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I STOOD, CROUCHING ON a wall, overlooking the capital city. Radon was awaiting me at the stables. I stared at the city, at the people mulling about, going in and out of the small shops, carrying things and walking to and fro. I watched the mothers hurrying their children along, at the boys playing swords, at the couples enjoying a day hiding from their parents. The blacksmith worked at the forge and another man skinned fish. Guards strolled through the city, watching everyone and even a carriage with hay in the back drove by. I watched them all as they went about their lives as normal. I remembered the days when I envied them all, now I felt nothing.
I stared at the city, the place where I had spilled so much blood, destroyed so many lives.
I reached through the detached numbness I had grown accustomed to as I thought back to Lavious’ dying words, to what I saw in my eyes in his reflection. When I looked at my reflection, all I could see was a rage I had never seen in another human expression before. And there was a part in my eyes—a tiny part that was coal black, rather than dark as they normally were.
Lavious’ last words only confirmed what I thought. When he had spoken, his voice changed... warped so that it sounded like a monotone of multiple voices all speaking together.
Just this once.... This once I let myself feel something one last time. I let all the anger, all the guilt and grief, I let it all back in until it slammed into me for the last time as I heard Lavious’ last words in my head.
“All the people you’ve killed... You may lie to yourself and say that you were forced to kill them, but deep inside there was a part of you that enjoyed the kill... Savored it. There is a darkness rooted in you, Aidan; a darkness that cannot be stopped.”
I felt the fear, then, a soul-shattering fear that paralyzed. Those words pierced right through flesh and bone, right into my very soul, and they would haunt me for as long as I lived.
It became too much. I thought about the long task ahead and slowly fell into the numb detachment until I could feel nothing, nothing but emptiness and cold.
***
PRESENT DAY
I LEANED AGAINST THE wall of the temple on Nassyria, Radon’s homeworld. Nsi stood in the courtyard, speaking quietly with some of the others whom Radon had Chosen—the one called Jace, his girlfriend Lellaey, the one known as Toron, and the newcomers: Jared, Averella, and more recently, Akari.
Radon glanced over and met my eyes, but I could not meet his. Instead, I stared at Nsi where she walked over to the edge of the courtyard and sat down away from the others. Just months ago, I had watched her transform into a wolf and kill her own cousin. No, I had not merely watched, but I had simply let her. In that moment, I had believed it to be true vengeance for her, for what her cousin had done.
Radon’s words echoed in my mind, still, even months after that had happened. “Vengeance belongs to the Father!” Radon’s voice rose in anger for the first time since I had met him. “You were Chosen because you have a great light inside you, Aidan! You are strong and wise, with many talents, yet you continue to use those talents to serve the darkness, darkness that you barely escaped. Do not think I miss that it stirs within your heart, Aidan. I see and know everything about you. You can hide in the shadows from your enemies, but not from me. You cannot hide from the light, Aidan. The more you give into your dark desires, the more you will feed the darkness inside you.”
Silently, as still as a shadow, I slipped away from the other Chosen...unseen by all except for him...for Radon.
Radon’s voice repeated the words over and over again in my mind. I had been the first—the first one he had Chosen and yet...
I was the one with Corruption inside my heart—the very evil we had been Chosen to stop.
Radon’s voice morphed and twisted until it became Lavious.’ His words that he had spoken just before his death whispered in my thoughts, twisting the fear and icy coldness that seeped through my body until I felt I could not breathe, could not think, could not continue on for another moment.
“There is a darkness rooted in you, Aidan; a darkness that cannot be stopped.”
