Aidan expected life to feel different.
He thought he would wake up to a sunny sky and birds in the trees and a cheerfulness in the streets. Instead, he woke up to Kianna barging in with a tray of tea and a scowl. “I have good news and bad news.”
“Good morning to you, too,” he muttered. He pulled through Fire and lit the one lantern in his room. Whatever he’d been dreaming faded in that movement, burning away with reality. All he knew was that it felt important. All he knew was that it made him feel like shit, and he was more than happy to forget it.
“Which do you want first?”
“Tea,” he responded.
She snorted and set the tray on his bed. “Who says that wasn’t the good news?”
“Tea is never good news,” he replied. “Because it means there isn’t coffee.”
“Americans,” she muttered. She flopped down on the bed beside the tea tray. There were biscuits on it, as well. Damn. Maybe this was the good news.
“Okay, shoot. What’s the good news?”
“Good news is, we’ve been stationed together.”
“You’re certain that’s not the bad news?” He tried to grin; he knew, however, that that was the type of joke she would usually make. The fact that she hadn’t put him on edge.
“The bad news is that they’re keeping us here.”
“What?”
“They say it’s because we’ve earned a break,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Truth is, I can tell they don’t trust us out there. Well, you. I don’t run the risk of immolating my troop mates.”
For a brief moment, he worried they had found out. That the Prophets in all their erratic wisdom had seen what he’d done to Trevor and the rest. But no. He reminded himself this was still about Vincent. He was still being punished for the lesser of his sins.
“I can’t just sit around while everyone else fights for us,” Aidan said. Even now, with Fire a low hum in his veins, he felt the pull. The draw to kill, to screw, to burn.
“I know,” she replied. “But I’ve put word in that we want to be deployed as soon as possible. Hopefully, in a few days, they’ll realize you aren’t going to burn down everything around you, and we’ll be free to go. Just...don’t burn down everything around you, okay?”
“I make no promises,” he muttered.
Honestly, he kind of meant it.
The next few days passed by in a blur. Without the thrill of battle to tell the time, Aidan’s life condensed to great swathes of gray. The empty black of morning in his windowless room. The dull tint of his tea. The endless rain while he and Kianna trained in the courtyard. She wouldn’t let him use magic in those training sessions. She never did. Said he needed to rely on more than the Spheres to survive. He hated it. Mostly because she kicked his ass every time.
At night, they would take their dinners in the corners of the mess hall, discussing all the boring drudgery Aidan was glad he got to skip. Kianna didn’t like anyone, which meant everyone tried to get on her good side with gossip and rumors. Of which there were plenty. Reports from up north of the smaller Guilds rallying. Reports of a small Guild in the Hebrides that had been overthrown and burned to the ground by the Church.
Reports of movement in the south. Of Churches attracting more followers.
After all, the Kin in Britain had been killed. A servant of the Dark Lady was dead. To the zealots, that meant the time was ripe to kill the rest of them, Hunters and Howls alike.
Once more, Aidan was smug in having had the foresight to kick them out of Glasgow before they could be a true threat. If he ever saw a Sept, he would feel no shame in burning it to the ground.
Hopefully, though, he would never have to.
It wasn’t the never-ending cold or rain or rumors that got to him, however. If he cared to admit it, it was the lack of Tomás. After all the promises of power, he hadn’t seen a hint of the incubus since that first night. He was starting to think it had all been in his head. The silence. The fact that nothing had changed. At least, not for the better.
He watched the Guild slowly expand. On the fourth day, when the surrounding countryside was definitively cleared of the Dark Lady’s forces, the gates of Glasgow were opened. At least during the day. People were allowed to return to their old lives, to find their old homes. What was left of them.
Perhaps to the surprise of no one, very few people actually left the city. There was still too much risk. From the wall that kept everyone safe, Aidan watched the drawbridge open and the dozen or so civilians walk cautiously out. Some carried bundles, as if they’d hoped to discover their old homes were intact, and settling back into their life would be easy.
No one had been let outside the walls since Glasgow had been barricaded. Not necessarily just for the protection of the civilians—unarmed humans meant easy prey, which meant a greater draw for wandering Howls or necromancers out to convert. Which meant no one truly knew the extent of the damage in the world beyond, save the Hunters who died to keep it safe. Soon they’d all learn the truth. There was nothing to go back to. Nothing to repair. They would need to start from the ground up, and it would be a long time before they managed to return to the world they’d left behind. If ever.
Anger churned in Aidan’s gut.
How fitting, that—after Calum’s death—the civilians were allowed to go free, and here he sat, barricaded, waiting for someone else to decide when he was allowed to go back into the world he alone had liberated.
“It’s not fair,” he muttered to himself.
Fire burned in his chest. Guiding him forward, ever forward. He stared out to the east, to where Edinburgh probably still smoked. To the throne that should have been his.
Kianna told him to wait. To bide his time. Patience wasn’t his virtue.
If it was true that someone had killed Leanna, he had to work harder to secure his place in history. He had to find that stupid shard Tomás had mentioned. Because as he waited here, that prick back in America was still making waves. And Aidan had no doubt that soon, he would land here.
Aidan refused to share his country with someone like that.
Aidan refused to let anyone else believe they were his equal.
“I have found it.”
Aidan jolted. Looked over to see Tomás standing beside him. The incubus radiated heat, and it made Aidan wonder which of his troop mates or civilians would be found frozen later that evening, but he didn’t have the heart to care who Tomás had fed on. Not really.
With Tomás at his side, it was hard to care about anything but power.
“Found what?” Aidan’s heart raced and his breath caught. He didn’t try to hide it, though—Tomás knew the effect he had on him. Aidan fully intended to use that observation to his advantage.
“The shard.”
It sounded so funny, the way Tomás said it, like this was some magical quest and not a fight for survival.
“Why do you need it?” Aidan asked. The last few days had made him doubt everything. Some mystical shard that could bring back the dead was top among them.
“I don’t. But you do.” He took a step closer. “I know what lies in your heart, Aidan Belmont. I know you wish to rule, to burn the world down. But to do so, you will need more strength than you currently have.”
Aidan bristled with the statement. “I’m strong enough,” he said. “I killed Calum.”
“With my help,” Tomás reminded him. “But I may not always be at your side to assist.” He leaned in, whispered in to Aidan’s ear. “Besides, my king, I want you to grow in power. I want to see what you can do when you truly take control.”
“I have no problem taking control,” Aidan said.
Tomás purred in the back of his throat. A second later, he stood a few feet away, and Aidan’s hand clasped thin air.
“Perhaps not,” Tomás said, head cocked to the side. “But you still are not the man you could be. The shard holds more than power, my prince. It holds secrets. Secrets that could prove very useful for us in the months to come.”
“What sort of secrets?”
Tomás chuckled, burning away the hints of the dream that tried to surface in Aidan’s mind. “If I told you that, they wouldn’t be secrets, now, would they?”
Another second, and then Tomás was at Aidan’s back again. This time the Howl’s hand was around Aidan’s throat, the other pinning Aidan’s arms behind him. Pain lanced through Aidan’s shoulders.
“This is not a negotiation,” Tomás growled into his ear. “I handed you Calum, and now you will do as I wish. I could threaten those you love. I could promise to rip your whole world away. But I know what scares you most, Aidan Belmont. I know I need only promise you a lifetime of this, and you will bend to my will. And that is the future you will have without my blessing. Get. Me. The. Shard. Or I promise you, no one will ever remember your name.”
“I thought I was your king,” Aidan grunted, his lungs hot.
“Kings can be replaced. Tenn may not be my first choice, but he will do should you fail me.”
Aidan choked as Tomás’s grip tightened.
“Get me the shard.”
Then Tomás was once more a few feet away. Aidan tried not to stagger, not to collapse. The incubus was too strong. But he would find a way to make himself stronger.
“Where is it?”
“London,” Tomás said. He smiled wickedly. “Good luck.”
Then, with a flicker of Air, the Howl was gone.
Aidan let himself lean against the wall. Stared down at the peasants below. The ants. Tomás’s words rippled through his mind.
He would never be like one of them. He would never be common.
He would be remembered.
And if that meant getting a stupid crystal, so be it. London was the biggest Guild in the UK. All he had to do was walk in there and ask for it.
In a small corner of his mind, he wondered why Tomás hadn’t done something similar. Clearly, the man had no problem appearing wherever he pleased.
Whatever. He needed a reason to leave.
“I’m coming for you,” he whispered to the three remaining Kin. “For all of you.”
And Tomás? But that wasn’t a question he had an answer for. Not yet. Not until he knew whether he wanted to screw the incubus or rip him apart.
Then he thought of Leanna. Of Tenn. The boy who thought he could usurp Aidan’s place in history.
He wasn’t about to let that prick steal his thunder. He was the ruler. He was the one for whom the world would kneel.
And if Tenn decided to get in his way, well... Aidan would kill him, too.