I told myself that this was what we needed to do. That this was what was necessary. Vital. Right now, right now Jax was beyond those glass doors readying his men. They had guns aimed at the backs of those soldiers.

But those soldiers had guns aimed at us and there were more of them than we'd initially thought. At least fifty. Varying weaponry, their expressions a mix of grim satisfaction and shifting anxiety.

With that gun pressed to my skull, the room seemed to still. Caine stood near the back of the ballroom, his hand wrapped in Nadia's hair, his knife pressed to her neck. Cohen was now on his knees, a gun pressed to his head too.

I tasted blood as I was hauled to my feet and shoved from hand to hand. Kai's gaze tracked me as I was passed from one soldier to the next, guns digging into my flesh, knives nicking my skin, until I was thrown onto the floor in font of Caine.

How much time had passed? Enough?

I moved to stand, but just as I'd pushed up from the ground, Caine's boot collided with my head. Pain exploded behind my eyelids and I slumped back onto my hands and knees.  From behind me, Kai made a sound at the back of his throat.

Cohen knelt a few feet away from me. He was looking behind me at his half-brother, his face unreadable. Directly in front of me, Nadia's boots scrapped against the shining tile as she struggled to get away from Caine's knife. The world was a piece of badly woven cloth, quickly unraveling.

I fought for a spark, for any small piece of myself that might catch and burn. Even the voices, always a dull whisper before, were silent now. Waiting. Watching. I tried to reach out, trying to pry that swirling darkness away from where it clung, weak and trembling, against my spine. I needed it. I needed to burn. I needed to be...to be...

Caine's voice broke through the swirling terror in my mind. Speaking to Kai. He was speaking to Kai. Kai—my Kai—who stood just behind me with a gun pointed at his uncle. Ready to shoot. I knew without looking that every soldier in the room had their weapon trained on him. If he shot at Caine, they'd shoot him. He'd die.

Wait, I silently begged. Give Jax time.

Caine said, "You will lower that gun. Now."

Kai's voice was steady. "Let Nadia go."

Caine paused and I lifted myself up onto my hands and knees, peering up at him. Those steely eyes flicked to me, the corner of his mouth twitching up as he crooned, "You'd rather me hold Monroe this close?"

"Let Nadia go."

"Not an answer..." Caine tsked. "But very well, I'd rather have my hands on her anyway. More flies with honey, as they say. You listened best when she was my pet."

A chill raced up my spine at his words and I pushed myself up, spurred onward by the need to get as far from Mirren Caine as I could. I made it to my feet, my legs trembling and my head spinning, just as a guard stepped forward and took Nadia from Caine. She fought him, kicking and spitting and biting at the man, a wild animal determined to get free, but the dig of a knife at her neck was enough to quiet her.

In the seconds their attention was on my friend, I made my move towards Kai. But my body was achingly slow. Too slow. Each movement sluggish from pain. The room spun. My vision seemed to flicker. A sweat slick hand caught my arm from behind and fingers closed in my hair as I was pulled backward until I was flush against Caine's chest.

I must have made some sort of frightened sound, because Caine laughed, the sound of it rumbling through me. My lungs wouldn't full expand. I was panting for air, my body shaking as I tried to steady myself, ground myself. Time. We needed time.

Caine said, "And there it is. Brave until it matters. Your knees are shaking so badly you'd collapse if I wasn't holding you up." I twisted, trying to shove that knee into his groin and he just barely managed to get a hold me again, dodging it. His grip tightened as he whirled me to face Kai.

Fire pressed to my skin, weak but persistent. I reached for it and found only cinders. Embers and no flame. My name is Monroe Benson and I am goddess-touched, I whispered to that inner fire. To that swirling, darkness within my blood, my bones, my very self. I said it again and again and again. A silent chant. A prayer. A plea for something, anything.

Where was Jax?

Across from me, Kai's gun was still trained on his uncle, his aim steady. "It's over. Darragh's forces are gathered outside those doors, he nodded to the closed wooden doors behind him. You've lost."

"Have I?" Hot breath fanned against my neck, Caine's words coming out wet against my ear as he whispered, "Have you missed me, Miss Benson?" A chill skittered down my spine and I strained to put distance between our bodies. He adjusted his hold, wrapping an arm around my middle, pinning my arms to my torso, as his gun dug a trench into my skull.

Caine must have shifted his attention back to where the guard stood holding Nadia. They were just beyond my peripheral, but Cohen was within my line of sight and he tensed. The first sign that something was wrong. His mouth quivered and I could see he was trying to think of what to say, what to do.

The prince took a step, just one, towards Nadia.

The chains at his wrists clanked loudly, making his movement obvious. But Cohen didn't seem worried about being noticed. He had eyes only for Nadia. As he took a second step, breeching the wall of guards that had been surrounding him, one of them stepped forward to haul him back.

Caine held up a hand to stop his men, "Let the little prince join the conversation. What say you, Cohen Warwick?"

Cohen's blue eyes darted from Nadia to Caine. His voice was hoarse from yelling as he asked,  "What do I say about what?"

Kai cut off Caine's response. "Let her go. Now."

"Let her go?" Caine repeated. "Go where?" His boot collided with the back of my knee and I hit the ground hard. The crack of my knees against tile mingled with the sharp click as Caine cocked the gun in his hand. I had a second to scramble forward on my hands, my torn dress tangling in my legs, before he was on me again.

He caught me by the jaw, yanking my head back sharply. Pain ricocheted through my jaw, my cheeks, my neck. I ground my teeth together as I fought for any sort of control over the situation.

My hands moved up, clutching his wrist as he held my kneeling body against his legs. My nails bit into flesh, I twisted, trying to bite him, but it all ended as he bent over and pressed the gun into forehead.

"Monroe!" Kai's barked warning cut through the room.

I froze.

Burn him. End him. The whispers were soft, so quiet I almost thought I'd imagined them. I bit my bottom lip against the sudden frightened tears welling in my eyes. There was no fire in my blood. I was an empty vessel. Coal gone cold. A match burned to nothingness.

Kai was watching, his eyes wide, his hold on the gun slipping only slightly as he watched me stop struggling against his uncle's hold. I wanted to tell him to shoot. Shoot him and be done with it. But I knew why he hesitated—one wrong move and Caine could pull the trigger. One wrong move and Caine would kill me and the soldiers would kill him.

But Kai would have told me to take the shot. In fact, he'd lectured me time and time again not to hesitate. But here we were.

I'd faced death so many times over the last year that is seemed like a taunt, a dare. I didn't believe it could happen and yet...

Caine smiled and crouched behind me, his putrid breath hot against my cheek as he said, "You have always been weaker than I expected." His thumb stroked my jaw like a perverse lover as he spoke. "I don't know what about you tempts him. You're pretty enough, but he could have anyone. Any girl he wants. Why you?" He sighed. "I thought having you here in the palace might reveal to me what it was—this hold you have over him. He was less of a disappointment before you. You've ruined him." The words were quiet, his voice like a snake against my skin. When he spoke again, his voice was louder. "Who would win the Culling, truly? You? Kinsley—?"

"She's dead," the words came from my throat in as a raw, broken sound. His hand tightened on my jaw, moving to my throat. His fingers were a vice against my windpipe.

"Dead?" He repeated, his voice sharp with surprise.

Kai's voice was soft as he said, "Release her. You hate me, not her. You've never hated Monroe. If you want to hurt someone, hurt me. Shoot me. You know it's only a matter of time before Darragh comes through that door. He'll end you."

"Again, you show your hand. Time and time again. Why play at all, Kaius?"

"Uncle—"

"It hardly matters," Caine smiled up at Kai and then looked to Cohen.

In the midst of my conversation with Caine, he'd taken more ground and now Cohen stood within a few feet of Nadia. Caine's soldiers were pointing guns at him, but none of them had the orders or the guts to shoot.

Caine said, "The Erydian crown is up for grabs once more. How exciting. Perhaps your damnable goddess will place it upon one of your heads after all." He stroked the gun down my cheek before pulling me by the hair until I was standing in front of him once more—a human shield, lest his nephew decide to try his aim. "That is," he said, his gun finding purchase in my hair, "if you still have a head at all when we're done here."

I dared a glanced to the large glass doors below the balcony. Where were my friends? Where was Jax. They'd said minutes. It had to have been that long. Longer.

I felt more than saw Caine follow my gaze, so I goaded him. "You won't have a head, not when Britta Warwick is done with you," I said, trying and failing to twist out of his grasp. "Whatever she does to you, Caine, it will never be enough. Whether she lets you live or she kills you, whether she hangs you, or cuts your nasty head off, or burns you alive, it will never be punishment enough. Death is too good for a piece of shit like you. You deser—"

The look of utter fear on Kai's face was what made me stop. I was playing with fire in a whole new way, and he was being forced to watch. Agony. Complete desperate agony laced his features. And that was when I knew for sure that we were damned.

The look on Kai's face was that of mourning. That of grief.

He believed I was already lost and he no idea how to save me.

"I believe we've played this game before, Miss Benson," Caine whispered. "Only, the last time, it was a princess who took the bullet. Will you die begging the way she did?"

The words were like a bucket of cold water.

He kept talking, his attention moving from me to Cohen. "Exiled prince," he said, his voice turning loud. "Who would win in a Culling trial, Miss Benson or the healer?"

When Cohen didn't respond right away, the guard holding Nadia dug his knife deeper into her throat. She hissed in pain. Crimson dripped onto her pale blue shirt.

Desperation laced Cohen's voice. "We're not in the Culling."

"We never left the Culling," Caine said. "Now, answer. You've both been the prince in the Culling. Who would you have as your queen, Cohen?"

"Let Monroe go." Kai spared Cohen only the smallest of glances.

"I'm speaking to your brother, Kaius," Caine bit out. "Wait your turn."

Kai spoke through gritted teeth. "Let. Her. Go."

"No worry for the other one?" Caine said, nodding to Nadia. "Come now, Kaius, would you see your brother's...friend? Lover?" He shrugged, as if what Nadia was hardly mattered. "Die so easily?"

Nadia let out a soft whimper as the blade moved, the guard pressing dangerously close to an artery. One cut from that blade, one slice too deep...Would Nadia be able to heal herself? With everything happening it was hard to remember how her ability worked. I couldn't burn myself. Would she be able to turn her ability inward and...and...

"Choose. One of you choose. I don't truly care which."

"Choose?" Cohen breathed. He looked at Caine fully now, his brow furrowed. "Choose...Choose what?"

Caine's mouth slid along my hairline as he said, "Did you believe you would all get out of this unscathed? All of you alive and well. Off to live your wretched happily ever afters. No. That isn't how the Culling works, remember? Only one girl wins. Only one queen rises. That's the game."

"This isn't a game," Cohen whispered. "It's never been a game."

"It's a game now." Caine turned us both, swiveling me to the side as he nodded to the guard holding Nadia. Fear, white-hot and breathtaking, coursed through me as Caine's gun found purchase against my skin once more.

"Caine, don't—" I began.

"The prince is struggling to focus," he said, speaking over me. "Perhaps more blood will help keep his attention."

There wasn't time to do anything as the guard yanked Nadia backward, holding her tighter to him. She screamed—the sound high pitched and terrible. Her face was still twisted in pain as she tried to get away from the guard holding her. It was only then, as he withdrew his blade and plunged it into her again, that I realized that he'd stabbed her.

🔥🔥🔥

I hope you all are having a wonderful Tuesday (or whatever day it is when you read this).

If you enjoyed this chapter leave this 💀 emoji in the comments and tell me which ✨currently living✨ character's death would upset you the most.