Aidan didn’t last nearly as long the second round.
He came to with a jolt, breaking from blissful unconsciousness to his waking nightmare. His breath was hot and frantic as he waited for the next cut, the next burn, the next scrape. It didn’t come. The room was silent. He looked around. No one. His wounds were freshly wrapped, blood seething through cotton in Rorschach-like clots, stains of sins he hadn’t known he’d committed. Not that the wrappings did anything to numb the pain that settled on his skin like shards of ice. Every breath shifted the cloth, made wounds sting and burn. Every pulse of blood felt like another day of life lost.
And after Jeremiah’s session, Aidan had definitely lost a great deal of both.
Aidan was proud of himself, though—he hadn’t broken. He’d spent the entire session with his teeth gritted and blood dripping from his lips and wounds, but he hadn’t said a word. Not about himself, or the Guild, or the shard.
Neither of them had gotten any answers, and Aidan knew Jeremiah was far from finished with him. So he sat in the silence and waited for the worst.
Was this another form of torture? Was Jeremiah behind him, waiting to literally stab him in the back? Aidan tried to turn, tried to see, but he couldn’t move an inch. The bonds were tight enough that he couldn’t feel his extremities.
That’s when he realized Jeremiah had left something behind.
There, right on the table in front of him, was the shard. Glinting amid the torture instruments, a fragment of black in a pool of blood.
Aidan tried to check the room. Not that he could move. So he closed his eyes. Went as still as possible, calming his breathing until he could hear every beat of his reluctant heart. He tried to convince himself he could hear that the room was empty, that he wasn’t being watched.
Once he was certain, or hoped he could be certain, he struggled. He clenched his teeth and tried to pull his arms from the leather straps. Tried to shift his weight, to topple the chair over. And even—desperately—tried to open to Fire. It felt like grasping for a ghost in the dark—vain and terrible, knowing it was there, haunting him, and forever out of his reach.
Nothing worked. Not that he expected anything else. Hope was a dangerous thing.
He didn’t know why he had to get the shard. Only that Tomás wanted it, that the Dark Lady needed it, that it would grant him power and supposedly bring his parents back, and maybe then he could get Fire back, as well. And maybe, when he got the shard, Tomás would appear and pull him out of this hell. Maybe this was all some elaborate, sadistic test, and Aidan just had to prove he could pass. Tears welled in his eyes from his wounds. Pain, and the frustration of being so close. So close to getting the fuck out of here. So close to getting it all back.
He couldn’t entertain the other possibilities, even though they gnawed at him. And without Fire to burn away the worries like pests, their voices grew louder as his struggle grew more fruitless.
What if, now that Aidan could no longer use magic, Tomás would have no use for him?
What if the shard would do nothing?
And then, the thought he’d been pushing away since that morning: What if Tomás had played him, sending him into the Inquisition’s clutches just to be done with him?
The thought took hold, and he stopped struggling.
He’d thought he was the one playing Tomás. Thought he’d been in control. But here he was, broken and beaten, as far from power as he’d ever been, and Tomás was nowhere to be seen. He had failed. Just as he had failed his mother. Just as he’d failed his friends. Just as he’d failed Trevor, the one man on this island who cared enough to look past Aidan’s faults—Trevor had loved him, and Aidan had failed him by giving in to his own primal need to win.
He couldn’t help it. Despite himself, he began to cry.
Big, fat tears filled his eyes, blurring the room and the torture instruments and the shard, dripping to mingle with his blood.
He didn’t know how long he sobbed. Didn’t care. He couldn’t hear anything else over his burning cries, over the constant voices in his head, telling him he had failed.
He had failed, and he had pulled so many others down with him.
He had killed Trevor for power.
He had killed Vincent in cold blood.
He had killed countless others under his command, solely by leading them into the battlefield.
And he had killed his mother by coming here.
“Oh, God,” he sobbed, his heart drowning under images of his mother succumbing to the Howls.
“Your God is not here,” came a voice.
A finger against his cheek. Wiping his tears away. Before him, silhouetted in the flickering candles...
“But your mother answers.”
Aidan gasped another sob. There was no way. It couldn’t be—
“Mom?”
And it was her. Kneeling before him. The same brown eyes filled with warmth. The same loving smile. The long black hair, the full cheeks. She glowed in the dim light. Radiant.
Alive.
“It’s me, Aidan.” She smiled wider. “It’s really me.”
“Impossible,” Aidan said. But her hand was on his knee, and her touch was firm. Warm. Soothing. “You’re—”
“Dead?” Her smile twitched, and there was a flicker in her eyes. A darkness. “What is death, when you could control life?”
“No,” Aidan grunted. The panic was back, stronger now, worse than anything Jeremiah could conjure. “No, this isn’t real. You aren’t real.”
The facade slid, her features shifting like shadows from one moment to the next. Dark hair bleaching blonde, clothing melding black and sinuous.
“I am very real,” the Dark Lady said. “And you are so, so close to bringing her back. I gave you my word. Now you must deliver on yours.”
“I’m not serving you,” he said. It was the last fragment of self-respect he had, the last sliver of humanity. “You’re evil. You did this...all of this.”
The Dark Lady shook her head slowly.
“I never took you for one to believe solely because others tell you to. Look around, my child. You are tortured by those who say they are righteous. I have done nothing but aid you, just as Tomás has lent his hand.”
She leaned in closer, and when she spoke, there was true sadness in her voice.
“I am not evil, Aidan. I never created monsters. I created gods. Just as I have created you. It was mankind itself that turned them evil, that painted them as villains and demons. I sought only the secret to life. And these people, this Church, gave us only death.”
He hated himself for believing her. Hated that when she touched the side of his face, he didn’t flinch away. If anything, he wanted to lean in.
“I will give you everything your heart desires. I will set you free.”
Aidan knew the answer he was supposed to give. He should push her away. Deny her. See through what had to be lies. He was a trained Hunter. Sure, in dreams he had been coerced into believing he would help, believing she could work miracles.
But this wasn’t a dream. The Dark Lady was here, in the room with him, even though she was dead, even though this was the heart of the Church. She was here, and she was the reason his mother had died, the reason this hell had broken loose in the first place. He had been trained to kill her. To resist her.
Yet he knew in the pit of his soul that she would deliver on her promise. He knew she was telling the truth. About everything.
“What...what do you need me to do?” he asked.
She smiled and stood, and in that sweeping motion she transformed, the shade of his mother once more.
“I knew I could count on you, baby,” she said. His mother’s voice. It was his mother’s voice. He didn’t realize just how much he’d missed hearing it.
Just how much he’d give up to hear it again. A cry bubbled up in the back of his throat. He could hear her again.
She stepped over to the table. To the shard.
“These men have stolen so much from me,” she murmured. “From us. From our families.” She looked at Aidan. “They tore us apart. It was never my desire to create this hell. I wanted only to make Eden. A world where death was not the end, but a transition. One that could be postponed. Or reversed.” Her fingers hovered over the shard, so close, yet not touching. “They ended my work. But with your help... I could resume it.”
She jerked up. Distantly, he heard footsteps down the hall.
“There is so much to teach you, but we don’t have time. We will though, baby. I promise. Just keep fighting. For me. For us.”
“The shard—”
“Is just the beginning,” she said. “Bring it to Tomás. He needs it. We need it.”
Then, before he could ask anything else, the door opened and his mother vanished in shadow.
Three figures stepped before him. Jeremiah. And the two guards from yesterday.
Aidan could barely focus on them. Had that just happened? Was that my mother’s ghost? The Dark Lady?
“I’m afraid we must change tactics, my son,” Jeremiah said. He walked to the table and pocketed the shard as though it were nothing. Just a stone. A rock. When Aidan was beginning to realize it was so much more. “You have proven that physical pain is not enough to break you. And so...” He gestured to the guards. They moved to Aidan’s sides, undoing the straps binding him to the chair and then hauling him roughly to his feet.
Their hands on his wounds nearly made him black out again.
“What are you going to do to me?” Aidan gasped through the pain.
“Not to you, my son,” Jeremiah said. “Not quite. Just remember...this—all of this—is by your hand.”