Their reign is ending. And it’s ending at our hands.
Rowan narrows his eyes at me, suspicion tightening his features. “What the hell are you smiling all crazy about? What present?” His voice has an edge to it, the one that always comes out when he knows I’m ten steps ahead and he’s scrambling to catch up.
Emerson doesn’t speak, doesn’t blink, just studies me like he’s dissecting every twitch of my face, trying to pull the truth out without me saying a word. But this isn’t something he can puzzle together with his logic or calm. This isn’t on their radar yet.
So, I give it to them straight. My grin widens, sharp enough to cut, and I say, “Grab all your worldly possessions, boys. We’re burning this motherfucker down.” The words hang in the air likegasoline fumes, and I can practically hear the spark catching. Their heads snap toward me in unison; twin looks of shock and hunger mingling in their eyes. For a heartbeat, I almost laugh—almost—because I know what they’re about to ask before the words leave their mouths.
I cut them off, voice low, steady, full of the conviction that’s been grinding through me since the second I opened my eyes in that bed. “And then I’m going to find my pixie.”
The silence after that statement is deafening. Rowan’s lips part, Emerson’s eyes narrow, and I can feel their questions ready to spill—Can we come? Will she forgive us? Will she even let us try? But I don’t give them the chance. I lean forward, pinning them both with my stare until they’re forced to see I mean every damn word. “She’s not going to want to see either of you. Not yet. But me?” My hand tightens into a fist against my thigh, and the heat in my chest surges like wildfire. “I’ll help put her back together. And when she sees this place burn, when she sees our grand gesture, she’ll know.” I pause, letting the promise cut through the room, the fire already burning in my veins. “She’ll know we’re behind her, every step of the way—and that we’re coming for them. Every last one of them.”
I may be the instinctive problem solver, the one who sees patterns where others see chaos, but my brothers aren’t fools. They’re just as sharp, and even if I don’t spell it out, they’re putting the pieces together. They know what I’m really saying. If we burn this house—our home, our prison—we send a message no one can ignore. It’ll be a line carved into the earth, separating us from the rot of our fathers, severing us from the empire that’s stained everythingit touched. It tells the world, and more importantly Berk, that we’re done playing their game.
It’s for her. Reign. Berk’s father. For us, together as a team.
And maybe—just maybe—it’s the only way to show her that no matter what’s happened between us, no matter the blood and betrayal in the basement, we’re not our fathers. That we never will be. Deep down, I think she knows it. She wouldn’t have let Rowan cross that line if she didn’t. Berk has always been deliberate, calculating even in her silence. She allowed it to happen—not to shield herself from pain, but to shield him. To shield us.
That kind of loyalty is a debt we’ll never repay. But we can burn the world trying.
We split off without another word, each of us peeling away toward our own rooms like shades drifting through a mausoleum. The house feels heavier than it ever has, each creak in the floorboards groaning like the building itself knows its end is near. The plan was simple: grab what matters, salvage the things worth keeping, mementos too important to leave behind. But when I step into my room and flick on the light, the truth hits me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken. There’s nothing here for me. Not a damn thing. The walls, the furniture, the clothes—they’re meaningless. This isn’t a room. It’s a stage set. An empty space dressed up to look like a life that never really existed.
I stand in the doorway longer than I mean to, staring at the bed I hardly ever slept in, the desk stacked with papers that mean nothing, the shelves lined with trinkets and trophies that once fooled me into thinking they mattered. They don’t. None of them do. Theweight in my chest confirms what I’ve always known but never wanted to admit: anything that ever had value is already gone. Reign’s smile. Berk’s laughter. The fleeting moments that felt like light in a house made of shadows. Those are the only things worth keeping, and they’re already with me, tucked away on my phone in stolen photos, carved into my memory where even fire can’t reach.
Everything else? It’s rot. Decay disguised as comfort. The longer I look, the more I see it—that this room is soaked through with poison. Every corner, every shadow, feels tainted by the truth we uncovered. The walls reek with the echoes of lies, with the blood I never noticed, with the weight of horrors our fathers let happen under this roof while we walked blind. My stomach turns. My hands clench. I don’t want any of it. Not the bed, not the desk, not even the memories tied to this place. Especially not those. They’ve curdled into something rancid, and I’ll be damned if I carry a single shred of it with me.
Fifteen minutes later, I find myself back in the living room, the silence of the house pressing down on me like a shroud. Rowan’s already there, his hands empty, his face carved into something tight and grim. There’s no hesitation in his stance, no flicker of doubt—just a hard, cold acceptance. His eyes meet mine for a moment, and in that look, I see the same truth I’ve just walked through in my room. He left it all behind too. Nothing in this house deserves to survive.
Emerson drags in a few beats later, slower than us, his shoulders heavy as though the walls themselves tried to keep him from leaving. His face is pale, drained of color, his eyes shadowedlike he’s aged years in the span of minutes. When he finally speaks, it’s barely more than a whisper, the words raw, splintered, like they’ve been dragged across broken glass. “There’s nothing here for us.”
The sound of it twists something inside me. Emerson has always been the steady one, the voice that stabilizes storms before they tear through us, but right now he looks gutted, wrecked in a way that no amount of steel can mask.
Rowan and I both shake our heads, the motion slow and heavy. He’s right. This place isn’t ours anymore. Maybe it never was. Whatever fragments of ourselves once lingered here—laughing in the halls, sneaking out the windows, planning lives bigger than these walls—they’re long gone. Ash waiting to happen. What remains is nothing but ghosts and ruin, and it’s time we stop pretending otherwise.
Rowan clears his throat, the sound rough, like gravel dragged across stone, and it pulls both Emerson and me from our spiraling thoughts. He straightens, shoulders squared, his expression carved from something harder than grief. When he speaks, his voice is steady in a way mine isn’t, each word carrying the weight of finality. “We’re going to the fallout house,” he says, naming the property we bought years ago under another name, buried in layers of false paperwork and silent promises. A ghost house. A place we kept off the grid, untouchable, untraceable. Insurance for the day when the ground under us gave way completely. The day none of us wanted to admit might come—but all of us knew would.
The words settle into the room like a verdict, and I feel something in my chest shift. Not relief, not exactly, but direction. A way forward through the wreckage. I nod, the movement slow but deliberate, my chest weighted by what we’re leaving behind—and what we’re about to become. “Then that’s where we go.”
We don’t linger. There’s no reason to. The halls that once carried our footsteps feel like hollow veins now, pulsing with decay instead of life. With every stride, I trail lighter fluid across the carpet, splashing it over door frames and down the stairs, painting the house in accelerant like a priest anointing the damned. Neither of my brothers asks where I got it, and it’s probably better that way. Some things are easier left unspoken.
We pass the rooms that raised us, but none of us look inside. We don’t let our gazes linger on the walls that watched us laugh as kids, watched us bleed as teens, and finally, watched us break as adults. There’s no point. Those rooms don’t hold memories anymore; they hold graves. Every corner is thick with ghosts, every floorboard groaning under the weight of the sins committed here. This house isn’t home. It’s a coffin. One we’ve been tricked into sleeping in, waiting for the lid to close.
When we step outside, the air cuts like glass, sharp and biting, but it’s the cleanest thing I’ve breathed in years. Cold freedom, fresh and untainted, compared to the stench that seeped into our skin inside those walls. We stand there for only a second, silent but bound together, the three of us carrying the same fire in our veins. Not grief. No hesitation. Just purpose.
We don’t look back. Not once. Instead, I let the lighter kiss the trail we left behind, sparks catching like whispers before roaring into something bigger. Flames lick at the windows almost instantly, greedy and alive, climbing faster than the memories ever could. The house crackles and groans as smoke rises, a dark pillar marking the death of what we once thought we were.
As we walk away, side by side, I already taste the smoke on my tongue—not just destruction, but rebirth. This isn’t an ending. It’s the first step into something new. Something ruthless. Something ours.
And I want my Pixie to see this—to feel it in her bones and know exactly who set the world on fire for her. My fingers itch with the need to reach her, to let her know she’s not alone in this war anymore. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I stare at the screen for a beat, the glow illuminating the raw edges of my thoughts. My chest hammers with something wild and unrelenting, a mix of fury and fragile hope twisting together until I can barely breathe. Without giving myself another second to hesitate, I pull up Reign’s old number—the one Berk still clings to—and start typing the message.
Send me your number, baby. The guys and I have got a present for you.
The words look sharp on the screen, taunting, carrying more weight than they should. A promise. Proof that I’m not fucking around.
I hit send without hesitation, my thumb firm on the screen, imagining her expression when she reads it. Maybe she’ll roll her eyes, maybe she’ll curse me for being reckless. But underneath it,she’ll know. She’ll know this is for her. The flames, the ashes, the break from the chains that held us. All of it—every step, every cut, every drop of blood spilled—is for her.
My Pixie. My girl. My vengeance wrapped in lace and steel. And tonight, I want her to see that we’re finally doing what we should have done years ago—burning it all to the ground.
By the time Berkley’s number lights up my screen, the house behind us is already an all-consuming blaze, the flames roaring so loud it feels like the earth itself is screaming. Fire devours every board, every rafter, every secret soaked into those walls, clawing its way into the night sky as though it wants to set the stars themselves on fire. The heat presses against my spine in waves, a living, breathing thing that licks at the edges of my skin, daring me to turn back, daring me to look at what we’ve destroyed. Sparks ride the smoke like fireflies, drifting upward before vanishing into the dark.