Page 31 of Twisted Empire

I missed the rest of what she said as horror seared through my thoughts.

I knew that house. I knew the tree out front and the design on the awning over the porch. I knew the stones forming the path up to the porch steps.

I’d been at that house just a couple of hours ago. It was my family home that was burning.

CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

Madelyn

I’d never walked so cautiously through the house where I’d lived almost my entire life.

The place was a blackened shell of what it’d once been. The foundation stood mostly intact, walls and floors where they should be, but even those surfaces were so charred that I tested each patch of floor before putting my weight on it.

Technically it wasn’t safe for me to be exploring the ruin at all, but I hadn’t been able to stand the thought of losing one last visit to my former home. To see exactly how much Doom’s Seed had destroyed.

The answer was pretty much everything.

Nothing remained of the furniture except the barest of bones: a few chunks of the sofa’s frame, the scorched appliances with melted dials. Everything smaller and flammable had transformed into indistinguishable heaps of coals and ashes.

It felt as if I’d stepped into some alternate dimension where my hometown was a warzone. This couldn’treallybe my house in the world I actually lived in, could it?

But I hadn’t hopped across any dimensions. The war we were fighting was all too real and happening right here around me. As the other people in the house with me were a stark reminder of.

Beckett glanced over at me when I raised my head. He’d been staying within arm’s reach the entire time, as if he thought he might need to yank me to safety at any moment. Also toward that purpose, he had a few men stationed outside the building, watching for any sign of enemy forces.

Logan stood several feet away in what remained of the dining room. He was staring at the place where the table had once been, his hands clenched at his sides, maybe remembering the family dinners we’d enjoyed there during the short time he and I had shared this home. Slade and Dexter waited nearby, tensed and apprehensive, their gazes flicking between their best friend and me.

When Slade caught my gaze now, I gave him a slight nod to say I was hanging in there. Logan needed support too.

“I can tell it was a beautiful house,” Beckett said quietly, reaching out to rub my shoulder.

I nodded, fighting the burn of tears behind my eyes. “Yeah. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to grow up.”

“I’m so sorry. I got you dragged into a war between two immense syndicates… I never would have wanted you—or anyone else outside of my world—getting caught in the crossfire like this.”

The guilt in his words tugged at my heart. “It’s not your fault,” I said without hesitation. “This might have happened even if we’d never met. It was me joining up with the Vigil’s investigation into my dad’s death that put me on Doom’s Seed’s radar and made him want to scare me off.” A rough laugh caught in my throat. “Maybe I should be apologizing to you for dragging you intoourwar.”

Beckett let out a dismissive sound. “Doom’s Seed must have had plans to move on my territory regardless. He just happened to be able to combine two of his goals. And connecting you to me probably made him even more determined to hurt you.”

I exhaled in a rush. “At least I got Mom and Holand out in time. The house is just a thing. The people are what’s really important.” The laugh finally worked its way out of my mouth, but it didn’t have much humor in it. “And now Mom totally believes that the danger I was trying to convince her about is real.”

“Always looking on the bright side.” Beckett stepped close enough to press a gentle kiss to my temple.

I was trying to stay optimistic, anyway. I’d said the house was only a thing, but I knew it was more than that. It was memories. It was a sense of belonging.

It’d held so many of my lingering impressions of Dad, and those were now burned up along with the furnishings.

Here in the living room, he would spread out the props for a scientific experiment on the coffee table and help me arrange them so we could complete a test of magnetism or kinetic force. Anything biological or chemical, of course, had to be in the kitchen because of the potential for mess. I could remember Mom standing in the doorway, shaking her head with a bemused smile, as I sent a wooden car careening off the table to bang into the baseboard.

So many times, we’d curled up on the sofa that was now ashes to watch one of the animated flicks I’d loved at that age, which Dad had always acted completely absorbed in even though he must have gotten bored to tears. He’d make popcorn fresh in the pan and douse it with so much melted butter it’d leave a sheen on our fingers.

I could almost taste the salty flavor I’d lick off my fingertips when the popcorn was gone.

How long would it take before those memories started to fade without the surroundings to remind me?

I swallowed thickly and turned toward the staircase. It was intact too but badly burnt. I crept over to it and treaded up it with even more care than I’d approached the floor downstairs. Beckett followed a couple of steps behind.

The banister had mostly crumbled away. I stuck close to the wall, edging along it to the door to my bedroom. The room I’d expected to come back to during the summer if I didn’t get a position in the city that kept me there.

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