Book 3 - Page 68 (2/2)
“What are you saying to her?” Vincent blinked rapidly.
“Um, your carnate needs you.” I pointed at the pool beside Selena. Both of the clone’s arms had risen, the top of a head crowning. Like a toddler, the creature repeatedly grasped at air, as if wanting to be picked up.
“Follow my voice,” he crooned to the thing as he knelt at the edge of the pool—
WHAM.
In a spray of blood, Selena had s.n.a.t.c.hed her nailed hand free then whipped her straightened arm out at Vincent. The line of her tensed limb connected with his throat.
His head snapped back. Lolled at an odd angle. His body collapsed backward.
Selena had awakened to break Vincent’s neck—with one strike.
“The sensor!” I dove for it, but he’d dropped it into the blood beside the now sinking carnate. “Selena!” I twisted around to claw her collar off.
“It’s okay,” she murmured.
“NOT okay!” I wrenched the piece off her neck, throwing it away.
She turned toward me. “I saw . . . his thumb slip . . . nothing happened. The sensor for the collar is broken, has been broken.” Without warning, she lunged at me.
“Selena, wait!”
“Evie!” she cried, hugging me tight. “You came for me.”
“Oh! Um, you’re going to be all right,” I a.s.sured her as I stroked her tangled hair. “But we have to take Violet out too.”
Selena pointed at Vincent. “Look at him.”
He sprawled on his back, his pale glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling. His s.h.i.+rt had s.h.i.+fted to reveal a weird tattoo on his chest.
“He has his own brand,” she added.
“I don’t understand. Let me go look.” I pried myself free from her, then took a step closer to him—
“AH!” I scrambled back, slipping in the blood, arms pinwheeling as I busted my a.s.s. Below Vincent’s collarbone, right over his heart, a wide-open eye stared at me.
Pale blue. Like a dead fish’s.
“Oh, my G.o.d! What is that?” Never taking my gaze off it, I managed to turn over on my knees. When the eye blinked, I stifled a shriek. Real? Unreal?
“That is Violet,” Selena bit out. “He told me he loved her so much, he took her into him before they were ever born. So the Empress could never separate them again.”
Vincent had absorbed his twin in the womb. His sister had never been a . . . person.
Matthew’s words: The twins—inseparable. Never parted. “B-but Vincent talked like she existed. The general did.”
“Because they were crazy!”
No wonder Matthew had been confused. No wonder the twins had never used their most potent powers. They couldn’t whisper together or clasp hands and swing arms.
The eye darted. Right. Left. Then it stilled, wide open, as glazed as her brother’s.
Violet was dead.
I couldn’t breathe, was ready to lose it, but as Matthew had told me, we weren’t out of the woods yet. “Selena, I’ll be right back. Getting your clothes. Okay?” I stumbled to the outer door. Combination-locked. Could Death break it down?
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