Lottie wanted it more than the others.
That much was clear from the beginning.
She didn't flinch when Carmen handed her the file — a local moneylender who made orphans out of debtors, grinning while he signed their eviction notices with the same hand that wrote their death warrants.
She didn't hesitate when Julian taught her where to stab, where to slice, where to press the blade to kill the scream before it could ever reach the throat.
She didn't ask why.
She didn't ask if he deserved it.
She only asked two words:
"Where?"
"And when?"
And Carmen loved her for that.
Not for her goodness — there was none left.
Not for her loyalty — loyalty was a currency already spent.
But for her efficiency.
For her willingness.
For her beautiful, inevitable failure.
Because they all failed.
That was the design.
That was the point.
The night of her first kill, it rained.
A sickly, thin rain that barely touched the ground before the dirt drank it in like a dying man at the mouth of a poisoned river.
Lottie wore a stolen coat, two sizes too large, the sleeves flapping at her sides like broken wings.
She found the man easily — drunk, fat, stumbling through the narrow alleys with a song on his lips and death already clinging to his shadow.
He didn't see her until she stepped out of the dark.
The knife caught the weak light once, and then it was buried.
Not clumsy.
Not hesitant.
A clean thrust — ribs cracked, lungs split.
Exactly the way Julian had shown her.
The man gasped.
Choked.
Sank to the stones without ceremony.
Lottie stood over him, watching his blood curl into the cracks of the street, dark and sure.
She wiped the blade on his jacket.
Tucked it back into her pocket.
And disappeared into the fog like she had never been there at all.
Carmen watched from the rooftop above, the rain trailing down her face like sweat, like tears, though she felt neither.
Arms folded.
Heart steady.
Julian leaned beside her, his cigarette shielded against the drizzle, his smile lazy and unkind.
"She's good," he said.
Carmen didn't blink.
"She's fast."
Julian's mouth curled around the ghost of a grin.
"And when she breaks?"
Carmen tilted her head, almost thoughtful.
"She'll break beautifully."
Julian chuckled, the sound low and quiet, barely carried by the mist.
"You think she'll see it coming?"
"No," Carmen said, the word like a kiss pressed against a knife's edge. "That's what will make it hurt the most.
Lottie returned to the flat soaked through, her cheeks flushed from the cold, her eyes fever-bright.
Carmen waited by the fire, legs tucked under her, a glass of whiskey dangling from her hand as if it barely mattered whether she held it or not.
Lottie knelt without needing to be told.
She held out the knife like an offering.
Carmen took it — slow, careful — studying the blade with something dangerously close to tenderness.
She wiped it clean herself.
Not because Lottie had earned it.
But because rituals mattered.
Carmen leaned forward and brushed a damp curl behind Lottie's ear.
"You did well," she whispered, so soft it could have been mistaken for love.
Lottie's breath caught.
Not with fear.
With hope.
Carmen kissed her forehead.
A benediction.
A branding.
Lottie closed her eyes, dizzy with the weight of it, not knowing she was already ruined.
Already lost.
Already claimed by the spiral that was carving itself through her bones.
Julian watched from the shadows, smiling around the end of his cigarette.
He had seen it too many times to feel anything but amusement.
The hunger in their eyes.
The desperate, trembling hope.
The belief that this time it would be different.
That this time they would be chosen, saved, crowned.
But monsters don't crown kings.
They sharpen knives.
And Lottie — poor, sweet Lottie — was already halfway down Carmen's throat.
Hargreave read the new report at dawn.
A moneylender, gutted like livestock.
Witnesses spoke of a small figure slipping through the rain.
A girl's voice.
A shadow laughing against the dark.
He closed the file slowly.
Lit another cigarette with hands that no longer shook.
Because it didn't matter anymore.
Because it had never mattered.
It was already too late.
The spiral was inside the city now — and it was smiling.
That night, Carmen stood by the window, the city howling beyond the glass like an animal caught in its own dying ribs.
Lottie slept curled by the hearth, clutching the blanket Julian had tossed at her, small and breakable, dreaming of knives and crowns she would never wear.
Julian stretched on the settee, cat-like, careless.
He watched Carmen's reflection in the glass and smiled.
"She'll think she's one of us soon," he said.
Carmen didn't turn.
Her voice was soft, steady.
"And when she believes it," she said, "that's when we cut her loose."
The fire popped, throwing sparks into the air like tiny, dying stars.
Carmen smiled faintly.
Because hope was a wick.
And tonight, Lottie's flame had been lit.
Soon —so soon, it would burn her clean away.