She launches to her feet with the ferocity of a wild thing unchained, shoulders squaring, spine straightening. The transformation is instant. Gone is the trembling girl weighed down by grief and betrayal. What stands in her place isCupcake—the fighter. The lioness. The spark they tried to snuff out but never truly could. She radiates fury and grace; a goddess forged in heartbreak and fire.
Her eyes lock onto Rowen, burning like the hottest blue embers threatening to consume him whole. But she doesn’t stop there. That same inferno shifts to Emerson too, catching him in the blaze of her wrath.
“You know nothing,” she spits, voice sharp as a blade, slicing through the thick silence. “So quick you were to turn onme. Like it meant nothing. LikeImeant nothing.” She jabs a finger toward me. “Looks like there’s only one of us left who has my back, even if it’s from myself.”
I swallow hard, pride swelling in my chest and pain blooming behind it. She glances down, thumb tapping over Reign’s phone in her hand—and then my ringtone breaks the silence. From Rowen’s pocket.
Confusion tightens his face as he pulls the phone free, holding it up where we can all see the name blinking across the screen.
Reign.
Berkley doesn’t give him a second to process it. “Your sister didn’t kill herself, you fucking morons,” she snaps, voice trembling with restrained rage. “She was forced to leave that note.”
Rowen taps the screen, and Reign’s laughter filters through the room. Her voice. Berk’s too. Lighthearted. Alive. A frozen moment from the past—before everything shattered.
But Berk isn’t done.
She turns to me, thrusting a folded piece of paper into my hands, her kiss catching me off guard as her lips press to mine, full of apology and sorrow and fierce, undying love.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save her,” she murmurs against my mouth, the weight of it breaking something deep in me. “But I’ll get revenge, Ronan. If it’s the last thing I do.”
And I believe her.
Because the girl I love just became a goddamn storm.
Several things unravel at once, each more devastating than the last. Reign’s voice—light, carefree, laughing—cuts through the room like a ghost resurrected. But it doesn’t last. Laughter warps into screaming. Pleas. Cries that hollow out the walls, and us along with them.
The color drains from Rowen’s face as the audio shifts. His jaw slackens; eyes lock on the screen as if it might erase the truth unraveling in front of him. Emerson leans in behind him, but barely gets a glance before he stumbles back, retching violently onto the hardwood floor.
I can’t move. I can’t hear them anymore. All I see is the letter in my hands—Reign’s handwriting, the curves and loops of each syllable burned into my memory. Her voice, her pain, her truth. I knew something was wrong that night. Ifeltit. But not this. Notthislevel of betrayal. Of horror.
My twin’s knees hit the floor with a dull, lifeless thud. The phone slips from his fingers, clattering onto the ground. His body curls forward, and he wretches, shaking, broken, as the last words of Reign’s letter echo in my ears like a curse.
And then everything halts.
Rowen breathes one word—raw and hoarse—“Berk”—and it draws all our eyes toward the window.
She’s there.
Perched on the open windowsill like an avenging angel ready to disappear. Moonlight frames her silhouette, her hair wildaround her bloody face, but it’s her eyes that destroy me—wide, haunted, and blazing with a kind of grief-drenched resolve that chills me more than anything else in this godforsaken house.
“No,” I breathe, voice cracking. I can’t mask the fear. “Don’t leave me again.”
I reach out like she’ll come back if I just try hard enough. I’m not above begging. Not for this. Not for her.
“I have to finish what I started,” she says, voice fraying like wind through torn sails. “They can’t go unpunished.”
Before I can stop myself, I’m on my feet, reaching for her as I stumble forward. “Let us help,” I say, my hand still out. “Let me help.”
Emerson wipes at his mouth, still pale and shaking, but his voice cracks through the fog. “Fuck, Berk. I’m so sorry.” His tears are real, streaming unchecked. His regret is palpable. “You’re the one hitting their contacts. Burning down their businesses.”
She flinches like he’s struck her, but he presses forward anyway.
“We’re doing it too. We’ve already made a plan—you’re just beating us to it,” Emerson says, like the words alone might convince her to let us stand beside her.
She’s already shaking her head, slow and mournful. “I can’t,” she says. “I don’t trust you. Not anymore.”
Her eyes flick between Rowen and Emerson, then settle on me like an anchor. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, so quietly Idon’t hear it—Ireadit, watching the words form on her lips like a goodbye kiss.