Chapter 36: Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter 36

Quinn’s POV

I had never feared death.

Not really.

I used to believe that dying for a cause, even a flawed one, meant something. That if you played your role well enough, your blood might stain history with purpose.

But tonight?

Tonight was different.

Tonight, the moonlight poured into the manor like silver blades, slicing across the marble floor in quiet warning. And Brie Nolan closed the door behind her with the kind of slow, deliberate finality that felt like a noose tightening around my neck.

“Sit,” she said.

I did.

Not because I was afraid of her.

But because I knew what she was capable of.

She didn’t need to raise her voice. Or bare her teeth. She ruled with the kind of power that didn’t scream, it whispered, coiled, and struck when you least expected it.

She moved across the room like a shadow, elegant, composed, lethal. Everything about her was sharp, refined, deliberate. I’d once thought she was beautiful in a haunting sort of way. The kind of woman who didn’t just enter a room, she claimed it.

Now, all I saw was the wolf beneath the skin. Hungry. Calculating. Cruel.

“You’ve been reckless,” she said, pouring herself a drink. A deep amber liquid filled the crystal glass, slow and smooth. She didn’t offer me one.

“I didn’t tell him,” I said. My voice barely rose above a whisper. “Not everything.”

She turned, glass in hand, her eyes glinting in the low light. “You almost did.”

I looked away. “He deserves to know.”

A long silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. Then, she crossed the room and placed the untouched drink down in front of me. Not an offering. A reminder.

“Let me make something very clear, Quinn.” Her voice was velvet and venom. “If Edgar finds out about my involvement in the attack… if you so much as breathe a word about our plan, I won’t just kill you.”

She leaned closer.

“I’ll erase you.

Your name.

Your family.

Your entire bloodline will vanish from Duskwood’s history like smoke.”

I didn’t flinch.

But my throat tightened.

“You think I haven’t already paid enough?” I whispered, trying to hold onto the last pieces of my defiance. “You used me. Lied to me. Told me Lia was a threat”

“She is a threat,” Brie snapped, her mask slipping. Her eyes gleamed with something cold and feral. “To everything I’ve built. To the bloodline. To Edgar. He’s too blinded by that bond to see it. But he will. And when he does, it’ll be too late.”

I swallowed hard, trying to steel myself. “He loved her. You saw him when she left, he’s hollow.”

Brie exhaled sharply, then began to pace, like a queen assessing the battlefield. “He loved the idea of her. The tragedy. The fire. But love fades. Legacy doesn’t. She doesn’t belong in our world.”

“She saved him,” I said.

“She changed him,” Brie corrected coldly. “And not for the better.”

I balled my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms. “You don’t know what he’d do if he found out.”

Brie turned to me then, her expression eerie in its stillness. “Oh, I do. That’s exactly why he can’t.”

Her calm scared me more than her threats.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked. “The look on his face when I told him. The way his voice broke.”

Brie didn’t respond right away. She just stared past me, as if she could already see the future unfolding, burning.

“When he finds out why she really left,” she said at last, “he won’t stop at me. He’ll burn everything down. Duskwood. The clan. You.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t plan to hurt her.”

“But you did,” she said, her voice soft but sharp enough to bleed. “You let your jealousy poison you. You let me poison you. And now you think guilt buys you redemption?”

My breath caught in my throat.

She was right.

I hadn’t meant to go this far. I hadn’t meant for Lia to suffer the way she had. I just… I wanted to matter. I wanted to be chosen. I wanted to stand beside Edgar, not behind him. Not forgotten.

But in trying to be seen, I’d helped destroy the only thing he truly cared about.

“I’m not like you,” I said, standing suddenly. I couldn’t bear to sit in her shadow any longer.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Brie said, returning to her glass. “But tell me, Quinn… How many lines have you crossed for power? For loyalty? For love?”

She took a sip and smiled.

“That’s the thing about monsters. We never realize we’ve become one until it’s too late.”

I turned toward the door.

“Walk away, then,” she called after me. “But remember this, if I fall, you fall too. There’s no safety without my silence. And I’m the only thing keeping you breathing.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t need to.

My hands were trembling as I shut the door behind me, her voice still echoing in my skull like a curse I couldn’t scrub clean.

I descended the manor steps and stepped into the night, the cold air biting at my skin. My legs moved on instinct, but my mind stayed behind, trapped in that room.

Everything about this had gone too far.

And now, there was no undoing it.

No taking back the lies. No reversing the betrayal. No way out.

The worst part wasn’t the threat.

It was the truth in it.

I’d helped shatter something sacred. I watched love unravel. I watched him fall apart. And for what? Favor? Power? A chance to be loved?

No. That is gone now.

All that remained was the echo of the girl I used to be. The one who believed in loyalty. The one who still thought there were lines we wouldn’t cross.

But monsters don’t draw lines.

They just keep stepping over them until all that’s left is shadow.

And I was standing in mine.

Alone.