“The hell is this?”
Kianna’s whispered voice cut through the dark. Aidan woke slowly, consciousness bleeding in like molasses. First the dim light. Then the pain. Then the warmth curled behind him.
He jerked and turned in bed, elbowing the mass that had been wrapped around his back.
Something thudded to the floor with a muffled yelp, and then he saw Lukas struggling to standing in the shadows. Kianna stood by the closed door, illuminated by a candle held in one hand.
“How the hell do you find someone to shag in a torture chamber?” Kianna hissed.
“I—What?” Wait, had Lukas been spooning him?
“You were shivering,” Lukas said. “I’m sorry. I should have asked. But I thought—”
“Save it,” Kianna interrupted. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What?” Aidan must have lost too much blood. Or been dreaming.
“Get up. We don’t have much time. The guard’s changing soon.”
“How—”
Kianna stalked over and yanked Aidan to standing. He winced at the pain. “Do you really want to have this conversation here? I’m saving our asses. Now move.” She shoved him toward the door and he stumbled, fumbling for the doorknob before realizing he was using the hand missing two fingers. He grabbed it with the other.
“I’m coming with,” Lukas said from behind them. “Please.”
Kianna snarled. “If I knew you had a cell mate...” she said, glaring at Aidan.
“You can’t leave me behind,” Lukas whispered. Almost a plea.
Kianna elbowed past Aidan, yanked open the door. “I don’t give a shit. I’m leaving. You can follow if you want. But it’s every man for himself and I swear to Christ, if you give us away or lag behind, I’ll kill you myself.”
She pulled open the door and crept through the crack. Aidan didn’t hesitate or look back, groggy as he was. His body was on fire with pain and determination, adrenaline coursing through his veins.
He nearly tripped on the body just outside the door. All it took was a glance at the head facing the entirely wrong direction to tell that the guard was dead.
“How did you get out?” Aidan whispered.
“Feminine wiles,” Kianna said flatly. Knowing her, that probably meant slamming the door into her guard’s face when meals were delivered, or something equally pleasant. He didn’t bother to question further.
Lukas followed close behind, their collective footsteps silent in the long hall. For being a prison, the place wasn’t heavily guarded. Then again, with the Church in control, there probably didn’t seem to be much need for guards down here.
Kianna led them onward, stopped at a flight of stairs. She looked up through the shadows, her candle flickering against the stairwell as she peered up into the darkness. Listening.
“Clear,” she whispered. “Come on.”
Aidan no longer wondered how she knew things like that. He just assumed it was another superpower.
They crept up the stairs, and with every step Aidan expected to be ambushed. He expected Kianna to get turned around. He sort of recognized where they were, but he would have no chance at finding his way out. She, it seemed, was better at paying attention. In a matter of minutes, Kianna peered through a cracked door, slowly opened it and slipped outside.
Aidan followed into the cool night air, the scent of cinder and flesh heavy in his nostrils. They were in the square, and the charred remains of his comrades still glowed warm and red like a wound in the night before them. He blanched at the sight, but Kianna didn’t give them a moment to stare. She darted along the side of the building, keeping to the shadows.
Every step they took, he felt the excitement of escape. And yet...something nagged at him, and he didn’t want to admit what it was.
He didn’t want to leave here without the shard.
He didn’t want to let Tomás down.
No, it wasn’t that—he didn’t want to give up. If the shard was the only thing standing between him and power, he couldn’t just walk away. And yet here he was, running with his tail between his legs, following Kianna through the dark.
It wasn’t until they were a few blocks away, far from the sprawling compound that had become his prison, that he stopped.
“I can’t.”
His words made her turn back. “What do you mean, can’t? You about to pass out or something?”
“No.” He couldn’t find the words. Not without admitting more than he wanted to. “There’s something I still have to do.”
“You’re delusional,” she said, and kept walking.
“No.” He didn’t move, and Lukas stood between the two of them, uncertain.
“What the hell are you talking about, Aidan? We aren’t in the clear yet.” She gestured out to the warren of tangled streets. “The Guild wall is that way. Still at least two kilometers off. We can’t stop until we’re past it. And not even then.”
Aidan took a step back. “You go. Take him.”
“Aidan, I’m not—”
“I said go!” he yelled, far louder than he meant. He lowered his voice. “I have to end this, Kianna. I can’t just run away.”
“You’re wounded, Aidan. You aren’t going to end anything.”
“Please,” he said. “Trust me. I have to go back. You heard what he said.”
She ground her teeth. Hands balled into fists. He knew the thoughts warring in her mind: she had just risked her own escape to get him out of there. But she knew he had been lying earlier. Knew he had something up his sleeve. And she knew exactly what he meant—Jeremiah had said that Aidan worked for the Dark Lady, had become her voice. She probably thought he was going in on a kamikaze mission. She was probably right.
“I’m not waiting around,” she said.
“I don’t want you to,” he replied. He nodded to Lukas. “Take him. Get out of here. I’ll come find you. Promise.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
Then he turned and hobbled his way back into the heart of the Church.
Aidan knew time was short. Kianna had killed the guards near their cells, and it wouldn’t take long for the guard to change and the alarm to be raised. Worse, he only vaguely remembered his way back to Jeremiah’s torture chamber.
But deep within, he felt the whisper.
Every time he thought of the shard, every time he envisioned the image of his mother, he felt the pull forward. He had to trust it, even though it was the last thing on this earth he should put faith in.
He snuck past the smoldering pyres, pausing only briefly to stare at the remains of his comrades, to feel that sick twist of doubt in his gut. Everything he had touched, he had broken.
This was his final chance to make it right.
At least...to make it right for himself.
He made his way back through the halls of the old Guild, following his gut and praying he could find his way in. Back to the one place he didn’t want to step foot in. He crept through the hallways, following the tug and his own scattered memories, praying to whatever god listening that he wouldn’t end up at Jeremiah’s bedchamber or something.
Moments later, he found it.
He could smell the blood, just as he could feel the tug in his gut that told him this was the correct door. The tug, and the fear, as though the place were a wound throbbing in the darkness. As though he had left more than a few digits and pints of blood here. As though his soul, his destiny, waited within.
Inside, the torture chamber was exactly as they’d left it.
The tables set out with their bloody instruments. The twin chairs, splattered with gore. His finger nubs, cast on the floor like rune stones. Candles flickering against the blood even now.
But no shard.
Aidan let the door click faintly behind him. Had he been mistaken? Had Jeremiah taken the shard? He stepped deeper in the room, staring at the tables, wondering if perhaps it had been hidden in the blood, or dropped on the ground...
“Looking for something?” Jeremiah asked.
Aidan jerked up as, from the shadows, Jeremiah stepped forward. He was smiling. Aidan looked around, but there was no one else in the room. Just him and this old man. An old man who shouldn’t have been a threat to someone trained in combat, but who still made Aidan freeze.
“How long have you been waiting?” Aidan asked. He tried to keep his voice steady, but every time he looked at Jeremiah, he felt the memory of another torture instrument graze across his skin.
“Since I learned you and your friend escaped. Frankly, I’m amazed it took you so long to get out. I would have thought lessening the guard would have been enough.”
Aidan’s head spun. “You lowered the guard?”
Jeremiah shrugged, stepping further into the room. Aidan stepped back. Thoughts weren’t coalescing as they should. “I wanted to see what you would do. And I wanted to ensure that I had gotten it right. That you truly were in the Dark Lady’s fold.”
“This was a trap.” Aidan’s heart fell. A trap to ensure his guilt, a trap to see if he would come back for the stone he swore he had no affinity to. And he’d fallen in headfirst.
“Not a trap,” Jeremiah said. “A test. To see if you were truly the one destined for this.”
He held out his hand and unfolded his fingers. The shard glinted within.
“I don’t understand,” Aidan said. “Why—”
“Because, my brother,” Jeremiah said. His lips twisted into a smile. “Our Lady works in mysterious ways.”