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”It’s been nine years since the DeRogna Law went into effect, prohibiting underage superheroes from registering and legally being allowed to be vigilantes in Wildemount. Since then, similar laws have gone into effect as far as Tal’Dorei, with rumors that several cities in Marquet are putting forth their own prohibition.”
”… well you see, this all started back when the Tombtakers were the darlings of the Empire. A bunch of street kids from Shadycreek Run turned superheroes? Everyone could feel good about that story! And somehow no one cottoned on that we were putting all this pressure and attention on teenagers. People weren’t really thinking about it until two of them got killed. Nobody wants to watch a kid die. Thank the Lawbearer for DeRogna stepping in when she did.”
”Prior to the DeRogna Law, there was nothing in place to keep kids from registering. Most of them just became sidekicks to bigger deals, but the Tombtakers were different. They had something to prove, and that got the Wase boy killed.”
”People will tell you two kids died that day, but Jurrell Wase was the only real kid. The other was just a copy. I’m sick of people trying to turn this into a whole thing. One kid died. One kid. If Jester Lavorre’s Duplicate gets popped in the middle of a mission, then no one is writing blog posts about it. She just makes another one next time. Stop spreading misinformation.”
”Lucien Tealeaf, sixteen at the time of the incident, was the leader of the group. His power was to create two independant copies of himself that were called Mollymauk and Kingsley-”
”-look I’m gonna stop you there. Jester’s Duplicates are copies. They’re made out of spun sugar. She doesn’t name them. They don’t have personalities. The Threeleafs were all distinct. It was some kind of cloning thing. Looks like someone didn’t do their research.”
”I remember those maniacal fans who followed the Tombtakers’ exploits even had favorites among them! Molly was the most popular. He did a lot of the face work, so naturally it hit everyone hard when he died. And then, of course, it kicked up a lot of drama. More people were upset and grieving this clone than they were Jurrell. Every few months, someone kicks that rock over and fresh discourse comes spilling out.”
”It doesn’t matter whether it’s valid to mourn Molly or not. They were a bunch of kids under a tremendous amount of pressure and society pushed them until they collapsed. Two kids died from it and the rest were removed from the public eye and forced out of the only life they ever knew, even if it was toxic. No one’s even seen them since. They never even made statements. We might never know their side of the story.”
”Seriously though. What DID happen to the Tombtakers after the law came down?”
”Reporters have tried, unsuccessfully, every year to reach out to the former Tombtakers to get the truth of what happened that day, but those that can be found have denied comment. It seems the world may never know what became of Wildemount’s last teenage superhero team.”
”Okay, so maybe this is a conspiracy theory, because he wears a cloak, but I will swear by every raven I see that one of the new members of the Mighty Nein looks just like one of the Threeleafs. Check out these pics.”
—-
Kingsley nearly dropped his phone off the dock.
A sharp breath escaped him as he scrolled back up to the blog post he’d only skimmed before. The anniversary of DeRogna’s Law always kicked up the most hysterical bullshit and when a fucking circus was made out of the most miserable day of your life, you kinda just had to roll with the punches and have fun with it. Trolling conspiracy theorists and adding harmless misinformation to posts was better than what he did for the first two years since Molly and Jurrell died and everything else imploded
He found the post and gave it a more thorough read. People in the comments claimed it couldn’t be Kingsley, because he was the only Tombtaker ever accounted for and had retired from vigilantism on the Coast (true and also untrue). There was speculation about it being Lucien, but Kingsley couldn’t see it. He knew the Mighty Nein by reputation- they weren’t his brother’s scene in the slightest.
So that meant…
He pocketed his phone and slipped away from the docks and into Nicodranas. Unlike the Empire, which was becoming a beacon of impossible feats of architecture- towers upon towers upon towers, like the Supers who governed it behind the King’s back would get antsy if they weren’t always chasing the sky- the coastal city remained low to the ground and relaxed. The presence of Supers here was muted and most with gifts kept them to themselves and it seemed to thrive like that- after all, with a minimal grandstanding Super presence, there wasn’t any cause for villains to try and entice them into fights.
The retired Super in Tidepeak Tower- a mentor and dear friend to Kingsley in his time of need- said that his reputation alone was probably keeping Nicodranas as quiet as it was. Having been to several ports with his crew, King couldn’t say he didn’t agree. Without a Super population, towns either relaxed into contentment and lack of drama or became hotbeds of mundane crime, which was what Kingsley spent his nights dismantling.
No one seemed to pick up that the blood magic used by the cloaked figure who overturned criminal organizations was the same as the blood magic the Three Tealeafs utilized or if they did, they stayed quiet about it. With all the constant drama about the affectionately nicknamed Threeleafs, Kingsley was glad to have fans in his corner who were willing to keep his secrets.
But that might end now.
He ducked into a small tavern situated all but on the beach, his hoodie pulled up to obscure his face. Dark skin and cheekbones that could cut a man to shreds weren’t uncommon features, but he was still always recognized, especially on this day, with all the press and buzz about the Tombtakers and the DeRogna Law. And right now, he needed peace to really get into this.
He checked the candids posted in the thread- shots taken from behind buildings or through bushes close enough to a battle that the person with their phone out must have had a death wish. There was a low-res video included shot from a distance that showed the cloak figure getting blasted back and, very briefly, losing his hood.
Kingsley slammed his thumb on the pause button and tried to zoom. Dark purple hair. Dark skin. Sharp cheekbones.
Tattoos.
He had half-convinced himself that Lucien had somehow produced a second clone again and had abandoned it to do what it would, but unless that clone had Molly’s exact taste- and there was no reason why that would be true given everything- it couldn’t be true. That was Molly.
We buried you. Kingsley’s hand shook, rattling the phone. They had wanted him buried back in the Run, but DeRogna and the rest of the Cerberus Assembly had demanded that he and Jurrell be buried in the memorial cemetery for Supers in the Capitol. They had fought on it until Oremid Haas had stepped in and issued a compromise. For all practical purposes, Molly and Jurrell had been buried in that place, their headstones elaborate and showy and overwrought so the Empire could show off just how sorry they were that this happened. They were the foundation on which DeRogna’s Law was built, but if she was going to use their blood and bone to build herself up, the least the Tombtakers could do was bury the bodies of their fallen friends where they didn’t have to tread through bullshit to see them.
So their real graves were in the Savalirwood, away from prying eyes with stones marking their resting places. Pauper’s graves for alleged heroes.
There at the end, none of them felt very heroic.
But the burial had taken place and no one was more attuned to vitals than Cree. She would have known if Molly had been alive, somehow. With still shaking fingers, he began to text a number.
”Did you ever go back to the graves after it happened? He barely spoke to Lucien these days. They didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other, but every so often something came up. It was the only reason that Kingsley even had his number.
The response came quickly, ”Why would I?”
Unsentimental bastard. Kingsley swore. ”Have you heard the news? The Mighty Nein have a new member.”
”I don’t keep up with that shite, Kingsley. What do you want? I’m busy.”
Busy. Lucien lived in relative peace at the edge of the Run with his piles of fucking hush money. He was never busy. ”Doing what? Counting the gold our family’s deaths got you?”
The shock of the Facetime ringtone that came not a second after he sent the snappish reply caused him to nearly drop the phone. The other people in the bar looked his way, regarding him with sour looks, and he mumbled an apology and stepped out to answer.
Lucien, identical to him except for his longer hair right down to the blood red of his irises, was dressed in heavy furs and in the background, all Kingsley could see was white. Frost dotted his eyelashes and he looked murderous. All around him was the crunching of feet on snow- not just his own, then. “See? Busy,” he snapped. “What. Do. You. Want?
Kingsley sent him the video. Lucien did some finagling and must have sent it to Cree, because she suddenly stepped into frame to hold her phone up for him. He couldn’t see her face, given the six inches of height she had on Lucien, but he recognized her crest of raven feathers pinned to her winter coat and the blood-red folds of her favorite headscarf dangling freely.
“Don’t you think that looks like Molly?” Kingsley asked once he’d listened to Cree replay it a few times.
Lucien worked his jaw. “Probably just some arsehole doing a publicity stunt.”
Kingsley squinted into the camera. “You don’t believe that.”
“Oh, we’re far past you getting to talk about what I believe, Kingsley.” The snarl in Lucien’s voice used to cow him, back when they were young, back when they were created to soothe his loneliness, but he was still too broken to know how to treat people and over the years Kingsley had just learned to ignore it.
Maybe Lucien would never really get better. Molly had tempered him a bit until it was tolerable- that’s what he did. He brought the best out of people. And then he died.
“Mollymauk would have let us know if he came back somehow,” Cree’s voice, as soft and gentle as ever, but somehow impatient and curt, as well. “It is the anniversary, Kingsley. Your grief is doing things to you.”
Lucien exhaled, mirroring her impatience. “And we don’t have time for this shite.”
Curiosity about Lucien’s business in a frigid wasteland overrode Kingsley’s need to understand if the person in the video was Molly or not. “Where are you anyway?”
“Balenpost.”
Kingsley squinted, bringing up a mental map to figure out why that name sounded familiar. “Eiselcross? Why are you back in Eiselcross?”
Lucien’s smile had far too many teeth. “Don’t worry about it.”
He hung up.
—
Molly hated mad scientists. They were officially the worst. They never managed to create anything that wasn’t completely covered in viscous liquid of some kind, which by the by? He never knew the word viscous before now. He never wanted to know it either.
Tentacles were on probation, too. All that weird porn he watched was going to sit differently now that he knew firsthand what those suckers felt like on your skin without getting unmentionables involved.
The remains of the latest tentacle monster creation of today’s latest mad scientist straight from the depths of the Empire’s worst corners lay in pieces in the streets of Zadash. The poor Starosta would be picking up their slack on spinning the property damage and mayhem into something palatable for the news and being miserable about it the whole time. No one hated the Supers more than local law enforcement and middle management governing bodies, and the Assembly made sure none of them said too much about it.
Molly dragged a hand through his hair and got a hand full of slimy, viscous liquid on his hand for his troubles. He waved it violently back and forth to try and get it off, but it clung and dripped disgustingly. “For fuck’s sake.”
“Pumat will take care of it, Molly,” Jester said, gently. Her candy magic was still hanging in the air- acidic pop rocks eating away at the tentacles; marshmallow unicorns shielding terrified civilians who gazed at them in wonder; and most, importantly, the rock-candy lollipop bludgeoning weapon that was coated liberally in the same viscous fluid as his hair rested against her shoulder. The air smelled like a candy store next to a dumpster.
“Anyone else think we’re taking advantage of him?” Veth dismissed her illusions with a clap of her hands.
“His job is literally taking care of whatever Supers are dumb eniough to protect this city.” Beau had no magic to dismiss and therefore was working on rewrapping her bloodied and goo-covered fists. As a member of the Cobalt Soul, she was required to be on their team as a non-Super liaison, though Molly speculated she was starting to treat them more like family than her charges. He was still fairly new to the team, but she was surprisingly easy to figure out. All gruff demeanor and opinions, but as squishy as those marshmallow unicorns on the inside.
“And we are the dumbest,” Caleb drawled, and oh… speaking of people who were not easy to figure out. Molly swallowed and bridged the gap between them, eager to have an excuse to get closer to the pyromancer.
“You’ve got goo on you,” he mused and reached out to press a thumb to his cheek to wipe it off. Caleb almost startled like a scared rabbit, but then relaxed, which was progress. The first time Molly had gotten into his space, he’d gone rigid and then jerked away.
“Ah. Thank you, Mollymauk.” He pulled away, gently, when Molly’s thumb lingered just a little too long, like he couldn’t trust himself quite so much with the touch. “Ah… Fjord? Are you all right?”
Fjord was sprawled, face-up, next to the body of the horrific tentacle monster, currently bleeding from where its eye used to be and flecked in ice. His frost blade- the weapon that made the finishing blow- lay next to him. “Never better.”
“I got you.” Caduceus was setting whatever part of the creature that Jester’s acidic pop rocks weren’t getting rid of to decompose and burst into brightly colored fungus, but abandoned the process to help yank Fjord to his feet.
So that just left- ah there it was. That clap of thunder and the heavy beating of wings and Yasha dropped down beside him to collect him in her arms in a hug. He breathed in the scent of ozone clinging to her valkyrie armor. “Hey, Yash’. We did it.”
“We did. You did so good, Molly!” She gave him one more squeeze for good measure. Ever since she found him wandering about and confused after a would-be supervillain ripped apart his circus from within, she’d been his best friend. They hadn’t meant to end up as part of the Mighty Nein- Yasha helped them periodically, but she preferred to work alone- but somehow it happened, and he had to admit they were better for it, even with all the goo.
“I didn’t even go unconscious this time.” He sheathed his scimitars proudly. His hemocraft skills were simultaneously very unique for someone with that Super classification and yet he was extremely untrained with it. He blamed the memory loss for some of it.
Yasha tugged the hood of his cloak over his head so that it fell over his face, playfully. “Don’t joke about that. You’re not going to die on me.”
Suddenly, Beau swore and Molly watched the rest of the Nein move forwards until they were all right in front of him and Yasha in a defensive maneuver he’d never seen before. He wasn’t tall enough to see over the top of Caduceus, Caleb, and Fjord, so he looked to Yasha, who was. “Please tell me it’s not another tentacle monster.”
Yasha scanned ahead and when she locked onto whatever the hell had caused the Mighty Nein’s vigilance, she swallowed a gasp. “No.” And then she pushed him behind her.
“Yasha, what-”
And then he heard the voice. “Nicely done! I can’t say I’ve seen that kind of teamwork in years.”
It sounded like his own, but… different. Molly had learned to talk after being found by the circus and his accent was shaped by the people around him, but there was a certain specific lilt that he never could quite shake. Bit of a Shadycreek accent, Gustav would say.
Despite Yasha trying to hold him back, he moved out of her arms and pushed his way through the protective barrier the Nein made, while they all protested his insistence. “Mollymauk-” Caleb hissed, desperately.
The damage was already done the second he was in view.
He inhaled sharply. He was looking into a slightly off-kilter mirror. Shorter hair, but dark and dusty and unnaturally plum-colored. Red irises, which didn’t even exist in nature- he was the only person he’d ever seen with them. Dark skin, lithe frame. A twin.
A little voice in his head he often tried to ignore whispered, no, a triplet, but he couldn’t think of why it would say that. There was only one person in front of him. “What the hell is this?” He demanded, jerking around to the Nein like they could explain.
All of them looked down, sheepish and guilty. His heart pounded in his chest- they knew something. They’d known it immediately. The overwhelming sense of betrayal was tempered by the fact that he had never wanted to know anything about his past and they had just respected that, but the fact that this was something they all knew still sat wrong. “Who is this?”
“I’m Kingsley. Hello! Still standin’ here like an arsehole.” Molly shifted his gaze to the twin and noted that the absolute lack of recognition in his eyes seemed to cow him. “Can we talk? Preferably not with the team of pissed off Supers lookin’ at me like they’re out for blood.”
He stepped forward and extended his hand as a peace offering and Molly lifted his to take it on impulse, but then drew back quickly, as something overwhelming came over him. A magnetic pull that wanted him to be yanked into him and made whole again.
You’ve felt incomplete your whole life.
He shuddered and shoved his hands in his pocket. No. None of that. He was whole as he was. He looked back to the Nein, who still hadn’t explained any of this. Too busy looking livid. He’d appreciate it if it didn’t make him so anxious.
“You abandoned him,” Beau suddenly snapped. “You don’t get to take him back now.”
Panic began to work its way through his entire body. He moved back towards the Nein, even if he was a little irritated at them. He could deal with irritation- he’d yell at them and they would apologize, probably, and it would be okay. But this Kingsley was an unknown quantity that he didn’t want anything to do with.
“That’s not what happened,” Kingsley’s voice shook. “He’s my family. I have a right to talk to my brother and explain our side.”
Our side.. Images flashed into Molly’s head. He recoiled from them- one of three, snow somewhere to the north, a flash of red, a book… and so much blood and screaming.
Yasha was suddenly at his back again, curling her arms around him, protectively. “If Molly doesn’t want to hear it, then he doesn’t have to.” Her wings mantled behind her and Molly tasted the oncoming storm in the air even if he couldn’t see the clouds moving in. “Now get the fuck out of here.”
He must have taken the hint, because the storm that was building both inside and outside of Yasha began to recede bit by bit, but Molly could only sense it from proximity. His face was pressed into her chest, blocking out everything he didn’t want to see.
His mind was farther away, somewhere up north. Somewhere with blood on the snow and too much screaming, both internally and outwardly.
He would find out later that some of that screaming was his own.
—-
Up and coming heroes, The Mighty Nein are set to accompany Vess DeRogna on her trip to Eiselcross to take care of the threat to our world lurking in the ruins of the fallen city of Aeor. As you may recall, it was this threat that led to the death of two of the Tombtakers-
Kingsley texted Cree. Cree, DeRogna is headed to Eiselcross. What are you doing there and why won’t Lucien answer his phone?
Cree didn’t respond. After an hour of frantically checking his phone, he realized she wasn’t going to.
Which meant he was going back to Eiselcross where this shit all started.
He wasn’t going to lose Molly to that bitch’s machinations again.
—-
The explanation the Nein had given was all the explanation he wanted or needed. Nine years ago, there was a team of teenagers who tried to save the world. They didn’t quite succeed and two of them died.
Or was presumed dead, anyway. Apparently, so long as Lucien- the Super he had split from- lived, he couldn’t die. The ordeal had left him with some mild brain damage leading to memory issues and he'd been picked up by the circus and then picked up by Yasha after that. The Nein all knew of the Tombtakers and DeRogna’s Law, but they respected Molly’s wishes not to look too deeply into his past and tried to shield him from it.
That was why they had insisted on the cloak as part of his uniform- so no one would recognize him. He avoided the news out of a general sense of boredom with current events, so there was no real risk, but he’d only been operating within cities with continuous access to television and internet for six months. It was bound to come up sooner or later.
He wanted to be angrier about it, but it made too much sense, and he was tired. The memories Kingsley had triggered had given him a panic attack and a nosebleed and set him screaming so much that it took an hour to get him to calm down.
And then three weeks later, DeRogna came to call.
“We didn’t have to take her offer,” Caleb murmured on the deck of the icebreaker ship that was bound for Balenpost, where he’d come to find Molly, bundled up against the cold and patently miserable.
“You need the clout and the money.” He gripped the railing until his knuckles paled. “I’m not gonna hold you back from that.”
Caleb reached up and patted his shoulder- a minimal amount of affection that made a grand amount of difference. Slowly, Molly began to relax. “We need you, Mollymauk. And besides, I do not trust the Assembly or what this woman is up to.”
Molly worried the inside of his cheek with his teeth. “Then all the more reason to go.”
He didn’t admit that ever since Kingsley had appeared, he’d felt a sickening drive to get back to Eiselcross that threatened to drive him insane. Vess DeRogna’s arrival with her offer was timely and likely not a coincidence.
Something was going to happen here in Eiselcross. Something that almost happened nine years ago.
He’d run as far as he could go and now he had to turn and face the storm.
—
Balenpost was just an Assembly-run outpost in the middle of the endless winter miles of Eiselcross. It was where a lot of good people spent their last warm moments before vanishing into the cold, never to be seen again. There were rumors that the origin of superhuman abilities lay out in the ruins of Aeor and the promise of answers and knowledge lost to time was enticing for the Supers who ran the Empire behind the King’s back.
Once upon a time, Vess DeRogna led a group of teenagers into those ruins and two didn’t come out alive. She’d covered her ass with hush money and grief and the laws she rallied for preventing the deaths of more children, but the truth was worse. She’d chosen children on purpose, believing they weren’t clever enough to understand what she was doing out there. Jurrell Wase and Mollymauk Tealeaf hadn’t died due to being too young. They died because Vess DeRogna was careless with any life that wasn’t her own.
And Molly hadn’t died at all, apparently.
Kingsley sat across from him at a table in the community space that took up most of the bottom floor of the barracks. It had been the Nein who were livid at his presence, but Molly was resigned to the revelation that his “brother” had followed him. Now the Nein sat several tables away, watching them like hawks, while Molly gripped the edge of the table and listened to Kingsley recount the story of how Vess DeRogna cheated and lied and martyred herself because she failed to get what she wanted.
“You can’t trust her,” Kingsley concluded. “She’s going to get the lot of you killed and I can’t do this again. Seeing you back… Fuck, Molly. I’ve missed you.”
Of course Molly couldn’t say the same. He didn’t remember him. Or Lucien. They were meaningless to him- but he loved the Nein and any fool could see that. If he didn’t back down from anything else, then at least he would for them.
“You’ve told me everything but what she even wants,” Molly said, deftly evading the sentiment. His eyes were on the table, where they had been since this conversation started, and Kingsley wished he’d just look at him.
“That I don’t know.” Kingsley took a long swig from his beer. “It was just a scouting expedition before.There was a book, but… she never really made it there for any of us to see what it was. She just got close enough to it that the traps fucked us up.”
“And then the screaming,” Molly murmured. “I remember the screaming.”
Kingsley grunted in a vague affirmation, but something nagged at him, distracting him. Lucien was in Eiselcross right now- out there in that frozen hellscape, doing gods only knew what. He still wouldn’t answer his phone.
Seeing as Molly had gone noncommunicative as he mulled over the lack of any further explanation, Kingsley pulled out his phone again and dialed Lucien’s number, idly, the same way he had been doing every few hours, hoping for a different result.
He heard a generic ringtone across the room.
Kingsley’s blood ran cold, while Molly’s head shot up, frowning in distaste (likely at the lack of originality). It could be a coincidence. With shaking hands, Kingsley canceled the call.
The ringing stopped abruptly, cut off mid-tone. Not a coincidence, then.
The sound had come from a group in heavy furs towards the back who looked nondescript enough to not be worth paying attention to. Just casual travelers, the same as everyone else here who didn’t work the outpost. Nothing to worry about. Now that Kingsley was actually looking, he could make out familiar shapes underneath the heavy coats and hoods. One, in particular, called to him like a siren, urging him forwards to be drawn back within the safety of his form.
The problem of being a duplicate is that no matter how independent you are, you can never shake the desire to return to your original whole.
Molly must have felt it too. His nails dug into the table, holding him steady to keep him from getting to his feet and rushing at the figure, who had just stood up and started to walk towards them. The hood obscured his features from a distance, but once he was a foot away, the lights in the tavern threw the sharp planes of his cheekbones and the blood-red of his irises into sharp relief.
“Hey, Lucy,” Kingsley drawled to cover up the mounting frustration. Molly looked like he was on the verge of another panic attack, and, meanwhile, he just wanted to cold-clock Lucien and put him on the floor for being such a rat bastard.
“I think I told you that I hate being called that.” Lucien pushed his hood down and shook his long hair free. “Well. Here we are again.” He looked Molly up and down. “So you were right after all. You look pretty good for a corpse, Mollymauk.”
Molly made a keening sound. The sound of scraping chairs nearby suggested the Nein had gotten to their feet and were ready to defend him.
“That your new group, then?” Lucien inclined his head in that direction without even regarding the Nein. That wasn’t the attitude of someone who’d sat on his ass in a mansion somewhere in the Savalirwood for years.
Kingsley set his jaw, realizing how little he really knew about his brother. He’d made assumptions out of feelings of abandonment and betrayal, and maybe they were dangerously inaccurate. There was too much bloody tension in the air for any of this to be anything but a threat display on two sides.
“Lucien,” Kingsley hissed between gritted teeth, “what are you doing here?”
Lucien smiled. “Had to clear up a few loose ends. Thanks for the information, by the by, Kingsley. Made for a detour, but I got what I wanted.”
Molly blanched and turned to look at Kingsley, who was doing the math in his head. What did he tell him before on the way here? He hadn’t been answering. He sent so many messages to him and to Cree, hoping something would get through, and when that failed, he’d just been dialing his number hoping to annoy his brother into answering.
He flipped to his last message- sent to Cree before he lost service on the icebreaker ship. Cree, DeRogna is headed to Eiselcross. What are you doing there and why won’t Lucien answer his phone?
Oh. Oh fuck.
Kingsley leapt to his feet and grabbed Lucien’s coat. “Are you insane?! What did you do?”
Lucien just pried his fingers away and shoved him back against the table, laughing like the whole thing was a joke. “I made it right again." The laughter cut off abruptly as he narrowed his red eyes and said, the picture of seriousness, "And I’m going to keep going farther.”
—
Lucien was gone by the time the Nein found DeRogna’s body. An entire political incident was going to be brought down on their heads because of his selfishness.
Molly’s head itched, while his locked away memories strained at the doors they were hidden behind. Whatever happened out here, he didn’t want to remember it, but it wanted to be remembered.
Kingsley sighed as he began to gather his things, and Molly awkwardly followed suit at a slower pace. The rest of the Nein were ready to pursue this, because it was the only way they wouldn’t come home to bad press. Only he was slow to join in.
He would. He couldn’t leave them… and he couldn’t run away either.
“The thing he’s after isn’t good, I know that much. DeRogna shouldn’t get her hands on it, but Lucien definitely shouldn’t.”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about DeRogna,” Molly muttered. There was more blood on the walls than there must have been in her veins at that point. “So we take care of it?”
“It’s what family does.” Kingsley extended his hand.
This time Molly took it. “Let’s get our brother back, then.”