Knotrium waited until Max's eyes were on her to break the heel. Catching it on the barstool was the easy part, making it look like an accident was slightly more difficult. With lucky, Maximus would be too intoxicated with blood and magic residue to notice the difference. As she fell, her drink spiraled from her hand, landing with carefully done precision onto his tailored shirt. 

"Whoops." She giggles, clutching her head. "So sorry, sir." He liked his ego stoked, and if calling Maximus sir got him to press her up against an alley wall any faster, she'd swallow the bile it took to make her lips for the sounds. 

He caught her wrist, smiled, and ran a hand through his hair, leaving a gel coating along his fingers. "Don't worry about it, darling. Let's get you another."

"Sure." Knotrium made sure to color her cheeks, melding red into her skin tone. She kept her eyes on him as he brought her another margarita. One of his hand slid something into it and Maximus took it from the bartender. She imagined the way he would look, strewn about across the alleyway behind the club, intestines squeezed out into the pavement.  The scene flickered before her eyes, and the club dissapeared for a moment. People began to whisper. Knotrium's fingers tighten on the hem of her skirt. 

Alexei's voice filtered through her head. Not now. It's not worth it. 

And Edward's sister's death, that's not worth it? The murder of your family by the coven, that's not worth it? I've seen your face, Alexei, every time you read the about discovery of Anastasia's bones. Knotrium could feel herself shaking. One of her hands twitched, maintaining the magic that hid her race from her target. 

He deserves to die, I can't argue that. But the people in this club didn't kill Romanovs, Knotrium. Your brother and his coven did that. Kill Maximus Alder, not a moronic party girl. Kukipici's voice joined Alexei. 

She tried to focus on his words, tried to see anything but the eyes of her target, dancing under multicolored lights. But in her memories those eyes shifted their reflection of snowflakes and lamp light. He laughed at her, howling as she dragged Gavriil's body from the mud, barely breathing. For a moment it was like she was carrying her thrall again, trying to ignore the sweet calling taste of his blood. She saw the concentration camp walls rising around them through peaks of snow, heard the guards shouting and his laughter, his laughter filled her ears over dying screams. Gavriil, she thought desperately, Where are you? 

Knotrium. Her name, just her name from him, and she snapped back to the present. 

Maximus said something to her; it made the other women laugh. The vampiress painted a smile back onto her face, all shiny white teeth and red lips. "What?"

"I asked if you wanted to go somewhere private."

A sharp smile, softened by her glamor: "I'd be happy too."

Maximus must have used some of his suggestion, as the dance floor parted around them. Knotrium thought of the Red Sea, and Moses parting the waters to let through the Egyptian slaves. Was this how they felt? Lost and uncertain, angry and calling out to everyone the loved, just to make sure they were still there? In her peripheral vision, she saw Caesarion peel away to follow them. Edward would be close behind. 

How had she dragged them all to this? Caesarion, her first  and greatest mistake. Edward, who she'd unknowingly betrayed hundreds of years ago, just to save a boy that had become her thrall. But never, never would she regret saving Edmund from the royal courts. Wherever she went, with each new thrall, someone paid the price. 

He had her hand in a repulsive, sweaty grip. Knotrium resisted the urge to wrench it away. Tonight, after they fled England, she'd stand in the shower for hours to scrub away the feeling of his skin on hers. They walked through the club to the back entrance. Maximus pulled open the door. A wave of chill from the pitch black night hit her, and she ran her other hand over cold bricks. They were here. This material world wasn't going away, no matter how much her illusions tried to blanket reality. Her memories couldn't touch her if she build up the walls around her mind again. 

We've entered the alley. Be ready. 

Murmurs of assent came through her head. The door opened and shut again. Maximus was whispering something into her ear, foul words from the way his hand ran up the inside of her thighs. Now, now that they were away from people, she could let her repulsion brew into poison.  He watched her as if she was unlacing her corset, and gulped in suprise as one of the knives she carried burrowed into his stomach. Maximus' gasp of pain was sweeter than a symphony. 

Her illusions came crashing down so he could see the face of his murder. 

But instead of fear, he began to laugh. "Are you going to kill me, Knotrium? It won't change the inevitable."

"Maybe it will change more than you know."

"You've killed so many of us, and still the coven grows. Octavian is going to find you." He laughed again, blood bubbling from his lips. "We get closer and closer every time. You picked the wrong side of the war, Knotrium."

She should leave him there. She should finish the job and let him die. Her brother would get her message; he would leave her alone. But her hands wouldn't bring the knife down. "I didn't chose a side in any war." 

"Maybe not now, but the second you picked a human thrall over your brother's army, was the second you dug your own grave. All this running? Your torture of your thralls won't help them. In the end, the coven will bury you together."

The door slammed open again. 

"Kill him, Knotrium!" Caesarion ran up to her, knife clenched in his hand. "End it!"

"I never understood why you wanted an Egyptian bastard. But it looks like you've both given each other enough pain."

Her thrall griped her wrists. His skin sent shivers down her back. Every time he touched her, she remembered his face pale and bloodless, lying in her bed as her brother's army advanced. Her fault. 

His grip tightened. "Knotrium. Don't listen to him. Look at me." His hand slid around her face. "You're alright." His lips brushed her ear. "He deserves this. Think about Alexei's family. Think about Gavriil. Remember Meallan's sisters. Channel your inner Sarabelle."

Usually she killed faceless minions. But Maximus, he was so wrapped up in the history of her thralls, in Knotrium's own guilt,  that bringing the knife down was like killing a part of her past. 

Maximus twitched, and fell still. She reached up, and wiped spatters of blood from her face. "He's won't hurt us any longer."

"Atta girl." Caesarion stroked her hair. 

Ice ran through her veins. In Knotrium's stomach, the cocktails turned to sludge. She almost wished vampires could feel the effects of alcohol. She could float through blissful oblivion, until certainty crashed down on her again. 

"Is Edward here?"

"Behind his."

Knotrium detached herself from her thrall. Forcing herself to look at the body as she stepped over it, she dragged her feet over to Edward. "I'm sorry."

He raised an eyebrow. "For hurting my thrall?"

Blood was congealing on her face, and she picked it off with her fingernails. "For all of it. For hurting Izem, for leaving you at the mercy of the court."

Edward flicked his eyes away. "You were the one who made every choice."

"They wanted to kill him." Her white hair was absorbing the red down her dress. She paid it no attention. Her eyes were fixed on Edwards, and Knotrium held up her hands in pleading, prayer, and surrender. "The court was going to kill him, and us with it. I had to leave. I should never have gone down to the dungeons. But God, we all make mistakes. Once I saw Edmund lying there, pale and blind like he'd never seen the light of day, purple hair all matted in blood and urine, I couldn't leave."

The vampire girl swallowed back bile and salt water. "Once his father found out we'd saved him, he was going to send the order to the executioner. It was so much easier to pretend you weren't involved. And today? I had no other choice. There was no other place for me to go."

"You were the one who made every choice." Edward repeated. He took a breath, and let their eyes meet on his terms. "But I don't hold every one against you." 

A trickle of warmth, maybe it was relief, or maybe she was just going crazy, ran back into her veins. Knotrium was an icecap, but maybe there was hope for more.

"We need to meet the van before people come snooping." Caesarion pulled them out of the alley by their wrists. 

Sergio was waiting behind the wheel of their car. "Get in. Don't want to be implicated for a murder now do we?"

Knotrium managed a smile as she climbed up next to him then rethought her desision. "I think I'll sit in the back for this one. You and Caesarion can handle any wandering baddies that come our way." She retreated to the last unoccupied seat. Caesarion pulled himself up to shotgun. His hair shone in the car lights, as mint green as the day she had met him. Behind closed eyes, the memory overtook her as the lights went out.