?"

"I met Jaxon and realized his hidden power. We broke out and went on the run until Jaxon made a mistake that got us caught by the ONNT. And the rest is history."

I remembered how Jake and Jaxon had seemed to have some strange iciness between them when I first met them. I wanted to ask what Jaxon did to cost them their freedom but refrained. He'd never asked me about my past, had simply accepted me the way I was. I'd return the favor.

"At first, I was wary of your connection with him," I said openly, thinking of how far we'd come from then. "I thought you were an even bigger threat to me together."

"I thought you were paranoid and suspicious at first." He shot me a flat glance. "I was right." And now I was right back where I started.

"I thought you were a cold asshole at first." The teasing retort surprisingly sharp, vastly different from the shaking fear I'd been so accustomed to. "I was right as well."

He gave no reply, but I saw how the end of his mouth pulled into the ghost of a smirk as he concentrated on his work.

The room settled into comfortable silence and I turned back to look out the window. But I could feel myself falling back into my own dark pattern of thinking. I'd been able to distract myself from it for small amounts of time, but it was always there sitting in the back of my mind. It always returned to me. Or I always returned to it.

I was sitting in the bottom of a well and there was no speck of light at the top. There was no end in sight.

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I dreamt of my family again.

And I awoke as I usually did—with a start, sweating and nauseous. I had to calm myself by reminding myself who I was. I had to repeat that I hated Imperium just to make sure I still could. Though I didn't quite have the necessity to vomit, another urge burned in the back of my mind.

As soon as I'd set foot into this house, I'd promised myself I wouldn't go near my parents' bedroom—the place they'd been murdered. But now I felt an unexplainable need to go there. And it terrified me.

I was in my own room, in my own bed. The only full night of sleep I'd gotten was in Jake's room. I needed him near. But now I refused, still having the strange desire to reinforce the line between us. I knew it was what he wanted too. The other night, I'd been desperate. I wouldn't give in another time.

I was afraid again, afraid of everything. Even things I shouldn't be.

I was reverting back to my old ways.

Against the will of the half of my mind that was screaming for me to stay locked in my room, I stood and slid both daggers out from underneath my pillow. I didn't use my mind to unlock the door and rather slid the multiple locks by hand.

The tile was cold under my bare feet, the hallway a dark tunnel before me. With a knife clutched in either hand, I crept forward. The darkness beckoned me. I wasn't sure why. Trouble followed me like a shadow, but I seemed to almost crave it, thrive on it. I'd become so accustomed to this life that I didn't know what other way to live. Sometimes I wondered if I had a death wish. Maybe part of me wanted the darkness to swallow me whole.

I saw my master in every niche, every shadow. He did know where I lived; he'd been there that night. He'd been the one to pull the trigger. The very thought made me sick.

Quiet as a mouse, I passed by the closed doors of my grandmother's rooms. And there was their door—closed, as my grandmother kept all her problems swept under the rug. It was easy to pretend they were still alive when you didn't have to see the place they'd died in.

Some unseen mental barrier was broken as I moved before thinking and pushed open my parents' door. Sliding my hand along the wall, I reached the the light switch. In the split second before the lights came on, I had the acute fear I'd see them bound on the floor again, my master standing over them with soldiers at his back. But the room was empty, devastatingly empty. Like the hole in my chest.

It was exactly as I'd seen it in my nightmares: the large canopy bed angled away from the wall, the sitting area in the other half of the large room. Curtains were pulled over the wall of windows.

That was where they'd been kneeling when I'd entered the room: in between the sitting area and the bed. I took a shaky step forward, feeling as though I wasn't really there. But the cold steel of my daggers kept me grounded, reminded me I really was in this haunting place.

I remembered being pushed into my parents' bedroom, this very room, when I'd refused to murder another victim. Whenever I'd denied him in the past, my master would find some way to force me to do it—either torture or blackmail at my family's expense. But this time, he'd had me loaded into a truck and knocked unconscious. And when I realized where I was, my entire body went cold.

All four of them: my grandfather, father, mother and brother were on their knees, hands and feet bound. My mother had let out a small cry when she saw me for the first time in two years. They'd assumed me to be dead. Little did they know, I'd been killing to keep them alive. I could read the confusion and terror in their eyes when Orion began speaking, telling them what I'd become.

My mother began to weep. Her sweet child had been killed and now a monster wore her skin.

For all his threats, I'd thought he wouldn't actually kill my family. I thought he needed them alive to keep his hold on me. I thought wrong. I'd been so pathetically wrong, especially when he shot my grandfather in the head. Screams filled the room. Tears streamed down my face when I realized what my master was going to do. I begged for him to spare their lives.

But he didn't listen. He never did.

He didn't even look at them; the masked face watched me through it all. Gunfire rang out, bodies dropped until my scream was the only one left in the room. They all died staring out at me on my knees as I sobbed before them. As soon as my master angled his gun away from their bodies, I scrambled forward. Their blood wouldn't stop flowing. Clutching their pale faces, grasping their hands, I screamed my pain into the world.

My fiercely protective father. My beautiful, soft spoken mother. The older brother I'd spent my childhood with. My grandfather, who'd always been ready to tell me stories about his early life in Russia. Four people who I'd loved enough to kill for. Now they were nothing but blood and bone.

Orion's gloved hand gently angled up my chin to look at him. "I told you not to defy me, Secerător. I warned you. They didn't have to die. It's a shame, really." He eyed the bodies, shaking his head. "Now, I am the only family you have left."

When the soldiers pulled me away, my muddled mind had wondered why my leader no longer needed to hold their lives over me. I had no idea what lay before me. The white room. A mind filled with thoughts that weren't my own. I had no idea I wouldn't get to mourn their lives until an entire year later, and by then, I would have even more to mourn than only my dead family.

Their deaths were two years ago. I'd died with them. Someone much darker and willing to do anything for survival took her place. I'd been a sixteen-year-old when my world fell to pieces. Now, I was nineteen, for my birthday had passed while I was still being controlled. Two years—almost three—and I doubted it would ever hurt less.

I wasn't crying. No, tears seemed to be too little to express the pain. I was never more aware of the hole in my heart than I was then. It made me almost wish for the bleak emptiness that had followed in the first few days.

"I haven't been in here since the day I found them." I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned to see my grandmother standing in the doorway, staring into the room with an unfocused look in her eyes.

"I don't know why I'm here." My voice sounded far away. Like it wasn't my own.

"You were looking for closure," she said abruptly. "And perhaps searching for meaning for yourself again."

I shook my head. "I don't have meaning anymore." And I didn't think I deserved to after how dismally I'd failed.

"You most certainly do. Their deaths only gave you more of a purpose," she insisted, sounding very sure of herself. "Your boss, Damien Hunt, told me of the danger that faces you—the danger that faces us all. You can help stop it."

"I can't. I can't stop it. I tried as hard as I could and I was still made his slave again."

"You are no one's slave, Vnuchka."

"Not anymore, but I will be. He will have me again. Over and over again, I've gotten so many chances and no matter what I do, I'm not enough. I lose every time."

"Damien Hunt said you took an entire fortress and brought it to the ground in mere hours. He said you'd fought an entire army yourself and won." She seemed insistent on proving me wrong and I wished what she was saying was still true.

"I'm not that girl. I'm not brave or fearless anymore. I wish I could be her, but she's dead. They burned her out of me."

"That's what that madman wants you to believe. Since when do you listen to the words of your oppressors? You're a phoenix, girl. Rise from your own ashes. You did it once. You will do it again."

I shook my head, trying to make her see what I saw. "I wish I could. But I don't know how to. I'm not strong enough. I don't even know I did it the first time." I wondered if I'd ever stop feeling like I was letting everyone down.

"You had a purpose. You needed to destroy that man and everything he stood for. Nothing has changed. If anything, that purpose has become even greater for you. It will take work and sacrifice. But you were born for this—the power you were born with was destined to destroy that man."

Before I could say anything else, she unclasped a necklace I hadn't known she'd been wearing and held it out to me. "You need this. It will remind you of the love of your parents."

I didn't take it when I saw what it was. An ornate gold chain holding two rings. My parents' wedding bands. "No. No, I can't take that." I didn't even want to touch it.

"You must." She pushed it forward but I took a step back, hands clutched in close.

"I can't—I don't deserve it. You know that."

"You blame yourself, but you were nothing but a survivor. You believe you should have died with them." Her hand dropped to her side when my silence was enough of a response. "Delphinium, you did not pull the trigger. You did not organize these events. You survived against all odds for a reason. And that reason is to make them pay for what they did."

My gaze dropped to the necklace in her hand. She continued, "We cannot bring them back or dwell on the past. The dead are dead. But you can remember them, you can honor them. Keep them in your heart as you forge forward in this war.

"Your teammates will fight. Soldiers will fight. I will support the effort in any way I can. But we need you. You were here when this started and you will be there to see it ended." She raised the necklace again. "Fight for them. Fight for your dead."

I looked to the pictures propped on the dresser. A family. We were all smiling. It seemed to be another family, not one I belonged to. But we'd been happy. They'd been mine.

I thought about my new family—my only friends in the world. They still lived and they were ready to fight. Imperium hadn't taken them from me. And I didn't think I could live through it if they did.

I didn't know how to be strong or even how to pull the wreckage of myself together again. I didn't know if I could even handle fighting again. But I would try.

Imperium had thoroughly broken me, but I wasn't dead. I'd try. For them. For my family. And for all of the people I'd killed. It was the least of what they deserved—to see their injustice made right.

For them, I would do everything I could to see Orion dead and Imperium burning.

So I took the necklace and clasped it around my neck.