train was loud enough to almost silence the fucking voice in my head. Almost.
Kill her.
She’s a threat.
Take what’s ours.
I did my best to ignore it as I paced back and forth in the train car, trying to outrun the restlessness pulsing through my body, begging me to act—to kill the Kinetic Princess in the train car next to me.
That fucking magic of hers.
Mm, so strong.
She’s a threat.
At least, that’s what he kept telling me. I wished to fuck it was anyone else’s voice.
Shaking my hands at my sides, I continued to pace.
It could all be yours. The whole world at your feet, Prince.
My head wasn’t big enough for the two of us. I shook it from side to side as a feral growl erupted from my chest. When the attempt to expel the voice from my mind didn’t work, I shoved my hands in my hair and yanked at the roots. As if I could remove this shit from my brain by pulling it out by the strands. I knew better. This…affliction had been with me long enough to know that the only reprieve I got was temporary at best.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill.
A mantra on repeat. A war drum of impending death that had me disgusted yet exhilarated. These days, it was getting harder to tell which thoughts were actually mine and what came from the affliction. It didn’t help that my memories were being erased with each passing day, taking the man I once was with it. Not that I’d been all that honorable before…
But right now, he was louder and chattier than usual—worked up over the girl. A girl who was most peculiar. If I didn’t need her alive, I’d have left her to die in the speakeasy.
The little assassin thought she’d been discreet in following me for the past three weeks. She had no clue about the monster she’d been tailing. I’d felt her…and not the energy of her aura. No, no. I felt her. In ways I didn’t usually feel others.
Familiar. That ice-blonde hair was so damn familiar. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to fist it for a fuck or beat it into a wall. But I knew I’d seen that hair.
The strangest thing about her was the fact that he started to clear out of my head whenever I was near her. It was part of the reason I hadn’t made a move against her until tonight. I wanted to savor what little peace I could manage while I was able to, without consuming any substances or drinking obscene amounts of moonshine. But time was running out, and I needed to force her hand.
I could’ve taken her after I gifted her thigh one of her blades, but I needed to get my shit together before I did. Had I taken her, I would’ve killed her. And then the plan would be dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Just like…
I screamed, slamming my fist into the wall at the vision of honey-colored eyes and a beaming smile flashing in my mind’s eye.
Don’t forget what’s at stake. What they took from you.
“I don’t need your shitty reminders!” My voice, vicious and deep, boomed off the aluminum walls as I rammed my fist into the deep ridges again and again. I stood stiff and heaving, wanting to hit something else. The gaping dents showed me just how much control I’d lost. There had been a time I could’ve knocked a hole in that wall with my bare fist in a single punch.
I could’ve fixed the wall, but I liked it better broken.
I glared at the almost holes in the wall before me, ignoring the shattered knuckles in my fist. Almost-hole. Almost whole. Like me. How poetic.
Physical pain, I’d take. It was my companion. If I thought it’d work, I’d trade physical agony for eternity over the fracturing of my mind any day.
All that work I’d done on myself. Gone. For nothing.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hide it from everyone. It had to be until Forest was dead and the Kinetics no longer controlled the fate of this world. I could let the cards fall as they may after that. But until then, I had to keep it together.
As if it personally wronged me, I remained glaring at the wall. But then I felt her. A vibration tugged on my heart, followed by a sense of unbridled fear crashing into my chest. The feeling clawed deeper into my mind, knocking me back several steps. Like a tether, it yanked me to the wall. I felt her giving up.
She was dying.
No, not yet, little assassin.
Not till you’ve served my purposes.
Her fear was waning, and in its place came resignation—the hope of freedom. No.
Well, shit. So much for not alerting the conductor of my presence. The energetic signature my magic emitted would be a beacon. Cursing my shaking hands, it seemed to take a fucking eternity to unclasp the black bracelet suppressing my Elemental magic. I basked in the sensation of feeling solid and grounded in the brief moments when my magic returned. Reaching out a hand, I felt for the metal and worked it to my will, blasting out the ceiling of the container above me.
Wind from the high speed of the train rushed me. Cold. Cold like my insides. Like my blood. Like my soul.
Using my magic, I forced dents big enough to form hand and footholds for me to climb to the top. The action helped ease the anxiousness surging through me, putting my body to use instead of leaving my thoughts alone with him. Scaling my way upward, I pulled myself onto the thin edge and rose with careful balance against the wind’s onslaught.
Damn, I wish I were an air elemental right about now.
The prospect of being thrown to my death didn’t scare me. A part of me longed to be put out of my misery, but I had important shit to accomplish first—starting with saving the little assassin princess against all temptation to snuff out her vibrant life force.
I tight-walked the thin edge of the moving train car, then leaped to the metal box ahead. Dropping into a crouch, I removed my dagger and stabbed it into the metal. I called on my element to weaken the material, making it easier to carve a circular hole large enough to accommodate my frame. Falling through the gap, aluminum clanked against the floor before I dropped in behind it.
I silenced my landing, immediately spotting the unconscious princess sprawled on the makeshift bench against the wall, the pain from the poisoned blade bringing her to the brink of death. My heightened eyesight could see through the darkness enough to spot the ghastly pale hue painting her tanned complexion. Her chest rose and fell in shallow and uneven breaths with a pinched expression of pain on her face.
Kill her.
I squeezed my eyes shut, doing my best to fight the urge to slice open her throat. Gods, it was so strong. Yet, a part of me felt repulsed by the idea. I didn’t know which one was true. I ignored them both and focused on the task at hand.
Reaching into one of my pants pockets, I retrieved a syringe, holding it up to the faint sliver of light streaming in through the hole I’d created above me. The vial was full.
I took measured steps toward the assassin, allowing myself to be guided to her waning life force. Each step brought an emotional strike to my chest, one I felt I should know the cause of, but couldn’t for the life of me remember.
She’s a threat to everything. Must die.
“Shut the fuck up,” I murmured to the quiet darkness as I knelt beside her.
She was beautiful. In a hardened and lethal kind of way, but she had a vulnerability to her that I could tell she worked to hide. A little warrior. Too bad she had to die eventually.
Taking the syringe in my right hand, I brushed aside the stray hair that had fallen loose around her neck. The moment my skin made contact with hers, I was bombarded with…peace. The inner turmoil that raged within me at all hours melted away. The voice silenced. A flashback hit me of a little girl in her school uniform with iced-blonde strands, lying in the fetal position on the playground as all the other kids fled from her.
I gasped, snatching my hand away from her like it was a searing burn. It was a memory I didn’t remember.
What the fuck was that? The normalcy of my fractured mind and soul returned at the loss of contact.
She’s a threat. Kill her! Kill her, now!
No. She was a threat to him, somehow, which piqued my interest in her more. I didn’t trust myself to do something I wouldn’t regret if I sat there and pondered what had just happened. Before I could overthink things, I took the syringe, jammed it into the frenetic vein that clung to life on her neck, and emptied its contents into her bloodstream.
Rocking back on my heels, I shoved the emptied vial into a pocket before rising to my feet, already missing what momentary reprieve I’d experienced. Because now, the affliction was coming back at me tenfold, and I needed to get off the train before I killed my only chance of hope.
I forced myself away from the girl, angling toward the sliding door of the train car. The need to take, take, and take gouged deep cuts into my mind. Pushing it open just enough for me to fit through, I jumped to the gravel below. It was time to hunt for a Kinetic to take from this world while I waited for my next run-in with the princess.