“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, and it’s the biggest lie I’ve ever spoken.
“You can’tdothis.” Her eyes spill over, tears tracking down her cheeks. “We have a plan. She’s fucked if we follow through, you can’t just—”
“Genevieve.”
“No.”
“Please.”
The word breaks something between us. I’ve never said “please” to her. Not once. Not when I asked her to stay. Not when I asked her to trust me. I just did those things, and she followed, and we figured it out together.
But I’m not asking her to follow me this time. I’m asking her to let me go.
“You promised,” she whispers. “Not just tonight. You said that. You said this isn’t just tonight.”
My chest cracks down the center.
“We’re eternal, Half-Pint. Seven seconds for your seven minutes, remember?”
One of the men pulls Genevieve back, and she fights him, her arm straining against his grip, and the sound she makes is something between a scream and a sob that I’ll hear every night for the rest of my life, however long that turns out to be.
I step toward Cassandra.
“When do we leave?”
“Now.”
I nod. I don’t look back at Genevieve, because if I do, I won’t be able to walk through that door. I’ll do something stupid and brave, and they’ll shoot Leo in his own kitchen and Genevieve will watch her father die over coq au vin, and I won’t let that happen. I won’t let this be the thing that kills them.
The knight sacrifices himself. That’s what the knight does. It’s what I’ve always done, and maybe Cassandra was right about one thing: She did build me for this.
She just didn’t expect me to use it against her.
Because as I walk through Leo DeGrance’s front door and into the cold Boston night with four armed men at my back and the sound of Genevieve screaming my name echoing off the brownstone walls, I’m thinking about chess.
The knight doesn’t move in a straight line. He moves in ways no one expects. And while Cassandra thinks she’s won the board, she’s forgotten the most important thing she ever taught me.
The queen strikes last.
And she isn’tmyqueen.
Chapter 42
Genevieve
The door is still hanging off its hinges.
Cold air seeps through the gap where the lock used to be, and I’m on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinet and my father’s arms around me. I don’t remember how I got here. I don’t remember the men leaving or Cassandra’s heels clicking down the stoop or the car pulling away. I just remember the sound of my own voice screaming Lance’s name and then nothing, like someone pulled the plug on the world and left me in the dark.
My dad holds me the way he did when I was small. One hand on the back of my head, the other pressed flat between my shoulder blades, his chin resting on top of my hair. He doesn’t say anything. He just breathes, steady and slow, and I match my lungs to his because mine don’t seem to know how to work on their own anymore.
The coq au vin is still on the stove. The wineglasses are still on the table. Lance’s chair is pushed back at the angle he left it, and his jacket is draped over the armrest because he didn’t havetime to grab it before he walked out the door and into whatever hell is waiting for him.
I stare at that jacket until my eyes burn.
“Genevieve.” My father’s voice is rough. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to look at anything except that jacket and the ghost of the man who was wearing it an hour ago.