"You're eighteen years old playing a game you don't fully understand with people who will kill you the second they realize what you're really doing here." I cross back to her, keeping my voice low and controlled even though frustration is building hot under my ribs. "Talia, this is over. We're leaving."
"Asher, no.” Something breaks across her face, grief and anger tangling together. "I’m doing this for Henry. You have to let me do this for Henry. You can’t keep acting like you don’t miss him. That you don’t want this too!”
“I don’t. Talia, I love Henry. I do. I am sad he’s dead, but that was so long ago, and revenge won't bring him back." I catch her wrist when she tries to turn away. "Talia, listen to me. I know what you're planning. I know you think destroying the Vipers from the inside will make his death mean something. But you're going to get yourself killed and it won't change anything except forcing me to bury another sibling.”
"I don't care?—"
"Yes, you do." I tighten my grip just slightly, making her look at me. "You care. You're not suicidal. You're angry and grievingand trying to turn that into purpose. But this isn't the way. This isn't?—"
The door slams open.
I spin, already reaching for the knife at my belt, already moving to put myself between Talia and whoever just entered. But I'm not fast enough—nothing is fast enough when Killian himself is standing in the doorway with three of his lieutenants, all armed, all looking at me with the particular kind of interest that suggests they know exactly who I am and why I'm here.
"Well," Killian says, and his voice is smooth in a way that makes my skin crawl, the kind of smooth that comes from being very comfortable with violence. "Asher fucking Throne. In my compound. On my territory. During my party." He smiles, and it's the smile of a shark that's just realized there's blood in the water. "This is either incredibly bold or incredibly stupid."
"Little of both," I reply, keeping my voice level, keeping my body loose and ready because this is about to go very bad very quickly and the only way out is through. "I'm just here for Talia. Let us walk out and nobody has to get hurt."
"Let you walk out." Killian laughs, the sound bouncing off the walls. "With one of my people. One of my inner circle. After you broke into my compound." He takes a step forward, his men fanning out behind him in a practiced formation that speaks to too many fights, too much experience. "No, I don't think so. I think what's going to happen is you're going to die here, and Talia is going to watch, and then we're going to have a very long conversation about loyalty and consequences."
Talia makes a small sound behind me—fear or protest or both—and I don't turn to look at her, can't afford to take my eyes off Killian for even a second.
"Last chance," I say, and I mean it. "Let us leave. Call it a professional courtesy. I won't come back, you won't lose face, everyone walks away."
"You broke that option when you picked my lock." Killian's smile widens. "Now the only question is how much this is going to hurt before you stop moving."
He comes at me fast—faster than I expected for a man his size, faster than someone who's been drinking at his own party should be able to move. His fist catches me in the ribs before I can fully dodge, a solid hit that drives the air from my lungs and sends pain radiating through my chest.
I don't have time to process it. Don't have time to do anything except move, react, fight back with every dirty trick I know. I catch his next punch on my forearm—the impact jarring all the way to my shoulder—and drive my knee up into his stomach with enough force to double him over.
But he's not alone. His lieutenants are moving now, closing in from three sides, and I know with absolute clarity that I cannot fight four men in a room this small with Talia behind me and expect to win.
So I don't try to win. I try to survive long enough to get her out.
I duck under a wild swing from one of the lieutenants, using his momentum against him to send him crashing into the wall. Spin and drive my elbow into another one's throat—a hit that drops him gagging and clutching his neck. But Killian is back up, his face twisted with rage, and his next punch catches me squarein the jaw with enough force to make stars explode across my vision.
I taste copper. Blood. My own blood filling my mouth from where my teeth cut the inside of my cheek. The world tilts violently and I have to grab onto something—the desk, the chair, anything—to keep from going down.
"Asher!" Talia's voice, high and panicked.
"Stay back," I manage, the words coming out thick and wet. I spit blood onto the carpet and force myself upright, force my body to respond despite the way my head is ringing like a church bell. "Stay?—"
Killian hits me again. And again. Methodical now, not wild, each punch placed with the precision of someone who knows exactly how to hurt someone, exactly how to break them down piece by piece. My ribs. My stomach. My face. Each impact a new explosion of pain that builds on the last until I can't tell where one injury ends and another begins.
I get a few hits in—enough to bloody his nose, enough to split his lip, enough to make him respect that I'm not going down easy. But there are still three of them and only one of me, and the math is simple and brutal and inevitable.
I don't remember deciding to stop defending and start attacking. Don't remember the moment when survival shifted into offense, when I stopped trying to get out alive and started trying to make sure Killian didn't. Just remember my hands finding his throat, remember the satisfying crunch of cartilage under my thumbs, remember the way his eyes went wide with something that might have been fear before I drove my forehead into his face with every ounce of strength I had left.
His nose breaks. The sound is wet and final and deeply satisfying.
He goes down hard, and I follow him, fists still swinging, still hitting, operating on pure adrenaline and rage and the knowledge that if I stop moving I'm dead. One of the lieutenants tries to pull me off and I catch him with an elbow to the temple that sends him stumbling back. The other one is smarter, stays back, gun already drawn and pointed at me with shaking hands.
"Don't," I rasp, barely recognizing my own voice through the blood and the pain and the ringing in my ears. "You shoot me and this gets a lot worse for everyone."
He doesn't lower the gun. But he doesn't shoot either. Just stands there in frozen indecision while Killian groans on the floor beneath me, unconscious or close to it, blood pooling under his shattered nose.
"Asher." Talia's hands on my shoulders, pulling me back, her voice breaking. "Asher, please, we have to go, we have to?—"
She's right. We have to go. Have to move before more guards come, before the situation deteriorates further, before my body gives out completely and I can't protect her anymore.