AIDAN
Aidan took an involuntary step back when the door opened and the Dark Lady stepped through. The very air around her wavered, as though she were the center of a rippling pond. Her dress billowed in an unfelt breeze, her blond hair a halo. She practically floated above the concrete floor.
“My Hunter,” she said, her voice once more its oceanic hum, a thrum that vibrated deep in his chest. “We have succeeded.”
Her words filled him with a new sensation: dread.
Because in those words was another proclamation: she had everything she needed, which meant she no longer had use for him. His single ace of reading the runes was spent. He just had to hope she still wanted him around. That his insight into the runes might still prove useful.
As he watched her fucking billow toward the Violet Sage, he doubted that insight accounted for much anymore.
“And now,” the Dark Lady said, “I believe we have some unfinished business.”
“My mother—” Aidan said, his voice quiet.
The Dark Lady turned to him, her eyes flashing, the air moving about her like a living, breathing thing. He stepped back.
“Your mother can wait. We still have many who would oppose us. Many who will rise up to defend this wretch the moment they realize she has gone. The moment they realize what I have become.”
Immediately, Tenn’s face flashed through Aidan’s mind. But the boy wasn’t a threat. He was bound and gagged and magically sealed off next door. What threat could he be? What threat could anyone else pose against...this?
“Go back to the island,” she said. “Kill all who dwell there. We cannot risk the powers of Maya falling into anyone else’s hands. We cannot risk a true rebellion.”
He almost wanted to tell her to do it her damn self. Almost. He might have been angry, but he wasn’t an idiot.
This would prove him useful to her.
Would endear him to her.
And maybe, when he was done, he could have his mother back.
Maybe, when he was done, he could turn against her.
Though...he doubted he had a chance in hell of killing her now. He’d need to attune to Maya. He’d need Tenn’s help. The thought made anger roil inside him—he’d come so far, and he was still relying on the help of others.
Weak. Tomás’s voice floated through his brain. A phantom, but no less potent. Or true.
Aidan pulled through Fire, burned the voice and the weakness away.
“Your will be done,” he said. “Killing them will be a pleasure.”
What surprised him was that he wasn’t certain he meant it.
Aidan expected some sort of commotion on the island. Torches and pitchforks, battle cries and armor. But nothing had changed. Birds still sang in the trees, the ocean churned endlessly against the white-sand beach. And the acolytes he’d seen earlier still wandered or meditated, their white robes making them look like seagulls in the breeze.
It was peaceful. Idyllic.
You don’t have to do this.
He wasn’t certain if it was the Violet Sage still speaking to him, or the echo of memory. He stood in the doorway of the room from which he’d stolen the Violet Sage and Tenn away, staring out at the beach, and doubt churned through him. He reached through Fire, but even though the heat filled him, the rage wouldn’t come.
These were humans.
Peaceful, innocent humans. They weren’t Howls or necromancers, they weren’t serving the Dark Lady...
He jolted.
They weren’t serving the Dark Lady, but he was. Doing her bidding like a dog. All so—what?—she might fulfill her promise and return his mother to him? Was it worth it?
For a moment, he wondered what Kianna would say. Only for a moment, though, because he knew without doubt she would have a sword in his back or a bullet in his brain before he’d even had the chance to ask. He’d betrayed her. He’d betrayed everyone.
He was no better than the Howls. No better than the necromancers.
You don’t have to do this.
His mother’s face floated through his mind.
But he did. He did.
He’d already gone too far. If he crossed the Dark Lady now, she’d kill him, and the world would go on and her reign would be unchallenged, and everything, everything would have been for nothing.
He wasn’t going to let his life be for nothing.
He had gone too far. And he had to go further if he wanted to make any of this worth it. Once he had his mother, he could stop. Then, and only then, could he start to question himself. Until that time, there was no turning back.
Closing his eyes, he reached deep into his treacherous Sphere, wrapped himself in heat and energy, fed himself to the flame. The doubt. The pity. The innocence.
He fed it all to the flames, and when he opened his eyes again, he fed his flame to the world.
In a blink, the acolytes on the beach crumpled, fire filling their lungs and veins and winking out without a trace. He turned, cast his Fire farther, seeking out the sparks he felt within the huts, the lives completely unaware they were about to be snuffed out. Another snap of Fire, and they flared and extinguished in a heartbeat.
It unnerved him, the ease with which he killed everyone. A half dozen dead. A dozen. All humans. All innocent. All seeking what he had thought he had wanted—an end to the darkness. Now, he was the darkness.
He snapped his fingers, and the huts went up in a blaze. Infernos, each of them, bright as the sun. It wasn’t right, that sun. He’d committed murder before, but it had been cold then. Dismal. The right weather for a massacre. This...this wasn’t right. None of it.
Still, he killed.
He stepped out from the building, onto the boardwalk, and behind him the bamboo and timber erupted in flame, wood snapping and crackling like skeletons beneath a boot.
There was no one around to scream or race to the buildings. There already were no survivors.
Except...
He felt them, farther in. A few dozen sparks, a few dozen lives, all huddled together like offering candles in a church. They must have felt the magic, the inferno. They must have known something was wrong. None of them moved, however. None of them seemed to know he was here, or what he had done.
You could leave them. The thought was most assuredly his own, and the voice of reason felt so alien that for a moment it froze him in place. You could let them live. She would never know.
It was true. He could turn back whenever, and the Dark Lady would believe he had done the job. He was a murderer, but he didn’t have to commit genocide, not like this.
At first, he thought the waver in the flames was from his eyes watering, from the heat and the smoke. Then he realized he was crying.
“I have to,” he said to her ghost. “I have to get you back. I have to make this right.”
Only there was no making this right. There was only going deeper. He could only make it worse.
That, it seemed, was all he was good at.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Blocked out the voice of reason in his head, his conscience coming to light all too late.
Then he turned and headed toward the sparks still wavering in the jungle, the lives he would end so he alone could carry on.