“Save it,” Kianna interrupted. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What?” Aidan must have lost too much blood. Or been dreaming.
“Get up. We don’t have much time. The guard’s changing soon.”
“How—”
Kianna stalked over and yanked Aidan to standing. He winced at the pain. “Do you really want to have this conversation here? I’m saving our asses. Now move.” She shoved him toward the door and he stumbled, fumbling for the doorknob before realizing he was using the hand missing two fingers. He grabbed it with the other.
“I’m coming with,” Lukas said from behind them. “Please.”
Kianna snarled. “If I knew you had a cell mate...” she said, glaring at Aidan.
“You can’t leave me behind,” Lukas whispered. Almost a plea.
Kianna elbowed past Aidan, yanked open the door. “I don’t give a shit. I’m leaving. You can follow if you want. But it’s every man for himself and I swear to Christ, if you give us away or lag behind, I’ll kill you myself.”
She pulled open the door and crept through the crack. Aidan didn’t hesitate or look back, groggy as he was. His body was on fire with pain and determination, adrenaline coursing through his veins.
He nearly tripped on the body just outside the door. All it took was a glance at the head facing the entirely wrong direction to tell that the guard was dead.
“How did you get out?” Aidan whispered.
“Feminine wiles,” Kianna said flatly. Knowing her, that probably meant slamming the door into her guard’s face when meals were delivered, or something equally pleasant. He didn’t bother to question further.
Lukas followed close behind, their collective footsteps silent in the long hall. For being a prison, the place wasn’t heavily guarded. Then again, with the Church in control, there probably didn’t seem to be much need for guards down here.
Kianna led them onward, stopped at a flight of stairs. She looked up through the shadows, her candle flickering against the stairwell as she peered up into the darkness. Listening.
“Clear,” she whispered. “Come on.”
Aidan no longer wondered how she knew things like that. He just assumed it was another superpower.
They crept up the stairs, and with every step Aidan expected to be ambushed. He expected Kianna to get turned around. He sort of recognized where they were, but he would have no chance at finding his way out. She, it seemed, was better at paying attention. In a matter of minutes, Kianna peered through a cracked door, slowly opened it and slipped outside.
Aidan followed into the cool night air, the scent of cinder and flesh heavy in his nostrils. They were in the square, and the charred remains of his comrades still glowed warm and red like a wound in the night before them. He blanched at the sight, but Kianna didn’t give them a moment to stare. She darted along the side of the building, keeping to the shadows.
Every step they took, he felt the excitement of escape. And yet...something nagged at him, and he didn’t want to admit what it was.
He didn’t want to leave here without the shard.
He didn’t want to let Tomás down.
No, it wasn’t that—he didn’t want to give up. If the shard was the only thing standing between him and power, he couldn’t just walk away. And yet here he was, running with his tail between his legs, following Kianna through the dark.
It wasn’t until they were a few blocks away, far from the sprawling compound that had become his prison, that he stopped.
“I can’t.”
His words made her turn back. “What do you mean, can’t? You about to pass out or something?”
“No.” He couldn’t find the words. Not without admitting more than he wanted to. “There’s something I still have to do.”
“You’re delusional,” she said, and kept walking.
“No.” He didn’t move, and Lukas stood between the two of them, uncertain.
“What the hell are you talking about, Aidan? We aren’t in the clear yet.” She gestured out to the warren of tangled streets. “The Guild wall is that way. Still at least two kilometers off. We can’t stop until we’re past it. And not even then.”
Aidan took a step back. “You go. Take him.”
“Aidan, I’m not—”
“I said go!” he yelled, far louder than he meant. He lowered his voice. “I have to end this, Kianna. I can’t just run away.”
“You’re wounded, Aidan. You aren’t going to end anything.”
“Please,” he said. “Trust me. I have to go back. You heard what he said.”
She ground her teeth. Hands balled into fists. He knew the thoughts warring in her mind: she had just risked her own escape to get him out of there. But she knew he had been lying earlier. Knew he had something up his sleeve. And she knew exactly what he meant—Jeremiah had said that Aidan worked for the Dark Lady, had become her voice. She probably thought he was going in on a kamikaze mission. She was probably right.
“I’m not waiting around,” she said.
“I don’t want you to,” he replied. He nodded to Lukas. “Take him. Get out of here. I’ll come find you. Promise.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
Then he turned and hobbled his way back into the heart of the Church.
* * *
Aidan knew time was short. Kianna had killed the guards near their cells, and it wouldn’t take long for the guard to change and the alarm to be raised. Worse, he only vaguely remembered his way back to Jeremiah’s torture chamber.
But deep within, he felt the whisper.
Every time he thought of the shard, every time he envisioned the image of his mother, he felt the pull forward. He had to trust it, even though it was the last thing on this earth he should put faith in.
He snuck past the smoldering pyres, pausing only briefly to stare at the remains of his comrades, to feel that sick twist of doubt in his gut. Everything he had touched, he had broken.
This was his final chance to make it right.
At least...to make it right for himself.
He made his way back through the halls of the old Guild, following his gut and praying he could find his way in. Back to the one place he didn’t want to step foot in. He crept through the hallways, following the tug and his own scattered memories, praying to whatever god listening that he wouldn’t end up at Jeremiah’s bedchamber or something.
Moments later, he found it.
He could smell the blood, just as he could feel the tug in his gut that told him this was the correct door. The tug, and the fear, as though the place were a wound throbbing in the darkness. As though he had left more than a few digits and pints of blood here. As though his soul, his destiny, waited within.
Inside, the torture chamber was exactly as they’d left it.
The tables set out with their bloody instruments. The twin chairs, splattered with gore. His finger nubs, cast on the floor like rune stones. Candles flickering against the blood even now.
But no shard.
Aidan let the door click faintly behind him. Had he been mistaken? Had Jeremiah taken the shard? He stepped deeper in the room, staring at the tables, wondering if perhaps it had been hidden in the blood, or dropped on the ground...
“Looking for something?” Jeremiah asked.
Aidan jerked up as, from the shadows, Jeremiah stepped forward. He was smiling. Aidan looked around, but there was no one else in the room. Just him and this old man. An old man who shouldn’t have been a threat to someone trained in combat, but who still made Aidan freeze.
“How long have you been waiting?” Aidan asked. He tried to keep his voice steady, but every time he looked at Jeremiah, he felt the memory of another torture instrument graze across his skin.
“Since I learned you and your frien
d escaped. Frankly, I’m amazed it took you so long to get out. I would have thought lessening the guard would have been enough.”
Aidan’s head spun. “You lowered the guard?”
Jeremiah shrugged, stepping further into the room. Aidan stepped back. Thoughts weren’t coalescing as they should. “I wanted to see what you would do. And I wanted to ensure that I had gotten it right. That you truly were in the Dark Lady’s fold.”
“This was a trap.” Aidan’s heart fell. A trap to ensure his guilt, a trap to see if he would come back for the stone he swore he had no affinity to. And he’d fallen in headfirst.
“Not a trap,” Jeremiah said. “A test. To see if you were truly the one destined for this.”
He held out his hand and unfolded his fingers. The shard glinted within.
“I don’t understand,” Aidan said. “Why—”
“Because, my brother,” Jeremiah said. His lips twisted into a smile. “Our Lady works in mysterious ways.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Jeremiah’s smile deepened at the shock on Aidan’s face.
“What?” Jeremiah asked. “Did you truly believe she wouldn’t have eyes within the Church? There are many within the heart of the Light that follow her ways. The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow. We are everywhere, Aidan. As she is everywhere.”
“But why?” His thoughts spun. Jeremiah worked for the Dark Lady. Jeremiah was of the Church. How was it possible?
And if Jeremiah were truly working for the Dark Lady...why had he tortured Aidan?
Why had Jeremiah forced him to kill his own comrades?
“Because I do not hear her as clearly as you, Aidan.” Jeremiah took another step forward. Aidan pressed back against the door. “Because I needed to be sure that you were the one to whom she spoke.” His eyes sparkled in the firelight, fervent. Fearsome. “The shard holds great power, my brother. The power to peel back the barrier between life and death, to rewrite all the wrongs of history. But only to the one who can read her words, who can understand the hidden language. Don’t you see? We have been awaiting her return since the Church took her from us. Awaiting the herald of her resurrection. We have been waiting for you, Aidan. The boy who could hear her voice and read her words. The boy who could speak them anew, and complete the work that she herself never finished.
“I had to make sure that you were the one. And you are. You are.”
“But my comrades. The Guild...”
“Mean nothing. Their deaths are the first of many offerings made at your altar.”
“You tortured me. You took my magic,” Aidan said. His thoughts were still slow. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening.
“I tortured your body to ensure you were fit for her power. And you have succeeded, my brother. What you know as magic is a candle compared to the sun. When you embrace her teachings, the power you know will be beyond measure. A god, Aidan. You will be a god. And the world will tremble at your feet.”
He pressed his palm to the top of Aidan’s head. As if blessing him.
“When you open to her teachings, the final Sphere will open itself to you. And when Maya is yours to control, the power you’ve known will pale in comparison.”
“Maya?” Aidan breathed. The fifth Sphere. The one that couldn’t be attuned to. The one that chose you. The one that—so far—had never truly been tapped.
Jeremiah nodded. “The Sphere that has eluded mankind’s grasp from the beginning. The power to control the very fabric of Creation.”
He took Aidan’s hand—the one with all its fingers. Gently. As though he hadn’t spent the last forty-eight hours torturing him. As though he cared more deeply for Aidan than anyone ever had. He dropped the shard into Aidan’s palm.
“She summons you. And none can deny that call. Embrace it. Open to it. And you will know power beyond your wildest dreams.” Jeremiah closed Aidan’s fingers around the shard.
A thousand emotions warred within Aidan. A thousand questions. But one thing resonated stronger than ever before.
This was not how it was supposed to go.
Just like with Calum, the moment felt stolen from him.
He hadn’t come back to reason with Jeremiah. He had come to steal the shard and kill those who wronged him. To feel like he was on the winning side. To feel power. To feel vengeance. To feel he was taking his place in history.
Not to feel like greatness was handed to him.
His fingers tightened around the shard. It burned under his touch, and now that it was here, in his palm, he felt it whispering to him. He felt the tug in his chest and a sensation he had thought he would never feel again.
Rage.
It burned within him, seeming to emanate from the shard itself. As if it contained more than power. As if it contained every ounce of hatred locked within this accursed place. He shook.
“Fuck you,” he whispered. The words ripped from his lips, and he wasn’t sure who he was angry at. Jeremiah, for the torture. The Dark Lady, for the lies. Tomás, for the trap. He felt like he’d been led by the nose, through the dark, and he was tired of it. Tired of playing other people’s games. Tired of being a pawn.
He looked to the shard in his hand. To the runes that whispered through his mind.
Some, he knew, were for resurrection. He felt them twining through his brain, hissing of the power of the open grave, the overturned casket, the dead spark brought back to life. Just as he’d seen in the vision of Calum. They could be used to pull back a soul from death. And even as he stared at them, at the shifting, jagged edges of the runes, he knew they were imperfect.
Jeremiah had been truthful in that, at least: the language of the Dark Lady, the words of the dead gods, hadn’t been completed. He didn’t know how he knew, only that they whispered to the deepest corners of his soul. The words were wrong.
The words were wrong, and he knew how to fix them.
He knew the shard was for more than bringing back the dead. The shard was for storing power. He could feel the echo of Calum’s flame within it. The shard had ripped out the last of Calum’s magic just as it had brought his soul back to life.
Stored it. The magic, not the soul.
And that magic, that fire, sat in his palm, begging to be released. It vibrated deep within, a flame at the heart of the void, and he knew the words that kept it locked away. Knew the words that were the key. Words to release the power. To set the world ablaze.
Words he knew that no one—not even the Dark Lady—had ever spoken.
Now, they were his.
“I’m not your brother,” Aidan said, glaring at Jeremiah. He didn’t know where the anger came from anymore. He had thought all rage had been beaten from him. Perhaps it came from deeper within. Perhaps it came from the stone. He didn’t care. All he knew was, he was done being toyed with.
Screw bringing the shard to Tomás. Screw bringing it to the Dark Lady. He was done serving. He was done kneeling.
He was done being anything less than King.
Behind him, the candles flared. “And I sure as hell don’t serve the Dark Lady. I serve myself.”
Now, it was Aidan’s turn to step forward, and Jeremiah’s to cower back. Tendrils of fire flickered from his fist, oozing from the stone and his fingertips. Flames coiled around his forearm like serpents, illuminating the raw wound of Jeremiah’s brand, the scrapes and bruises and slices from Jeremiah’s instruments. Reminders of what this man had done to him. What he’d done to others. What he’d made Aidan do. “You made me kill my comrades. You tortured me. Worse. You tortured my friend. And you made me watch.”
“She means nothing,” Jeremiah began.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Aidan cut in. “She means everything.”
The candles were torches now, the scent of burning blood thick in his nostrils.
“You must con
tain yourself,” Jeremiah said. “If you attack the Church, you will be forever hunted. You cannot complete her work if you are dead.”
“I don’t plan on dying.” He took another step. “And I’m not here to hide. Didn’t you know? I am here to rule. And I will start by bringing you and your bloody Church to its knees.”
Aidan didn’t speak. He reached through the shard and whispered the words that flickered in the shadows of his mind, words that went beyond language, that were more sensations than sounds. Words of power. Of release.
Of destruction.
The shard grew white-hot, searing his palm, flaring between his fingers, BURN highlighting in a promise. Liquid dripped between his knuckles. For a moment, he thought it was blood. Then he realized the shard itself was melting. Power seeped into him. A power so great his limbs shuddered. A power so great that even his starved Sphere filled past the brim.
Power flooded him.
Filled him.
A flame he held tight in his chest. A flame he couldn’t hold for long.
He glared at Jeremiah, fire sparking in his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Jeremiah fumbled backward in fear. Smashed into the table of torture instruments. They clattered to the ground, ringing like church bells.
“I’m accepting my destiny,” Aidan said. He smiled, and fire curled from the cracks his teeth. “I hope your faith is true, Jeremiah. Your Creator awaits.”
The words weren’t his. The words were never his.
Fire burned through him. Charred through his veins. Burned through his soul. Calum’s fire. Aidan’s fire. And a power even deeper, a strength even darker. Her power. The fire of hatred that burned so brightly on this godforsaken earth. The rage that coiled deep within the soil for every sin committed, for every treason, for every ache.
And oh, how that fire yearned to be released.
Flames flickered around Aidan. Swirled deep within his chest.
The fire wanted a voice. And now, it had one.
He opened his mouth. Opened his palms. Let the remains of the shard melt silver and black across his bloody palm. Let the Fire consume him.
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