Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

So you went big instead of small, because small never worked.

“What does any of that mean?” I ask Kimber, and even though she looks hesitant, she stands.

“Where are you going?”

“Follow me,” she calls back.

Standing up and keeping the book open, I follow her quickly down the stairs. Fortunately, we’re the only ones here. She’s right about one thing; we’re overdue for a family meeting.

Everyone’s been avoiding me besides Chaz. Everyone hates Slade, but they aren’t broaching the subject with me, because they probably hope he still plans to die, then they can avoid the topic without ever directly affecting my relationship with them.

No doubt Dad told them about Slade’s suicide plan, since Dad seems to know more than he’s been saying, especially lately.

Kimber stops in front of the table that has all of Dice’s dominoes stacked up in a complicated pattern.

“He’s been doing this to distract himself from worrying about Karma,” she says on a sigh.

“I think I helped with that,” I tell her absently, “but what do the dominoes have to do with my question?”

She removes a few dominoes, then goes to the back and tips them. They all fall, though the ones missing cause them to stop falling as prettily, and a few get skipped before the wave finally stops, and a few rows are left standing.

“It means, even with certain things changed, when other things are set into motion, the dominoes still fall almost the exact same way. A small pause can stop, interrupting the fall, but all it takes is one push, and they all continue to fall again, until the last one.”

She taps a domino, reigniting the falling sequence. The dominoes topple until the last one drops off the table as if to punctuate her point.

“He saw a future where you died over and over, no matter what he did differently with the new knowledge he’d acquired. The path of the future remained the same, with new, unexpected things restarting the interrupted paths, and every single time it ended with the last domino falling.” Her eyes meet mine. “You.”

“What does any of that have to do with the Gemini Twin lie?”

“The Gemini Twin lie kept them relevant. It made them special. They’d likely have been dead long ago, had that not been the case. Seriously, Ella, he’s put something into play that we shouldn’t mess with. Changing the future is a lot harder than one might think, and it looks like he has taken serious measures to do so.”

Ignoring her yet again, I sit down and start reading. She might be objecting to this, but she still comes to read over my shoulder

A lot of calculations were made to decide the most important things to know outside of these pages and these memories.

You will read this when you falter, because you will falter. You love her too much not to falter.

A single tear rolls down my cheek and splatters onto the centuries’ old page, seeming to make the gold writing shimmer as it drinks the tear.

“He actually infused the memories into these pages,” Kimber states, running her finger over another equation in the margin. “He did that with chains on and bars surrounding him that weakened his power, because he was that determined, Ella.”

Another tear falls from my cheek when I read the next line.

You’ll eventually claim her; there’s no point in pretending any new variable can happen there. You can’t help it, because you love her too much. But the longer you delay it, the better for her.

Your main prerogative in the rings is to get stronger. You’ve laid out the formulas for a variety of different ways to do that, but one way in particular assures it happens.

More formulas swarm page after page after page, along with some brief notations that don’t really help me figure out what they’re for. Kimber takes the book from my hand, her interest renewed as her eyes light up with intrigue, then turn somber as though she understands something I don’t.

“What?” I ask, almost scared of the answer.

“Holy shit, Ella,” she says so quietly as more and more tears fill her eyes. She blinks them back, shaking her head.

“He’s the reason he’s scarred.”

“What?” I ask, feeling something warm and wet trickle down my own cheek.

“He siphoned the power from our bodies’ natural healing capabilities, and he stored it to put all of this into effect. In order to make himself stronger, he stole his body’s natural defense, in turn, forcing his mind to work more like a predator’s instead of a visionary’s. Our appearance plays into a lot of our personalities—we’re the deadly beauties for a reason. Beauty is our greatest offense, because even we let our guard down around someone who looks like you, or me, or Gage. But Slade? He’s had to fight everyone because you look at him, see the scars and the predator in his eyes, and he’s a huge threat. And his scars intrigued them so much, he was able to siphon a lot of power, only allowing his body to mend as much as necessary, while he stored that power to another part of him.”