Page 61 of Iron Crown

Morelli was simply a cadaver, as lifeless as the mouse I had stomped beneath my heel.

I did not feel the blade in my hand, or the task that lay before me. This corpse was not Morelli.

Morelli was far, far away, flying with the robins he saw in the window.

His matted hair was darkened by the blood, his gray eyes now lifeless and dull.

With my bare hand, I grabbed the empty bottle of wine—the one that had been laced with joy and death. With a cry, I threw it against the stone wall of the cell, and it shattered into a thousand pieces.

I put Morelli’s head down on the table, facing the photo he’d chosen as his favorite, his body unmoved from how it had been when I did my first slice. Were it not for the blood, you would not think the two parts had been severed.

I stepped away, leaning against the rough wall, and slid down until I sat in the blood of my fallen enemy.

“Farewell,” I croaked out. “Our roles should have been reversed.”

This was the way of so many of us. I made the sign of the cross, touching my forehead, chest, my left shoulder, then right. I whispered a small prayer, and hoped that when my violentdemise was nigh, I would go with thoughts of my wife and child—that I’d imagine them running to me in my last moments.

“I hope you know,” I said to the now empty room, as I felt Giovanni Morelli’s soul vacate from this haunted place. I was speaking to the robins that were not there, and to the sky that he had not seen in three years. But still, I said the words, nonetheless: “If I did not have a wife and child, I would have let you go, and damned all the rest.”

Chapter eighteen

The Blood of My Blood

Kira

The cell door opened, and I stumbled to my feet. Kieran was much more graceful, coming to a stand with his hands clasped in front of him. His face was a stone-cold mask of indifference.

Blood ran down his suit, down his body, to his shoes. Blood covered his face, his hands, his… everything.

He was red from head to toe. Even his eyes were bloodshot.

I opened my mouth to speak, but shut it again.

“O’Malley,” Eoghan said, not sparing me a glance. “Get the mortician and embalm the body. Keep the blade and headtogether, because we’ll need them. Have them dress him in a suit—take one of mine if you must or buy a new one. I want it tailored to him. Shave him, clean him. Have them cut his hair the way it had been before… before…”

He shut his mouth, swallowing something down, as he looked away, clenching and unclenching his fist before he regained his composure.

Running a bloody hand through his blond hair, he straightened. Then, he looked at Kieran with the authority of a man who was not a crimson mess of human remains. His face went from one of anguish to… nothing. Like someone had extinguished the light of Eoghan Green, and left nothing behind.

“Give Giovanni Morelli as much dignity as we can.”

“Yes, sir.” Kieran nodded.

“Husband…” I whispered on a sigh, just hoping he would turn his head to me. Just for a second.

When he did look, his eyes were searching me for… something.

Whatever he was looking for, he did not find it because he turned away, trudging up the stairs, leaving bloody footprints in his wake.

“Eoghan!” I called, but he did not answer.

Kieran already had a phone to his ear, relaying information to someone else.

I was about to follow in Eoghan’s bloody wake when Kieran called out, “Mrs. Green!”

I turned to him, and he put his hand over the mic of his phone.

“Please be kind.”

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