The wine room seemed to shrink around them.
Kane looked toward the door.
That tiny movement changed the room faster than any apology could have.
Mira saw his eyes shift, saw the calculation return with cruel precision. The door. The corridor. Ethan somewhere beyond the walls, probably searching for her by now. Madaline near the garden, frightened and angry with the ruby at her throat. Kane was already moving past the wound he had made, already packing it away as something unfortunate but necessary.
Already thinking of the next body.
Mira moved before he did.
She stepped into his path.
Kane stopped.
“Move.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened. “You are not strong enough for this.”
Mira laughed softly. “You keep saying that like I’ve ever needed to be stronger than someone to ruin them.”
His eyes darkened.
There he was.
Not Luca. Not the careful pen pal with the thoughtful words. Not the brother who once cried over her body. Kane Amato, stripped down to the part of himself that survived by deciding first and feeling later.
“I am going to handle Ethan,” he said.
Mira’s hand curled at her side. Her palm was still cut from the broken bottle. Blood slid warm between her fingers.
“You are not touching him.”
Kane’s expression was almost gentle when he answered.
“You won’t stop me.”
That was his mistake.
Not underestimating her body. Not forgetting her injuries. Not assuming love had weakened her.
His mistake was thinking the promise between them still had the same shape.
Mira remembered being small enough to fit beneath the kitchen table. Remembered Kane pushing half a bruised apple into her hand and telling her to eat before their mother noticed. Remembered his whisper in the dark after their father slammed a door hard enough to make the walls tremble.
I’ll keep you alive.
She had believed him.
For years, she had mistaken that for the same thing as being free.
“I loved you first,” she said.
The words caught Kane off guard.
His face changed.
“Mira.”
“I did.” Her voice scraped, but she kept it steady. “Before Ethan. Before Madaline. Before bloodlines and rubies and Mother’s little lessons. I loved you first.”
Kane did not move.
“Then move,” he said.
Mira’s smile broke.
There it was.
The answer to every question she had been too afraid to ask.
Kane loved her too. She knew that. She would never pretend otherwise. His love had teeth, but it was still love. It had dragged her through death and childhood and the spaces between monsters. It had been the first warm thing she knew how to name.
But he would still step over her to keep control.
He would mourn her resistance and punish it in the same breath.
He would kill Ethan and tell himself he had done it for her.
“No,” Mira whispered.
Kane reached for her.
She struck first.
Not with the bottle. Not yet.
Her fist hit his chest hard enough to push him back a step. Pain tore through her ribs from the force of it, but she didn’t stop. She shoved him again, and this time Kane caught her wrist.
His fingers closed over bruised skin.
Control, not rage.
That made it worse.
“Enough,” he said.
Mira twisted sharply, ignoring the pain that snapped up her arm. “You don’t get to decide when I am finished.”
Kane turned her wrist, forcing her sideways. She stumbled into the wine shelf, bottles clinking behind her. Her shoulder hit wood. Her throat burned around a gasp.
He flinched at the sound.
Mira saw it.
She used it.
Her knee came up into his stomach. Kane grunted and released her just enough for her to wrench free. She grabbed the nearest bottle by the neck and swung.
He ducked.
The bottle shattered against the shelf, spraying glass and red wine across both of them. For one wild second, it looked like more blood had exploded into the room. Kane caught her by the waist and shoved her backward, not hard enough to throw her down, but hard enough to make her hit the edge of the small tasting table.
The impact stole her breath.
Kane moved toward the door.
Mira grabbed the broken bottle neck from the floor.
The glass sliced deeper into her already wounded palm.
Her blood slicked the edge.
Kane saw the bottle.
He did not see the blood.
Or maybe he did and didn’t understand fast enough.
“Put it down,” he said.
Mira’s laugh came out small and broken. “You first.”
He reached for her again.
This time there was anger in it.
Real anger.
The kind that forgot gentleness because fear had worn its face too long.
He caught her shoulder and drove her back against the wall beside the door. Mira’s head struck plaster. Light burst behind her eyes. For a second, she was in the kitchen again, small and pinned and listening to someone bigger decide what love allowed him to do.
Kane froze the instant he saw her face.
That was the last mercy he gave her.
Mira drove the broken bottle into his side.
Not high.
Not clean.
Not elegant.
It went in beneath his ribs with a wet, awful resistance, and Kane’s breath left him in one shocked sound.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Mira’s hand was still wrapped around the glass.
Her blood was on it.
His blood was around it.
The two reds met between her fingers.
Kane looked down.
Then back at her.
The room had gone silent except for the distant music beyond the villa walls.
His mouth parted slightly.
Not in pain.
In understanding.
“Mira,” he whispered.
This time, she let him say her name.
Because this time, it sounded like goodbye.
Mira’s hand loosened around the broken bottle.
For one impossible second, Kane stayed standing.
His eyes remained locked on hers, wide not with fear exactly, but with recognition. The kind of recognition that moved through blood before the mind had language for it. The kind that said something ancient in them had understood what happened before either of them could deny it.
Her blood was on the glass.
His blood was around it.
Amato against Amato.
Blood against blood.
Kane looked down slowly, as if the wound belonged to someone else. As if he expected to see a mistake. A shallow cut. A temporary injury. Something their bodies could fix with enough pain and enough time.
But the glass sat beneath his ribs, buried in him by Mira’s hand.
And Mira knew.
She knew before he fell.
She knew from the sudden cold that opened in her chest. From the way Kane’s face shifted, not into anger, not into betrayal, but into something so young and startled that it stole the air from her lungs.
He looked like the boy from her childhood.
“Mira,” he whispered.
This time, she let him say her name.
Because this time, it sounded like goodbye.
His knees gave out.
Mira caught him before he hit the floor.
She didn’t think. She didn’t decide. Her body moved for him the way it had always moved for him, the way it had when they were small and had learned that the safest place in the house was wherever they could press their backs together and be quiet. Her arms went around him, one hand catching his shoulder, the other sliding behind his head as his weight dragged them both down.
He was heavier than he used to be.
That should not have been the thought that broke her.
But it did.
Because once, Kane had been small enough to curl beside her under a bed. Small enough that his knees knocked into hers when they hid. Small enough that his hand, when it closed around hers, felt like a child’s hand and not a man’s. Small enough to tremble when thunder rolled over the roof and pretend he wasn’t trembling because Mira was already scared.
Now he was grown.
Now he was bleeding.
Now he was dying in her arms because she had put him there.
“No,” Mira whispered.
The word came out before she could stop it, raw and useless and pathetic.
Kane made a soft sound. It might have been a laugh if there had been enough breath behind it. It might have been pain. It might have been both.
“You did it,” he said.
Mira lowered him to the wine room floor as carefully as she could, but there was no graceful way to lower a dying brother. His back slid against the bottom shelf. Bottles clinked quietly above him. Thorfinn’s body lay several feet away, already forgotten by the room, by the story, by Mira’s entire ruined heart.
Kane’s head tipped slightly to one side.
The green contact in one eye had shifted, exposing a crescent of the brighter color beneath.
That ruined her too.
The false eye. The black hair. The jacket. Luca Armani peeling away in tiny, ugly pieces until only Kane was left underneath.
Mira pressed both hands to the wound.
Blood welled hot between her fingers.
Too much.
Too fast.
“No,” she said again, sharper now, like death might listen if she sounded angry enough. “No, no, no. Kane, don’t.”
His eyes moved over her face.
He looked so tired suddenly.
Not bored. Not calculating. Not cold.
Tired.
Like every year they had survived had finally arrived to collect its due.
“Mira.”
“Stop saying my name like that.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “Like what?”
Her vision blurred. “Like you’re leaving.”
Something softened in him then, and it was crueler than anything he had said. Crueler than the father line. Crueler than Ethan serving his purpose. Crueler than every sharp, practical thing he had built out of love and fear.
Because softness had always been the one thing she could not defend herself against when it came from him.
Kane lifted a shaking hand.
Mira caught it before it could fall.
His fingers were slick with blood. Hers were worse. Their hands fit together anyway, badly and perfectly, like they had been doing this since childhood. Like death had always been a room one of them entered and the other waited outside of, hand pressed to the door.
“I was scared,” Kane whispered.
Mira shook her head hard. “Don’t.”
“Every time.”
Her throat closed.
Kane’s thumb moved weakly over the back of her hand. It left a red smear there, small and almost tender.
“Every time you died,” he said, voice thinning, “I thought that would be the one. I thought… I thought maybe your body would forget. Maybe the blood would get tired. Maybe you would open your eyes somewhere I couldn’t follow.”
Mira’s face crumpled.
She hated it.
She hated that he could still do this. Still reach past everything monstrous in her and find the child underneath. Still say one true thing and make her feel like the floor had vanished beneath them.
“You acted like it was nothing,” she said.
“I had to.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes.” His breath hitched. Pain dragged through his face, but he kept looking at her. “Because if I let you see how scared I was, you would’ve been scared too. And you were already scared enough.”
The tears came then.
They spilled down Mira’s face before she could stop them, hot and humiliating and useless. They cut pale tracks through blood and dirt and dried wine, and for once she had no instinct to make them pretty. No audience to convince. No role to play.
Just Kane.
Just the brother who had held her hand.
Just the man she had killed.
“You should have told me,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“You should have let me take care of you too.”
His eyes shone. “You did.”
A sob tore out of her.
“No, I didn’t. I stayed. That isn’t the same thing.”
Kane’s mouth trembled.
The answer hurt him. She saw it hurt him.
Good, some ugly part of her thought.
Good.
Then the thought died immediately because his blood was warm under her hands and getting cooler at the edges, and she would have taken every cruel thing back if it meant his chest would rise properly again.
“I stayed too,” Kane said.
“I know.”
“I stayed when you got bad.”
Mira broke.
A broken sound left her, too small to be a scream and too ruined to be a sob. She leaned forward until her forehead nearly touched his shoulder.
“You weren’t supposed to use that against me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m saying…” Kane swallowed. His eyes squeezed shut for a second, and when they opened again, they were wet. “I’m saying I knew. I knew what we were. I knew we were hurting people. I knew this wasnt right. And I stayed anyway.”
Mira gripped his hand harder. “Then stay now.”
His eyes flicked to hers.
Desperate.
Sorry.
Already too far away.
“Mira.”
“No.” Her voice sharpened with panic. “No, don’t. Don’t make that face. I hate that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you already know something horrible and you’re trying to make me survive it.”
A tear slipped from the corner of Kane’s eye.
Mira stared at it.
Kane cried so rarely. Not because he couldn’t. Because crying had been dangerous in their house. Crying drew attention. Crying made their father smile. Crying made their mother sigh and say they were wasting energy better spent learning.
But now a tear moved down his temple and disappeared into his black-dyed hair, and Mira felt something inside her fold in on itself.
She touched his face with her bloody fingers.
“Come back,” she whispered. “You always make me come back.”
Kane let out the smallest breath.
“I never made you.”
“You waited.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll wait.” She nodded too quickly, as if agreeing with herself could make it true. “I’ll wait right here. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
His expression shattered.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But the grief in his eyes opened so fully that Mira saw the whole boy beneath him. The frightened one. The angry one. The one who had watched her die before he had even known multiplication. The one who had decided, too young, that love meant standing guard outside death’s door with bloody hands and no help coming.
“Not this time,” he whispered.
Mira shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I feel it.”
Those words stopped her.
The room seemed to move farther away.
“You feel what?”
Kane’s hand tightened weakly around hers.
“It’s quiet.”
Mira stared at him.
His voice was barely there now, each word scraped thin from the bottom of his lungs.
“When we come back, there’s always something. Heat. Pulling. Pain. Like the body is angry. Like the blood is calling everything home.” His eyes searched hers, and the fear in them finally showed itself. Not fear for him. Fear for her having to hear it. “There’s nothing, Mira.”
“No.”
“It’s just quiet.”
“No.”
Her hands pressed harder to his wound, even though she knew enough to know pressure could not undo what her blood had done. The glass was still inside him, but the real weapon had already entered deeper than that.
She had ended him.
The curse would not reach for him.
Death had him cleanly.
“No,” she said again, and now the word was a child’s word. A little girl’s word. The word she had used when doors locked, when footsteps came closer, when Kane took blame for things she had done because he was older and thought that meant he could carry more pain. “No, Kane, please. Please don’t do this.”
He looked at her with such tenderness she almost hated him.
“Do you remember the storm?” he whispered.
Mira’s breath caught.
“No.”
“You do.”
“I don’t want to.”
His mouth lifted faintly. “You never did like remembering the sweet parts.”
“They hurt worse.”
“I know.”
And then she was there.
Not in the wine room.
Not with blood under her nails and death between her hands.
She was small again.
Nine years old, maybe. Maybe younger. The kind of age that blurred because every year in that house looked too much like the one before it.
Rain hit the windows hard enough to make the glass chatter. The room smelled like dust, old blankets, and the faint sourness of fear. She and Kane were beneath his bed, knees pressed together, shoulders touching, hiding in the narrow dark while their parents’ voices moved below them like a storm worse than the one outside.
Mira had both hands clamped over her mouth.
Not because she was crying loudly.
Because she was terrified she might.
Kane was beside her, pale and too thin, one eye bruised yellow at the edge from something that had happened three days earlier and had already healed more than it should have. He had stolen a bruised apple from the kitchen and split it with her using a butter knife he kept hidden beneath his mattress.
The apple tasted like dust and sweetness.
Mira had eaten slowly because hunger felt less frightening when she could stretch it.
Downstairs, something shattered.
Mira flinched.
Kane reached for her immediately.
His small hand covered hers.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
“It’s not,” she whispered back.
He went quiet.
Because even then, Kane had hated lying badly.
Rain streaked the window. Thunder rolled low over the house. Their mother laughed downstairs, high and bright and wrong, and Mira pressed closer to her brother.
“What if I die again?” she asked.
Kane’s fingers tightened around hers, looking at her in the dark.
“Then I’ll wait,” he said.
Mira sniffed. “What if it takes a long time?”
“I’ll wait a long time.”
“What if I come back wrong?”
Kane’s eyes changed.
He was too young to hide everything then.
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How?”
“Because I’ll be here.” He said it with the fierce stupidity of a child who still thought love could argue with curses and win. “If you come back wrong, I’ll bring you back right.”
Mira had believed him.
That was the thing that made the memory unbearable.
She had believed him with her whole small heart.
She turned her hand over and linked their pinkies together. It was serious then. Sacred. Their little fingers hooked in the dusty dark while the house shook around them.
“I’ll take care of you too,” Mira whispered.
Kane tried to smile. “I’m older.”
“So?”
“So I take care of you.”
“You can’t all the time.”
His smile disappeared.
For one second, he looked frightened enough to be honest.
“What if I get bad?” he asked.
Mira frowned. “Bad how?”
He looked toward the bedroom door, listening to the footsteps below.
“Like them.”
Mira had not known how to answer.
She only knew that the question scared him.
So she squeezed his pinky as hard as she could.
“Then I’ll remind you.”
Kane looked back at her.
“And if you don’t listen?”
“Then I’ll make you.”
His eyes filled then, though he blinked fast to hide it.
Mira leaned closer, whispering like a vow into the dusty dark.
“We keep each other alive.”
Kane nodded.
“No matter what,” he said.
“No matter what,” she repeated.
Their pinkies stayed linked until the shouting downstairs stopped.
Until the house went quiet.
Until they were more afraid of the silence than the noise.
Mira came back to the wine room with a sob trapped in her throat.
Kane was still looking at her.
Older now.
Dying now.
Remembering.
“You promised,” he whispered.
Mira shook her head, tears falling onto his face. “I did. I did, Kane, I did. I’m trying.”
“I got bad.”
“No.”
His eyes softened.
“Mira.”
“No.” Her hand moved to his cheek again. “No, you don’t get to say it like that. You don’t get to make me agree. You don’t get to turn yourself into a lesson now.”
“I got bad,” he whispered.
She pressed her forehead to his.
“You got hurt.”
“So did you.”
“That’s different.”
“No.” His breath shuddered. “It isn’t.”
Mira closed her eyes, and their tears touched between their faces.
For one second, she wanted to be under the bed again. She wanted dust in her nose and rain on the windows and one bruised apple between them. She wanted Kane’s small hand hooked around her pinky. She wanted a world where their promises had saved them before they learned how to turn into weapons.
“I stayed,” she sobbed.
“I know.”
“I stayed even when you got bad.”
“I know.”
“I stayed too long.”
Kane’s face twisted.
That one hurt him most.
“Maybe,” he whispered.
Mira cried harder. “Don’t agree with me.”
A faint laugh trembled through him, almost nothing.
“You asked me to fight you.”
“I changed my mind.”
His hand lifted slowly, painfully, and touched her hair.
Not her face.
Her hair.
Like they were children again and he was smoothing it back after she cried too hard. Like he could fix anything with that tiny gesture. Like he had not spent years becoming someone who broke people in the name of keeping her safe.
“Mira,” he said.
She opened her eyes.
His hand slipped slightly, and she caught it, pressing it to her cheek.
“Tell Ethan…” Kane started.
Mira stiffened.
“No.”
His eyes shifted faintly.
“I wasn’t going to say kill him.”
A laugh broke out of her, wet and awful. “That is not comforting.”
His mouth curved a little.
For a heartbeat, he looked like her brother in a way that had nothing to do with blood or death or monsters.
Just her brother.
“Tell him…” Kane’s breath caught. He had to stop, gather the words from somewhere deeper. “Tell him if he loves you, he has to love the ugly parts too.”
Mira stared at him.
Kane’s fingers trembled against her cheek.
“But don’t make him,” he whispered. “Don’t be us.”
Mira shattered.
Fully.
The sound that came from her did not belong to the bride or the killer or the girl who smiled with blood in her teeth. It belonged to the child beneath the bed, to the little girl on the kitchen floor, to the sister who had spent her whole life confusing survival with loyalty.
“Kane,” she sobbed.
“I’m tired,” he whispered.
“No.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am, Mira.”
She shook her head so hard her hair fell forward around both of them. “You don’t get to be tired. You don’t get to leave me. You don’t get to make me do this alone after everything. You promised.”
“I know.”
“You promised.”
“I know.”
“You promised me no matter what.”
His eyes filled again.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” Mira gripped him tighter. “No, don’t say sorry. Come back and say sorry later. Come back and I’ll hate you properly. Come back and I’ll scream at you. Come back and I’ll never forgive you. Just come back.”
Kane’s breathing hitched.
Once.
Twice.
Then shallower.
Mira heard it changing and panicked.
“No. No, no, look at me.” She tapped his cheek lightly, then harder when his eyes drifted. “Kane, look at me. Stay with me.”
His gaze found hers with effort.
There was so little of him left in it now.
That was what terrified her.
Not the blood. Not the wound.
The distance.
He was still looking at her, but some part of him had already begun stepping backward into a place she could not reach.
“Mira,” he breathed.
“I’m here.”
“Take care of you.”
“I will.”
“Promise.”
Her mouth trembled.
For a moment, she could not speak. Promise had become too heavy a word. It had crushed them once already. It had followed them from beneath a bed to this wine room floor, warped and bloodied and still somehow alive between them.
But Kane was looking at her.
Waiting.
So Mira linked her pinky around his.
His fingers barely responded.
A child’s promise.
A deathbed vow.
The last shape they had left.
“I promise,” she whispered.
Kane’s eyes closed.
A faint peace moved through his face.
Not forgiveness.
Not redemption.
Just relief.
Like some terrible weight he had been carrying since childhood had finally slipped from his hands.
“Good,” he breathed.
Then his hand loosened.
Mira stared at their pinkies.
“Kane?”
No answer.
His head rested against the shelf. His mouth was slightly open, like he had been about to say one more thing and forgot what breath was before he could finish.
Mira waited.
At first, she waited like a sister.
Then like an Amato.
She knew the rhythm of resurrection. Knew the horrible little silence before the body jerked itself back from the dark. She knew the twitch in the fingers, the first torn gasp, the wet panic of air returning. She knew because she had lived it again and again, and Kane had always been there when she opened her eyes.
So she waited for him.
One second.
Two.
Ten.
The music outside kept playing.
Someone laughed on the beach.
The villa pipes clicked softly in the wall.
Kane did not breathe.
Mira pressed shaking fingers to his throat.
Nothing.
She waited longer.
Long enough for her knees to go numb.
Long enough for the blood beneath her hands to cool.
Long enough for the green contact in his half-open eye to dry slightly at the edge.
Long enough for the wine room to stop feeling like a place where something might change and start feeling like a place where something had ended.
“Kane,” she whispered.
His name was small in the room.
Too small for everything he had been.
Too small for the boy beneath the bed, the brother by the kitchen floor, the ghost at the memorial, the man who wrote to Madaline, the monster who threatened Ethan, the only person who had ever known the first version of her and loved her enough to keep it alive.
Mira touched his cheek.
It was still warm.
That was cruel.
Warmth should have meant possibility.
It didn’t.
She bent forward and pressed her forehead to his chest, listening for a heartbeat that was not there.
“Kane,” she said again, and this time it sounded like she was the one dying.
The curse did not answer.
The blood did not call him home.
Death did not loosen its teeth.
Kane stayed still.
And beneath the villa, while the party laughed and the music played and the wedding waited with flowers it would never use, Mira held her brother’s body and understood that for the first time in their lives, one of them had broken a promise the other could not survive.