Chapter 36: The Edge of Darkness
The news hit Cambria like a bolt of lightning. Knox. Her first instinct was to deny it. Knox, her most trusted, no, her family. The man who had been with her from the very beginning, the one who had always been there, watching, supporting her. The man she had once thought of as a brother.
But the evidence was undeniable. Elara’s message had left no room for doubt. Knox had been feeding Elena information. He had been working with her all along. The shock reverberated through her entire body, and for a moment, everything felt like it was spinning out of control. She wanted to scream, to rail against the injustice of it all, but no sound escaped her.
Maddox, standing across from her, looked as though he too was trying to process the enormity of what Cambria had just learned. His face went pale, his lips tightening in frustration.
"No," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "No, it can’t be true. It doesn’t make sense."
Cambria didn’t know how to respond. Her entire world had just been upended. Knox, someone she had trusted so completely, someone who had been by her side through every decision, every triumph, every failure, had been secretly working with Elena.
She had always known Knox was ambitious, but this? This was a betrayal on a level she hadn’t been prepared for.
"I can’t believe it," Cambria said, shaking her head as if doing so would somehow erase the truth. "Not Knox. He was always loyal. He was... He was family."
But the more she thought about it, the more the pieces started to come together. Knox had always been a little too eager, a little too quick to offer solutions, too quick to agree with her ideas. And yet, she had always written it off as ambition, as drive. He had always been good at reading people, at knowing what they wanted to hear. But now she realized he had been reading her all along. He had seen her as a way to move up in the world, just as Elena had.
She clenched her jaw, trying to force back the tears that were threatening to spill. She wouldn’t cry. Not now. Not when everything was falling apart.