I
Smoke filled Zone Seven. It choked out the blue sky and trapped the sun in a thick orange haze that settled over every inch of the charred forest. But Elodie and Aiden had made it—they had been through hell, and this was the last bit, the outer rim, the final test before absolute freedom.
Elodie’s lungs burned and her eyes teared, but she forced herself to stay facing the grays and blacks of the forest and not turn around to gaze at the box truck that had dropped Aiden and her off in the middle of this wasteland. There was no use in looking in a direction she could no longer travel.
The truck’s low grumble turned into a distant purr before fading from existence on its trek back to civilization. Silence bored into Elodie’s ears as she balled her hands into fists and made herself move forward, one foot in front of the other, until the muffled thud thud of each step was as soothing as a metronome.
Next to her, Aiden was her shadow at high noon. Goosebumps crested against her skin as his arm grazed hers while they silently trekked deeper into Zone Seven. Having him there and knowing that they’d been through everything together was a comfort. It was true that misery loved company, but more than that, misery loved being held close and told everything was going to be okay.
“How are you?” Aiden finally broke the silence.
“Fine.” The word came out a croaky whisper, and Elodie swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “I’m fine.”
“You can’t die in VR, El. It’s not real.” Astrid’s voice pounded against Elodie’s ears.
Turns out, that wasn’t true. Once again, her misery reared its ugly head, and Elodie blinked back the image of her best friend’s glossy black ponytail swimming in a sea of fresh blood.
“Getting out here was easier than I thought it’d be.” Her stomach twisted. Fleeing the city had been less complicated than expected, but there was nothing easy about what she and Aiden had been through.
The memory of blood spraying from Cath’s body temporarily stained her vision red. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She wanted to be everything he needed, everything they needed, and move forward without dragging the weight of the past with them. She wanted to forget the last day and banish the memories that haunted them like the ghosts of her best friend and Aiden’s adoptive mother. But there was no escaping what had happened.
Tears burned Elodie’s eyes. This time, it wasn’t the smoke. She stared up at the dingy orange sky to keep from crying. The mask she’d made from a red bandanna she’d found in her pack pressed against her parted lips as she inhaled. It had stopped raining, but ash still fell from above like snow.
“You don’t need to apologize.” Aiden draped his arm over her shoulder and squeezed her against his side. “I get it.”
His arm left her back, and she shivered in its absence, surprised that it felt so good to be touched. Elodie shook away the heat that built in her cheeks and met his gaze. He blinked, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
The empty arms of the jumpsuit he’d changed into before arriving in Zone Seven hung loosely around his hips. With the top half of his suit unzipped, its arms tied around his waist, and those heavy brown boots he was never without, he looked almost the same as the first time they’d met. But a part of this Aiden was missing. It had died in his sister Blair’s office along with his adoptive mother Cath Scott, and Elodie didn’t know what would come to fill its place.
She wiped the chalky flakes of ash from her lashes and squinted ahead at the wasteland of Zone Seven. There was no end in sight—the Key had burned the forests outside Westfall to the ground. They had said it was to keep its citizens safe from Cerberus and eliminate the risk of other zoonotic diseases. Elodie assumed that was also why there were hardly any birds or squirrels or bugs in the city. There was no real reason for them not to exist, no biological or evolutionary explanation for their absence. They existed in virtual versions of the past along with cats and dogs and other pets that the people of Portland, the name of the city pre-Cerberus, used to cart around attached to leashes, in buggies, and in cars. Decades ago, studies showed that there was a small chance that Cerberus could infect dogs, so the Key had exterminated all pets. It wasn’t long before all critters ceased to exist within the Zones. Burning, exterminating, all done in the name of safety. But, up close, this didn’t look like protection. Or perhaps it only appeared differently now that she knew the Key was lying.
The corporation that had saved mankind from the brink of extinction had been telling the same story for so long that no one had stopped to ask whether or not it was still true, still needed. No one except Aiden and Eos.
She glanced back up at Aiden as he swiped his fingers under his eyes. She averted her gaze. Men didn’t like to be seen crying.
“I read this banned book,” Elodie blurted, needing to fill the anguished silence and the vast, unending nothingness of Zone Seven.
Aiden blinked down at her as if she was holding a copy of Death by Violet in her hands.
“I mean, I used to read it. Back at home.” The brittle, black remains of a tree branch crunched under her feet as she stopped. The realization that Westfall was no longer her home sunk to the bottom of her stomach like a stone.
He paused alongside her. “You never told me that.” Shielded by his makeshift mask, Aiden’s expression was as indecipherable as his tone.
She rolled the pointed end of her bandanna between her fingers. “Well, you don’t know everything about me.” She’d meant it to sound cute, coy even, but the words came out as flat as Aiden’s.
He grabbed the canteen dangling from the strap of his backpack and unscrewed the lid. “What made you think about that?” The top of the canteen disappeared under his bandanna as he took a long drink, his eyes never leaving hers.
Elodie’s cheeks heated and her lashes dusted the top of her makeshift mask as her attention fell to the ash-covered earth. “The series is about Violet, this woman, this assassin. She breaks all the rules, but it never seems wrong, you know?” She looked back up at him, his green eyes and red bandanna the brightest things in the desolate Zone. “Vi does all the wrong things for all the right reasons.”
“Like us.” Aiden dropped the canteen. It swayed back and forth, thumping against his side in time with the accelerated beat of her heart.
“Like us.” Elodie yearned to reach out and twine her fingers around his, but she wasn’t used to making the first move, and she was even less familiar with making this one.
“So, how does Violet’s story end?”
“She falls in love with this guy who seems all wrong for her but ends up being totally right because he understands her in a way no one else ever could.” Elodie choked back an embarrassed giggle as her cheeks cooled and her heartbeat steadied. Vi would never feel embarrassed for speaking her mind or saying how she felt. That’s part of what made her relationship with Zane Cole, fellow assassin and all-around bad boy, work so well—she was honest with him, and he was honest with her.
Aiden cocked one ash-dusted brow. “So, it’s a love story . . . but with murder?”
“Yes,” Elodie said and slid her hand into his.
Aiden stared down at their joined hands, both chalky and dry with the steadily falling ash. He nodded to himself and squeezed her hand.
His hand warmed hers, melting her like a flame to wax. “Vi and Zane both have hard lives, but they’re able to make it through because they’ve chosen to face everything together.”
She bit her lip. With each step forward, she got further and further away from Death by Violet and closer to her reality with Aiden. She was writing her own romance novel.
Aiden released her hand and stuffed his into the pockets of his jumpsuit as they started moving again. “Sounds like quite the story.”
Elodie stilled. The distance between them increased as Aiden marched on without her. She didn’t know how to navigate this space between their new lives and their old. There was so much in their way. Plus, Elodie hadn’t told the truth, not entirely. She hadn’t finished Violet Jasmin Royale’s books, and from what she had read, she knew the ending wouldn’t be a simple happily ever after. Violet’s story was about pain and rebirth, and heartache was written only a few pages ahead.
II
Holly’s transparent image pixelated and faded from Blair’s vision as the Key’s Priority One transmission ended. Her pulse thundered inside her veins, threatening to shake her to pieces while she waited for the doors of the Council Hall to open and her trial to commence.
Preston Darby had done it again.
Rage sloshed in Blair’s gut, so hot her throat burned. It didn’t matter that he was the Council Leader. She would find a way to sink him. She had to, and fast, or one day she would wake up to discover that she’d been replaced by a hologram.
Major Rhett Owens cleared his throat, alerting Blair to his presence as he made his way to the two rows of chairs that lined each side of the corridor outside of Council Hall. Since he and Blair had both been caught red-handed (literally and figuratively) after Cath’s death, they would be reprimanded for any wrongdoing together. The thought that Blair would lose her job never once crossed her mind, and not only because she had more pressing things to think about. The Key couldn’t afford to lose Dr. Cath Scott and Blair Scott at the same time—no matter the reasoning, the citizens would take the death of one and the firing of another to mean that trouble was brewing within the corporation. The Key hadn’t maintained power all these years by sowing unrest and fear. Well, at least not the fear that the corporation was unstable and therefore couldn’t keep its citizens safe.
“Blair.” Rhett forced her name between clenched teeth as he dropped into the chair opposite her.
She didn’t respond. If she wasn’t careful, she would open her mouth and drown this corridor with the wrath that bubbled up her throat. Not even Major Rhett Owens deserved that.
Rhett crossed his thick arms over his barrel chest, the jacket of his Key Corp–red dress uniform stretching and creasing with the motion. “I, uh, well, I just wanted to say that—”
“Don’t,” Blair whispered.
Rhett blinked. There was still a purplish bruise around his eye, but it was healing nicely. “I only meant that—”
“Don’t,” she repeated, her gaze skewering his. It wasn’t a request, but a warning.
She wanted to blame him for Cath and her brother and for putting her in the position she was in; sitting in this hallway waiting on people who thought they were better than her. Blair wanted to blame someone that was still alive for everything that had happened in her office the night before and for everything that had happened every moment since. But the only person Blair could blame was no longer available for punishment. Cath had removed herself from the equation.
“If I want to hear from you,” she growled. “I will address you directly.”
Rhett’s white-blond temples pulsed, and he fixed his glare to the ceiling.
Satisfied, Blair tugged on the sleeve of her Key Corp–red blouse, rubbing the silk between her thumb and forefinger in a gesture identical to the one Holly had made in the transmission. Heat licked her skin as she shook out her hands and forced them flat against her bespoke pencil skirt.
There was one person she could hold responsible. One person who deserved far more than her wrath. Council Leader Preston Darby could be blamed for the tragedy of Cath, and the loss of her brother. She could blame the Council Leader for many, many things.
Blair brushed her wild curls away from her round cheeks.
Darby had issued Aiden’s death warrant. Without it, she could have saved her brother, saved her whole family. But Darby had pushed her to act too soon.
And then there was the continuing matter of Holly . . .
Maxine’s kitten heels clicked against the tile as she hurried down the hall toward Blair. “I was so worried the meeting had already begun.” She gracefully lowered herself into the chair a mandated six feet away from Blair. Maxine had been calling the trial a meeting since Blair had received the message demanding her presence at Council Hall. The Council didn’t have meetings. The Key Corp Council held trials and heard complaints.
Rhett grunted something unintelligible, or perhaps Blair simply wasn’t paying attention, before clearly snapping, “Couldn’t start without you, now could they, Ms. Wyndham?”
For every strong woman, there was a man who despised her for no reason.
Maxine’s skin smoothed over her sharp, angled features. Blair’s assistant wouldn’t give the major the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her.
Good little monster.
Maxine pursed her lips and continued as if Rhett Owens had never been born. “Everything in your office has been sorted. The bots just finished cleaning and—”
Blair held up her hand. She didn’t want to hear about bots cleaning the blood from every surface of the space she’d once thought of as her fortress. She wanted to distance herself from the hurt that came with thinking about her office and her adoptive mother and live inside the rage instead. She was comfortable there.
The Council Hall doors hissed open and a steady stream of violet light illuminated the entrance to the great open space. As she stood, Blair smoothed down her skirt and mindlessly straightened the collar of her blouse. She plunged into the Violet Shield, a practiced grin plumping her cheeks.
Without looking at him, she felt Darby’s eyes pressed against her, studying her. What piece of her would he cut away next to paste onto Holly?
Heat washed up Blair’s throat and sharpened her tongue. She was ready for battle.
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