I swallow.
“You realize I could kill you for attempting to disarm me,” Sterling tells her. “Also, do you truly think any ofthemwould allow you to get near me?” he asks, nodding to the old Lords, who are watching from a few feet away. Harlow, especially, looks ready to pummel Astern.
“Fuck you,” Astern hisses, her voice breaking on the last word.
Sterling pushes her down to her knees. “I changed my mind. For your insolence, I’m going to have one of yournew friendskill you.” Sterling snaps his gaze to me, and then he holds a hand out. “Take it,” he commands, breathing heavily. “You’ll need to learn how to do this anyway.”
I narrow my eyes as I look between him and Astern. “Are you serious?”
Sterling cracks his neck as he takes a step forward. “Dead serious. If you fail, I will have to kill you, too. The Lords of Darkness cannot have any weak spots.”
Interestingly, Harlow covers a cough with her hand that sounds a lot likehypocrite,and when my eyes flick to the other Lords, they almost seem proud of the fact that I refuse to do this.
Like they’re proud of the fact that we want to protect each other.
“If you won’t do it, I’m sure one of the others would happily take your place. I’m not fucking around.”
My skin pebbles as I look between him and the old Lords.
I don’t think he’s serious–Iknowhe is.
Just as I step forward to tell him to fuck himself, Otto begins speaking.
“Who is Charlotte Banks?”
When I look over at him, he’s looking down at one of the papers he collected from the ground.
Charlotte Banks?Wasn’t she the posh girl from Berkshire who died in a house fire? It’s all anyone talked about for weeks–how tragic it was, how charitable the family was. I’d given a speech on fire safety about it–it was one of my first public speeches at the ripe age of eighteen. I vaguely recall a picture of a small brunette girl standing in front of her parents…
My eyes flick to Astern, and she’s deathly white.
Suddenly, it clicks into place.
“You’re Charlotte Banks,” I murmur.
CHAPTER 20
Astern
I can’t breathe.
I can’t doanythingbut panic.
He knows.
Heknows.
I let my gaze wander over to Alaric, and his dark eyes regard me with interest. Harlow whispers something, and he nods. Theo and Gideon shift uncomfortably, and when I look back at Sterling, he’s smirking.
He’s…not mad.
“Let me repeat what I said earlier. We are the Lords of Darkness, and there is nothing we don’t know. Did you believe you survived a lethal injection, Ms. Hackbolt? Nice play on your name, by the way. Charlotte Banks = Astern Hackbolt. It’s a simplistic, amateur anagram and it was all too easy to solve. If you’re going to be in this order, you’ll need to do better next time.”
I stiffen. My heart pounds against my ribs, and that whole godawful night comes roaring back to the forefront of my mind.
The blood.
The bodies.
