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The ruin of a man who loved her, embraced her, freed her—and learned, too late, that the freedom she handed him did not extend to the freedom to betray her. There is a terrible symmetry to it that the artist in me cannot help but admire. She does not punish the men who cage her, in the end.

She escapes those.

She punishes the ones who promised not to.

And I understand her a little better for it, the shape of the rule she lives by.

The husband took her freedom and she took it back; that’s arithmetic, clean and survivable, the math of any cornered thing. But the boyfriend—the boyfriend gave her the one thing no one else ever had, gave her herself, and then proved the gift was conditional. That’s not a wound she could escape.

There’s no door out of a betrayal like that. There’s only the fire. I think of the three of us, then, with a small cold thrill that is not entirely fear and not entirely desire—because we have, every one of us, just been handed the terms.

Cage her and she’ll vanish.

Betray her and she’ll burn us beautiful.

Love her honestly, keep the one promise that matters, and she is the most loyal creature three monsters could ever hope to call their own. I find the terms entirely fair.

I find them, in fact, a relief. I have always preferred a contract whose penalty clause is written in plain flame.

“So,” she says, brisk, the chapter closed. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” I echo.

“We’re here, aren’t we. Tucked into a pretty valley with cameras in the walls and arches on the hills. Clearly we’ve been positioned to play our little parts until my ex-husband worksup the nerve to come finish what he commissioned. So in the meantime—” she spreads her hands, gracious as a hostess, “—we’re playing house. Yes?”

When she frames it that way, it does rather snap into focus. We three look, as one, to Doc—because whatever the rest of us are, he is the head of this peculiar little body, the one who plots while Riot strikes and I arrange the aftermath.

“We play house,” Doc agrees, unhurried. “Until your ex-husband tries to strike.”

“Tries?” she repeats, one brow arching at the verb.

“He will not succeed at whatever gamble he’s playing.” Doc says it the way he says everything he’s already solved—as a settled equation, a sum that simply will not come out any other way. “He’s never dealt with the Holy Trinity.”

And that undoes me completely.

I throw my head back and laugh in pure, ringing glee, delighted past all dignity, because there is nothing in this world I love more than a man who underestimates the people he’s about to lose to. Riot only shakes his head at the both of us, the long-suffering patriarch of a household of maniacs.

The Holy Trinity.

I do adore it when Doc gets grandiose; it happens so rarely that it lands like scripture when it does. And the dreadful, delicious truth of it is that he isn’t wrong.

Separately we are each a problem a clever man might survive.

The husband could perhaps outspend Lucien, or outrun Riot, or out-wait me. But he will have to do all three at once, in a town with no exits, around a woman who has already proven she can dismantle better men than him while wearing a straitjacket.

He has spent untold money and patience arranging a trap. He has not noticed that he built it around the four mostdangerous things in the valley and locked the door from the inside.

“Buckle your seatbelts, ladies and gents,” Riot drawls, rising and stretching until his spine cracks. “We’re off on a rollercoaster ride.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “Man. I need a beer.”

“Me too,” Doc huffs, with feeling.

“Me three!” Vex beams, bouncing upright in her cushion.

“No,” Doc says, without looking up.

“Awww.” She pouts, the full theatrical production of it. “Why?”

“Once you’re done with your meds,” Doc mutters, already reaching for the pill organizer on the side table with the weary diligence of a man who has appointed himself the keeper of an unkeepable creature, “I’ll make you a milkshake.”