Still, Tavia pushed herself to standing, ignoring the blinding pain up her arm.

She slumped against the bridge beam, cold metal pressing onto her skin and through the tears in her clothing.

Ashwood’s lips quirked.

“Such hunger to live.” He stepped closer and the breeze blew by in a deathly croon. “I’ll enjoy taking you apart, piece by piece.”

He won’t kill me, Tavia thought again. It’s Zekia who kills me. It’s Zekia. It’s Zekia.

The mirror doll hitched in the back of her trousers called to her, begging for blood.

Tavia cursed at her knife, sinking slowly to the bottom of the waters where Ashwood had thrown it.

Still, she had one last dagger left.

She pulled it from her sleeve and flung it at Ashwood, but the knife caught midair and with a flick of the Kingpin’s wrist it sailed back toward her.

Tavia ducked in barely enough time.

She couldn’t kill Ashwood. She could only delay him.

And if that was all she could do, then she’d do it well.

She reached for her belt loop and pulled out the first marble she felt.

Cutting charm.

She threw it toward Ashwood and it split into a thousand pieces in the air, glistening daggers of glass heading straight for his cloaked face.

Ashwood waved a hand. Bored, almost lazy.

The shards fell to dust before her eyes.

“So much potential,” he said. “All of it wasted.”

Ashwood crossed the gap between them in a blink and grabbed Tavia by the shoulders.

His nails dug into her like knives of his own.

“At the very least, your mother died without a fuss,” he said.

Tavia spat on the floor by his feet.

“After I kill you, nothing will stop my boy from coming back to me.”

Tavia looked at Wesley’s bone gun on the bridge floor and steeled herself.

Ashwood was close enough to whisper in her ear, cold breath making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

“Wesley and I will create a new world together.”

Tavia flung her head forward.

The tip of her skull cracked against a part of Ashwood’s face that wasn’t made from shadow and magic.

He growled and stumbled backward and Tavia propelled herself forward, moving past him and skidding across the rough concrete of the bridge.

It burned against her skin, so much so that she felt like she’d grazed herself to the bone.

She grabbed Wesley’s gun, felt the familiar weight of it in her hands. The comfort it had brought for those weeks when she didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

She aimed. Dante Ashwood’s bloodred lips tilted upward.

“I like the old world just fine,” Tavia said.

And then she pulled the trigger.

36

WESLEY

The bullet went through Ashwood’s neck and hit the bridge column behind him with a loud clang.