AIDAN
Aidan didn’t think much could surprise him anymore. Not with all the power running through his veins, not with the body of the Dark Lady splayed out before him. He was wrong.
When Kianna burst into the room, shock pulsed through him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. “How are you here?”
They were in Russia. A thousand miles from where he’d left her. Even if she’d somehow taken a plane, there was no way she could be here. Unless...
He looked. Really looked.
And there, curled in the pit of her gut, glowing green behind the black of her trench, was the Sphere of Earth.
“You let them attune you?” he spat as the others—the Hunters he expected—crowded in behind her. Well, he’d expected all of them, except blondie wasn’t with them. Maybe they’d had a lovers’ quarrel?
“Aye,” Kianna said. He didn’t fail to note that her gun was pointed straight at his chest, the sword at Tomás. “And I blame you for all of it.”
“Well, well, well,” Tomás said. “Here we are at last. All of us. How pleasant.” He glared at her, but the scowl broke into a grin. He pulled aside his shirt to reveal his smooth flesh. “No hard feelings, of course. It takes a bit more than a few gunshots to kill me.”
“I look forward to it,” Kianna said. She took a step forward, but Tenn put a hand on her arm.
Surprisingly, she didn’t lop it off.
“Wait.” He looked at Aidan with those damn watery eyes, and Aidan had to fight down the memory of Trevor looking at him the same way. The sadness. The fear. The absolute ache of betrayal, right before Aidan had burned him to ash on Calum’s throne. “Aidan,” he continued. His voice smooth. Calming. The way you’d talk to a feral dog. Fire sparked at the indignation. No one should talk to him like this. And yet, something in the way Tenn said his name... “Aidan, I don’t know what you’re doing. But it doesn’t have to be like this.”
Aidan laughed. “Please. You don’t even know what this is.” He gestured wide, sparks racing across his arms. “What, you believe that just because you’re the chosen one, you have a part in all this? You don’t. This has nothing to do with you.” He looked to Kianna. “With any of you.”
“Then what does it have to do with?” she asked. “Because it sure as hell looks like you’re standing over the woman you vowed to kill, beside a monster you swore to kill, as well.”
Tomás chuckled and bowed at the word monster. Aidan was impressed. Normally, that was enough to set Tomás off.
Then he realized why everyone was static. It wasn’t just because they were uncertain. It was because he held this entire situation in the palm of his hand. He could kill them in a heartbeat if he wanted. He could bring the very castle down around their heads. Or, he could be a merciful god and let them live.
He looked to Kianna. His only friend. Then he looked at the pistol pointed at his chest. Perhaps she was no longer his friend, Fire purred. Perhaps she has joined with them.
“Things aren’t so black-and-white,” Aidan said. “Not anymore.” He clenched his fingers, brought his destroyed hand in front of him. Lowered his voice, tried to level the burn. “Don’t you understand? After everything we’ve been through, there isn’t a pure good or pure evil. Just power. She knew this.” He pointed to the Dark Lady. “And I’m quickly learning. This world doesn’t give a shit about good or bad. It never has. It only bows to one thing—power. And we either use that power, or we are chained by it. I know precisely which side I want to be on.”
He placed his hand on the Dark Lady’s chest, right over her heart. Felt the shiver of life within. Just as he felt the words of the runes snaking over his skin. He had undone them. Most of them. But there was only so much he could do.
There had been another curse hidden within the runes.
A requirement.
He looked to Tomás.
“I suppose I should thank you,” Aidan said. “You taught me that good and evil are just what we make of them.”
Tomás nodded, but his grin was slipping. Probably because Aidan’s was slashing into place.
“The true heart of everything is power. You showed me that. That life was only about the burn, the acquisition. No matter who we have to consume along the way. You’ve taken me far, Tomás. Here to the very end.”
He paused, let them linger on the word end while he looked at the others.
“And you are also to thank for bringing us all back together again. You and that treacherous heart of yours.”
He traced lines of flame over the Dark Lady’s chest.
“You have risked everything to bring me here. To help me achieve everything I desire. You’ve given your life to bringing your mistress back, when all your brethren were content to lock her away. All because they were too weak. Too frightened to see what she might create.”
He looked to Tomás as he burned the final runes into the Dark Lady’s skin, as the runes of the pedestal fell away, and a new language took their place. He reached to the blade at his hip, his fingers wrapping around the hilt.
“You were imperfect. All of you. And you had hoped that by bringing me here, by aiding me, I would overlook that imperfection.”
Tomás growled in the back of his throat. But he didn’t take a step forward. Didn’t try to rip out Aidan’s tongue. Everyone stood silent. The whole world waiting to see what he would do.
“But if there is one thing I have learned from you, Tomás, it is that weakness has no place in the world. Your mistress knew that better than most. You say you would do anything to bring her back? Good. Because she requires something of you. One more little thing.”
Aidan struck.
He lashed the final runes into the Dark Lady’s chest, deep into her static heart, and twined tendrils of flame around his arms as he thrust his dagger into Tomás’s chest. Tomás screamed.
It shouldn’t have been enough to kill him. On their own, the dagger or the flame would have been nothing to the incubus. But the runes...
The power of the runes Aidan seared on the Dark Lady’s heart twined with those he burned into Tomás’s chest, linking one to the other. As Tomás’s heart failed, as his spark winked out, the runes on the Dark Lady dragged that power in.
Tomás’s eyes widened.
“What’s the matter?” Aidan asked, making sure to stare deep into the Howl’s copper eyes. “You told me you would die for me. Did you truly think I wouldn’t call your bluff?”
Distantly, he heard commotion. As if in another room, another world, he heard the other Hunters leap into action, felt the flares of their power. But the power he wielded billowed around him, the fire a cocoon of searing warmth. The power of his own inner flame. The power of Tomás’s dying light.
The spark of her awakening.
Maybe the Hunters attacked. Maybe they didn’t. It didn’t matter.
He watched Tomás sink to his knees, the dagger still in his chest.
He felt the Kin’s heart stutter against the blade.
Felt the Kin’s power flood through him. Past him. And into the woman who warmed beneath his fingertips.
“The Dark Lady does not forgive treachery,” Aidan said. “And neither, my prince, do I.”
Tomás’s heart stalled.
He crumpled to his side.
And as his eyes closed and his head thudded to the floor, the woman the world had thought dead was reborn.