His silence must have said enough.
“Did you really do it?” Lukas asked.
“What?” Aidan replied, trying to keep his words steady. He hated that he was shaking. Hated that he could be scared. Hated that without Fire, he was nothing. Nothing. He’d always been nothing.
“Defeat Calum.”
“Aye,” Aidan replied. “I did.”
“What was it like?” Lukas asked. His words were soft and heavy with excitement.
For a moment, Aidan considered telling the truth. The full truth. After all, he might as well start practicing his confessions now. Why not admit that he’d stormed into the castle to see Calum pinned to the wall? That he had only won because another Kin had come in to do most of the dirty work? That that very Kin was the only reason Aidan had pushed to come down here? He considered sharing every dark secret of his soul, and without Fire to tell him otherwise, he nearly did.
His soul was a very dark place.
Instead, he grunted, “Not what I thought it would be. Do you have any idea how many Church members there are?”
“No idea. We never counted.” Lukas paused. Sighed. “Not that it matters, really. All it takes is a few of them to get into the people’s heads, and you have a whole new Sept. Their faith is a plague.”
Aidan felt it then—that note of anger, of rage. Not over being trapped, but over how easily the very people he’d liberated had turned against him.
“Shit,” Lukas said, and that’s when Aidan heard it: a shuffle outside the door, the thud of footsteps.
Aidan had just enough time to get to his feet before the door opened. Warm light poured in, flickering and orange, and just the sight of a flame made Aidan’s chest ache. He stumbled and reached out, steadied himself on the wall.
So much for not looking weak in front of the enemy.
There were three of them. Two maybe in their twenties, with shaved heads and strange angular tattoos on their scalps. The third, the man in the middle holding the lantern, was Brother Jeremiah.
Aidan found himself flinching at the memory of hot metal on his skin, at the sensation of emptiness when everything else consumed. “You,” he whispered to the man who had done this to him.
Old Aidan would have leaped forward and wrung Jeremiah’s neck with his bare hands. No matter the guards holding clubbed staves. He would have gone down fighting. Rather, he wouldn’t have gone down at all. Now it was all he could do to keep upright. To stare the bastard in the eyes rather than cower like he wanted.
“Me, indeed,” the man said. He smiled and bowed graciously, acting all the world like he was entertaining a guest and not holding him prisoner.
“It is good to see you again, Aidan.” Even though the man sounded like a grandfather, blood laced through his words. “Ever since we were forcefully removed from our home, I have prayed that we would cross paths once more. It seems my prayers have been answered. I hope you slept well on your journey; we have a great deal of work at hand. The road to salvation is long and arduous, especially for one such as you. But tonight is a night for rejoicing. For here, you are found. And with our help, we will guide you from the darkness, back into the heart of the light.” His smile made Aidan’s blood run even colder. “Let us begin.”
He gestured to the guards. They grabbed Aidan by the arms, yanking him out the door and into the hall. He didn’t even have the strength to fight. Especially when one of them grasped his burnt forearm. Aidan bit back a scream and tasted blood. They shoved him out. Jeremiah locked the door behind him.
Aidan knew Lukas’s expression all too well.
He didn’t expect Aidan to return.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You can’t do this.”
Aidan’s words echoed in the too-empty room. Too empty, too white, too sterile. Maybe this place had once been an office. No longer. Candles dripped like blood from the shelves, casting flickering light over the laminate table and the silver tools glittering there.
The table dripped, too, but not like blood. With blood. A thick, heavy sap staining the tiles at Aidan’s feet.
Not all of it his.
Aidan’s head swam as he tried vainly to stay awake. Conscious. He’d given up struggling against the ropes holding him to the chair long ago.
“It is my charge, my son,” Jeremiah said sagely. “I must cleanse the world of evil. I must cleanse you of evil, and to do that, you must pay for your sins in blood.”
He paced back and forth before Aidan’s chair, scalpel loose in one hand, his fingers tipped crimson.
“I didn’t realize your God condoned torture.”
Aidan couldn’t tell if the warm liquid dribbling from his lips was saliva or blood. What did it matter? The guards had punched him a few times to get him to settle down; Jeremiah’s touch was far less blunt, but all the more painful for its precision.
Now, the guards were gone. Just him and Jeremiah and all of Jeremiah’s toys and a dozen candles reminding him of the power no longer his to control. The power that had, in a way, been the cause of all this pain.
“This is not torture. This is salvation. You may be free of magic, but it will take conviction and strength to bleed the last remnants of the Dark Lady’s sin from your soul.”
For a moment, Aidan tore his eyes away from Jeremiah, focusing instead on the welt covering his Hunter’s mark. A cross in a circle, its points crossed by arcing lines. It scrawled red and raw over the looping circles and sigils of his tattoo. Breaking it. Disconnecting him from something that should have been as close to him as breathing.
A sob caught in the back of his throat. No matter what Jeremiah did to his body, he’d already done the worst thing possible.
Aidan couldn’t even find the rage to hate the man for taking Fire away.
Jeremiah stepped closer then. And when he gently pressed his thumb to the scar, Aidan cried out as lightning burned his vision white.
“What I could do and have done to your physical body is nothing compared to what awaits you in the afterlife,” he said through Aidan’s pain. “I am saving you, my son. Magic has brought Hell to this earth. In renouncing magic, you give in to divine mercy. In bleeding out your sins, you prove your love to our God. Only there will you find mercy. Only in His embrace will you find forgiveness for all you have done. For all the sin you brought into our world.”
Jeremiah let go of Aidan’s forearm; the pain subsided and the room inked back into focus.
“I don’t believe in God,” Aidan managed. He’d been raised atheist, and if anything, the last few years had taught him that the gods—if they were real—didn’t give a damn about humanity. No caring god would have let the Resurrection happen.
“God is very real,” Jeremiah said. “As are the many false idols who oppose him. One of whom, I believe, has chosen you to bring her shadow into the light.”
“What are you talking about?”
Aidan’s head lolled. Yep. Definitely blood trickling from his lips.
“The Dark Lady works through you,” Jeremiah whispered. “She has chosen you, Aidan Belmont. She has chosen you, but you are not past saving. Not yet.”
Truth echoed in Jeremiah’s words, a fear whispered into life.
The Dark Lady had chosen him.
Did Jeremiah know? Or was this his usual tirade?
That was as far as Aidan’s thoughts could go. The further he pressed them, the further they contracted, sinking back to the sensation he would never voice.
Jeremiah was right.
Jeremiah was wrong.
The Dark Lady had chosen him. He had sinned. Gladly.
And even if he believed in the Church or a God, he knew in the pit of his bloodied heart that no amount of pain or repenting would ever save his soul.
“I have waited a long time for you to fall into our care, Aidan Belmont. We have followed you fo
r years, and we know what you have done.” Calum’s throne room flashed through Aidan’s mind, the throne and the blood and the burn of his comrades, the screams and the fear in Trevor’s eyes. The sins racking up, one by one. “You’ve tasted her power. You’ve heard her words. She speaks to you, doesn’t she?”
Aidan didn’t answer, but the stutter in his heart spoke the truth. How does he know?
“This is why you are here, my child. You serve a greater purpose than those around you. If the Dark Lady speaks to you, through you, then perhaps, by purifying her from your veins, we may find her source. We may find a way to purify our entire world.”
“You’re mental,” Aidan said. Coughed blood. How does he know?
How does he know?
If Jeremiah was right about the Dark Lady, what if he was right about the rest? The damnation and sin and... Get a hold of yourself!
“If you want to know about the Dark Lady,” Aidan managed, forcing the fear away, “why not interrogate a necromancer?”
Jeremiah smiled.
“Because she hasn’t spoken to them since the Resurrection. Not since she was killed by our illustrious order. Even her followers thought her dead. Until you came along. You have heard her voice. Of all people in the world, you are the one she has chosen to continue her work. It is my charge to discover why you are her conduit, and how to end her for good.”
“She is dead.”
It had to be true. She couldn’t be speaking to him. He couldn’t be chosen for anything, let alone this.
“Evil never dies. It merely changes form. And now, it seems, it has chosen you.”
“I liberated Scotland. I can’t be evil. I can’t be hers.”
“You liberated Scotland with magic,” Jeremiah said. “And with her orders simmering in your veins, those victories were never for the glory of God. You are not an altruistic man, Aidan Belmont. Pride, perhaps, is your greatest sin of all.”
He placed his free hand on Aidan’s forehead, as though blessing him. Or preparing to drown him.
“The road to salvation is long and fraught with terrors,” he said. “It is not with pleasure that I wield these tools against you. But it is God’s will. And I am but a pawn. Together, we will learn why the Dark Lady has placed her mark upon you. Together, we will walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps, if your soul is strong, and your heart pure, you will reach salvation on the other side. After all, my own road was long and shadowed, but I endured. It is only fitting you pass the same test.”
Jeremiah smiled. Aidan’s heart stopped in that gaze. Whatever charade of righteousness Jeremiah paraded under vanished. He wasn’t a pawn of some benevolent God. He was a maniac hell-bent on revenge.
The trouble was, he seemed to be right. The Dark Lady had chosen Aidan. She’d spoken to him. Commanded him. And he’d agreed without question. He’d convinced himself it was so he could get his family back. So he could see his mother again. So he could make everything right. When that was done, he’d defy the Dark Lady and punish her for causing this hell.
But without Fire burning away his doubts, he knew the truth.
He’d agreed to help her because he wanted to rule, no matter the cost.
Jeremiah’s blade dug a channel through Aidan’s arm, and as his world went red, as the room filled with Aidan’s screams, Aidan knew no amount of repenting would save him.
Not when the Dark Lady had already taken him as her own.
No matter the reason, his soul was hers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Aidan woke with a slap across his face. It wasn’t the pain that woke him, but the jolt.
Every inch of him hurt, a dull, throbbing ache that stretched from his toes to his fingertips. Jeremiah hadn’t been stingy in his methods; he’d used every instrument at his disposal. Multiple times. Aidan quickly learned that Jeremiah wasn’t interested in a confession. At least, not right away.
Aidan couldn’t have spoken through his screams if his life depended on it.
Apparently, tonight, it hadn’t. He was still alive, but that didn’t mean he was grateful for it.
He’d blacked out halfway through round two of an awl jammed beneath his fingernail. He had never read it, but he was pretty certain that wasn’t in the Bible.
“Hey,” came a voice in the flickering dark. Thankfully not Jeremiah’s. “Are you alive?”
Aidan groaned. It was about the only response he could muster.
“Good,” Lukas said. “I didn’t want to share a cell with a corpse.”
Slowly, the room came into view, the space lit by a single tiny candle. Aidan blinked multiple times, tried to force down the nausea rising in his throat, tried to ignore the frozen emptiness of his chest. For a moment, he thought he was in a hall of mirrors. The walls were crystalline smooth, carved by magic and glimmering wetly in the candlelight, reflecting the flame a thousand-fold.
The moment he saw that flame, he ached for the warmth that had always been a part of him. The assurance. The strength. He barely even registered the rest of the room. It was a holding cell, clearly, similar to the ones they’d constructed in Glasgow—tiny, with two small cots and a chamber pot in the corner.
A definitively full chamber pot.
Lukas sat on the bed beside him, his pale face lined with worry and his red hair sparking like fire in the light.
Aidan pushed himself to sitting. Or tried. The moment he shifted weight, a new glittering wave of pain crashed over him, sending him back to the hard bed. His eyes fluttered as darkness pulled at his many raw and bloody edges.
“Hey, no, no.” Lukas put a hand on Aidan’s shoulder. Patted the side of his face. “Stay with me.”
Lukas’s face swam. Blurred. Tomás?
“What...” Aidan managed. His mouth tasted like blood and his jaw hurt. He ran his tongue over his teeth, over the lip ring Jeremiah had nearly ripped out. Another tooth was chipped. Kianna would shit herself laughing if she knew he’d broken another one.
The thought made him laugh, which made him wince, and a moment later he was sobbing for the second time in front of this stranger, every convulsion making him hurt more and cry harder. And through that pain was a single, terrible question: Was Kianna even alive?
Lukas didn’t say anything, nor did he retreat. His hand stayed on Aidan’s shoulder as Aidan tried to get himself under control. Everything hurt. Inside and out. And when he instinctually tried to open to Fire to burn the weakness and pain away, he gasped. The pain of absence struck him like a hammer, a blow to the ribs. He curled in on himself, felt more shudders trace down his body. Heard, at the very edges of his consciousness, his mother screaming his name.
No, no. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t look back.
He took a deep breath. Forced the blood and the screams back into the shadows where they belonged. Even there, he could still hear the cries echoing in his own hurt.
“Sorry,” Aidan eventually managed. He forced his eyes open, forced the memory away. He coughed. Red splattered across the sheets.
“Don’t apologize,” Lukas said. “You were just tortured half to death. I think you’re allowed a breakdown or two.”
Aidan tried to sit up again, slower this time, and Lukas helped guide him. His help didn’t lessen the pain. If anything, it made him want to scream in frustration. He wasn’t supposed to feel this hurt. This mortal.
The moment he was up, another shudder wracked him, this time from cold, and Lukas pulled a blanket over Aidan’s shoulders. The harsh wool scratched Aidan’s skin, and it was then he remembered he was shirtless. Jeremiah hadn’t kept his torture to Aidan’s limbs. Nowhere had been safe.
Nowhere had been sacred.
Lukas didn’t shuffle away, just sat there, so close Aidan could practically feel his heat. Gods, he wished he could truly feel heat.
“Why are you being nice to m
e?” Aidan asked. It wasn’t the most pressing question in his mind, but it was the one that escaped his lips. He hated it. He sounded pathetic.
“Because I’d like to think you’d do the same if roles were reversed.” Lukas raised an eyebrow. He had a sharp, aquiline face, almost statuesque, though that arched eyebrow was adorably expressive. “Your silence is making me think otherwise.”
Aidan swallowed the blood pooling in his mouth and wondered when he’d bitten his tongue, and how much blood he could ingest before vomiting. Or passing out. He didn’t think it was much for the first. He’d already thrown up a few times under Jeremiah’s care.
“Aye,” Aidan muttered. “I’m not known for being nice.”
“I gathered.” Still, he lingered at Aidan’s side. Aidan refused to admit it was comforting. It was just the warmth. The only real warmth in this frozen room. He wanted to draw it closer, but he refused to lean in. Refused to let himself need Lukas’s embrace. Even if he desperately wanted it. Even if the empty cavity within froze worse than ice. He would use the candle to set himself on fire first.
“He’s like that with everyone,” Lukas continued. He pulled back the sleeves of his sweater. Bandages wrapped every inch of his flesh, stained with old blood. “Jeremiah’s a bit of a dick.”
“A bit,” Aidan said with a small laugh.
“At least you’re still alive.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
Lukas hesitated. “It is. Trust me.”
He shifted and reached under the bed, pulling out something that Aidan prayed wasn’t another chamber pot. He was in luck. It was a tray with a covered bowl and a chunk of bread.
At least, he hoped he was in luck. There was no promising the bowl wasn’t filled with excrement.
“They brought us dinner,” Lukas said. He leaned over to set the tray on Aidan’s side. Normally, Aidan would have made some quip about the guy bending over him, but as broken as he was and without Fire’s urgings, all thoughts of sex fell flat.
“Delightful.” Eating was the last thing on his mind, right after sex and anything remotely pleasurable.
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