“Preaching to the choir, my friend.”
“The choir isn’t answering my question.”
Aidan watched shadows curl around his feet, wondering about the shadows lacing through his heart.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” he finally said. “I don’t know. Honestly. I think Jeremiah just has the hots for me.”
Lukas laughed, terribly loud for such a small space. Then he winced and went silent. “Sorry. But yeah, okay. I get it.”
“What I don’t get,” Aidan said, “is how the Church managed to hijack all of London. And capture the entire army without a single warning being raised. Even with a civilian coup, you’d think someone would manage to escape.” Aidan paused. “Do you think we could throw a rebellion of our own?”
“Doubtful. The Church has numbers we never expected. And our Guild wasn’t just captured.” His eyes narrowed. “They were killed. There are only a few of us left. The ones who weren’t mauled by the civilians or killed during the uprising have been massacred.”
“But how?” Aidan pressed, almost frantic in his fear. “London was huge. Your army was the biggest on the continent.” And mine was second. “The Church couldn’t have converted that many.”
“They didn’t have to,” Lukas said. He glanced at his wrist, to where his own mark was burned and buried beneath scar tissue and bandages.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m starting to worry that we were wrong all along. That they’re protected by God, and the rest of us are damned.” Lukas’s voice was fragile in the darkness. “It should be impossible. But they’re immune to magic.”
Aidan didn’t think it was possible for his blood to get any colder, but in the light of that revelation, his whole body turned to ice.
Howls were immune to the Sphere they were pulled from. Weapons were immune to magic if consecrated in their user’s magic or blood. But humans didn’t get to be immune to magic. Humans were made of magic. The Spheres weren’t some otherworldly force—they were what drove the body, what fueled it. To be immune to magic was to be...well, inhuman.
“How?” It was the only word he could speak.
“I don’t know,” Lukas said. “They haven’t exactly given me the chance to ask.”
Aidan’s sluggish mind tried to race as panic set in. This changed everything. If the Church was immune to magic, they could take over any Guild with barely a fuss. Sure, Hunters were trained in combat. But magic was what turned the tides of battle. Magic was what ensured you lived to see another fight. Magic was what humanity relied on to survive, even as it caused the world’s downfall.
The tiny candle between them snuffed out.
A few minutes later, the door opened. Jeremiah and his guards entered.
Aidan didn’t even fight when they lifted him up and hauled him away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“How are you immune?” Aidan asked.
He tried to keep his voice steady, tried not to wince as Jeremiah slowly unwrapped the bandages from his arms. Slowly, because the dried blood peeled at his skin, ripped open scabs, and sent fresh streams of blood down his flesh. Made him wince and fight back the darkness. Even the unwrapping was another form of torture.
“By the grace of God,” Jeremiah said. “In His glorious light, not even shadows may seep.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, when you have faith.”
Aidan knew he would get no further. Not when ideas of faith were involved. “But why?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Why did you take over the Guild? I thought we had a treaty. I thought we were on the same side!”
“We were never on the same side.” Jeremiah paused his unwrapping to stare Aidan down. “You made that abundantly clear when you kicked me and my followers from Glasgow. Do you have any idea how many we lost in those early days? How many fell to the darkness? No,” he continued, resuming his work, “we were never on the same side. You may have destroyed Calum, but you have no love for the living. None who use magic can truly value the world they desecrate. Liberation can only be gained by the erasure of your kind. All who use magic must be brought to the light.”
“That’s genocide.”
Jeremiah grunted. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
Jeremiah didn’t give him a chance to question further. He placed a bare hand on Aidan’s arm, right over the brand, and squeezed. Blood trickled between the man’s fingers, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Magic will be banished from the land,” Jeremiah said through Aidan’s scream. “But first, you will find your way to the light. And you will do so by telling me how such darkness entered your heart. The Dark Lady stirs within you. I will know how she got there. I will know how her words became your own.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aidan managed, his words more gasps than anything.
“I think you do,” Jeremiah whispered. He reached into the folds of his cloak, and Aidan flinched back, expecting the worst.
What he hadn’t expected was the onyx shard Jeremiah pulled from his pocket. The same shard as he’d seen in the vision. The shard that Tomás and the Dark Lady both wanted him to find.
Aidan tried to keep his expression calm, stony. But he couldn’t keep his heart from racing with recognition. He hoped Jeremiah didn’t notice the slight increase in surging blood.
Jeremiah held the shard in the glittering firelight. Examining it. And examining Aidan’s reaction.
For his part, Aidan tried to look anywhere but the shard. This close, however, and the crystal felt like a whirlpool. It pulled at his senses and snaked through his thoughts, demanding attention. Demanding worship. He could no more pull back from its power than he could from the siren song of Fire.
Aidan’s eyes were glued to the crystal, to the serpentine coil of silver wrapped around its length and the sigils sketched into the surface, their sharp shapes inlaid with pewter.
Symbols that seethed with power.
And maybe it was his imagination, maybe it was a trick of the candles, but shadows seemed to ooze around the shard, drifting over Jeremiah’s palm like fog, twining to and from the crystal, as though it absorbed and expelled the light. Even the runes seemed to twitch and move, dancing in patterns he could almost understand. In those movements, Aidan heard a whisper. Faint and feminine. The same unearthly hiss as Fire. Consume, devour, destroy. Burn them. Burn them and be mine.
For some reason, that voice filled him with hope.
“Yes,” Jeremiah said, his words fogged. “It calls to you. You cannot deny its pull.”
Aidan blinked. Peeled his gaze away from the shard, which felt like tearing off another layer of skin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your lies are opaque as blood,” Jeremiah said. He turned the shard back and forth in the light, but he wasn’t looking at it—he didn’t stop searching Aidan’s eyes. “What does this speak to you? What does she speak?”
Aidan shook his head. He refused to look at the shard again. He’d already given too much away with his shitty poker face. “It’s a rock. What makes you think it would say anything?”
Jeremiah just smiled, pocketed the shard, and turned toward the table of torture instruments.
Aidan struggled against the bonds. He had to stall. Had to get Jeremiah to talk. To do anything. Anything other than continue the torture Aidan knew awaited him.
“Please—”
That was the only word Aidan could manage through the fear that choked his throat. Fear, and need.
If he could get the shard, he could get out of here. He was so close. So close. But the only thing in his future was pain.
Jeremiah didn’t acknowledge Aidan’s plea. The man’s bloody hand hovered over his tools, their silver dulled with Aidan’s caked blood. Jeremiah’s fingers waved slightl
y as he selected, and he actually hummed to himself, something that sounded less hymnal and more ’80s rock. Sweat dripped down Aidan’s skin despite the chill in the room. Jeremiah enjoyed this. He loved every minute of it. Even this was a part of the torture—the long, drawn out anticipation as Aidan awaited his fate. The knowledge that literally nothing Aidan could do would prevent another session.
“Hmm, yes,” Jeremiah mused. Aidan shrunk at the pleasure in his voice before even seeing the instrument. “Yes, I think this will do quite nicely.”
Jeremiah picked up an object, and the blood drained from Aidan’s limbs.
He struggled against the bonds as Jeremiah stepped over, holding the bloody cheese grater before him like an offering.
“I seem to remember you reacting quite favorably toward this one,” Jeremiah said. He knelt down before Aidan.
“No, please,” Aidan began, but Jeremiah shook his head.
“Begging will get you nowhere, my child. Only repentance. And you will only repent through answers.” He reached out and placed the cold, serrated metal against Aidan’s chest. Right above his nipple. Aidan’s breath burned his throat, quick as a rabbit.
Jeremiah looked positively delighted at the fear in Aidan’s dilated pupils.
“You will scream. But even that is music to our Lord and savior. That is the song of redemption.” He smiled. “When the screaming is over, your secrets will flow freely. We will learn why the Dark Lady seeks you, and through our work, we will free you from her clutches.
“So sing for me, my son, and let your sins burst free like blood.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Aidan didn’t last nearly as long the second round.
He came to with a jolt, breaking from blissful unconsciousness to his waking nightmare. His breath was hot and frantic as he waited for the next cut, the next burn, the next scrape. It didn’t come. The room was silent. He looked around. No one. His wounds were freshly wrapped, blood seething through cotton in Rorschach-like clots, stains of sins he hadn’t known he’d committed. Not that the wrappings did anything to numb the pain that settled on his skin like shards of ice. Every breath shifted the cloth, made wounds sting and burn. Every pulse of blood felt like another day of life lost.
And after Jeremiah’s session, Aidan had definitely lost a great deal of both.
Aidan was proud of himself, though—he hadn’t broken. He’d spent the entire session with his teeth gritted and blood dripping from his lips and wounds, but he hadn’t said a word. Not about himself, or the Guild, or the shard.
Neither of them had gotten any answers, and Aidan knew Jeremiah was far from finished with him. So he sat in the silence and waited for the worst.
Was this another form of torture? Was Jeremiah behind him, waiting to literally stab him in the back? Aidan tried to turn, tried to see, but he couldn’t move an inch. The bonds were tight enough that he couldn’t feel his extremities.
That’s when he realized Jeremiah had left something behind.
There, right on the table in front of him, was the shard. Glinting amid the torture instruments, a fragment of black in a pool of blood.
Aidan tried to check the room. Not that he could move. So he closed his eyes. Went as still as possible, calming his breathing until he could hear every beat of his reluctant heart. He tried to convince himself he could hear that the room was empty, that he wasn’t being watched.
Once he was certain, or hoped he could be certain, he struggled. He clenched his teeth and tried to pull his arms from the leather straps. Tried to shift his weight, to topple the chair over. And even—desperately—tried to open to Fire. It felt like grasping for a ghost in the dark—vain and terrible, knowing it was there, haunting him, and forever out of his reach.
Nothing worked. Not that he expected anything else. Hope was a dangerous thing.
He didn’t know why he had to get the shard. Only that Tomás wanted it, that the Dark Lady needed it, that it would grant him power and supposedly bring his parents back, and maybe then he could get Fire back, as well. And maybe, when he got the shard, Tomás would appear and pull him out of this hell. Maybe this was all some elaborate, sadistic test, and Aidan just had to prove he could pass. Tears welled in his eyes from his wounds. Pain, and the frustration of being so close. So close to getting the fuck out of here. So close to getting it all back.
He couldn’t entertain the other possibilities, even though they gnawed at him. And without Fire to burn away the worries like pests, their voices grew louder as his struggle grew more fruitless.
What if, now that Aidan could no longer use magic, Tomás would have no use for him?
What if the shard would do nothing?
And then, the thought he’d been pushing away since that morning: What if Tomás had played him, sending him into the Inquisition’s clutches just to be done with him?
The thought took hold, and he stopped struggling.
He’d thought he was the one playing Tomás. Thought he’d been in control. But here he was, broken and beaten, as far from power as he’d ever been, and Tomás was nowhere to be seen. He had failed. Just as he had failed his mother. Just as he’d failed his friends. Just as he’d failed Trevor, the one man on this island who cared enough to look past Aidan’s faults—Trevor had loved him, and Aidan had failed him by giving in to his own primal need to win.
He couldn’t help it. Despite himself, he began to cry.
Big, fat tears filled his eyes, blurring the room and the torture instruments and the shard, dripping to mingle with his blood.
He didn’t know how long he sobbed. Didn’t care. He couldn’t hear anything else over his burning cries, over the constant voices in his head, telling him he had failed.
He had failed, and he had pulled so many others down with him.
He had killed Trevor for power.
He had killed Vincent in cold blood.
He had killed countless others under his command, solely by leading them into the battlefield.
And he had killed his mother by coming here.
“Oh, God,” he sobbed, his heart drowning under images of his mother succumbing to the Howls.
“Your God is not here,” came a voice.
A finger against his cheek. Wiping his tears away. Before him, silhouetted in the flickering candles...
“But your mother answers.”
Aidan gasped another sob. There was no way. It couldn’t be—
“Mom?”
And it was her. Kneeling before him. The same brown eyes filled with warmth. The same loving smile. The long black hair, the full cheeks. She glowed in the dim light. Radiant.
Alive.
“It’s me, Aidan.” She smiled wider. “It’s really me.”
“Impossible,” Aidan said. But her hand was on his knee, and her touch was firm. Warm. Soothing. “You’re—”
“Dead?” Her smile twitched, and there was a flicker in her eyes. A darkness. “What is death, when you could control life?”
“No,” Aidan grunted. The panic was back, stronger now, worse than anything Jeremiah could conjure. “No, this isn’t real. You aren’t real.”
The facade slid, her features shifting like shadows from one moment to the next. Dark hair bleaching blonde, clothing melding black and sinuous.
“I am very real,” the Dark Lady said. “And you are so, so close to bringing her back. I gave you my word. Now you must deliver on yours.”
“I’m not serving you,” he said. It was the last fragment of self-respect he had, the last sliver of humanity. “You’re evil. You did this...all of this.”
The Dark Lady shook her head slowly.
“I never took you for one to believe solely because others tell you to. Look around, my child. You are tortured by those who say they are righteous. I have done nothing but aid you, just as Tomás has lent his hand.”
She leaned in closer, and when she spoke, there was true sadness in her voice.
“I am not evil, Aidan. I never created monsters. I created gods. Just as I have created you. It was mankind itself that turned them evil, that painted them as villains and demons. I sought only the secret to life. And these people, this Church, gave us only death.”
He hated himself for believing her. Hated that when she touched the side of his face, he didn’t flinch away. If anything, he wanted to lean in.
“I will give you everything your heart desires. I will set you free.”
Aidan knew the answer he was supposed to give. He should push her away. Deny her. See through what had to be lies. He was a trained Hunter. Sure, in dreams he had been coerced into believing he would help, believing she could work miracles.
But this wasn’t a dream. The Dark Lady was here, in the room with him, even though she was dead, even though this was the heart of the Church. She was here, and she was the reason his mother had died, the reason this hell had broken loose in the first place. He had been trained to kill her. To resist her.
Yet he knew in the pit of his soul that she would deliver on her promise. He knew she was telling the truth. About everything.
“What...what do you need me to do?” he asked.
She smiled and stood, and in that sweeping motion she transformed, the shade of his mother once more.
“I knew I could count on you, baby,” she said. His mother’s voice. It was his mother’s voice. He didn’t realize just how much he’d missed hearing it.
Just how much he’d give up to hear it again. A cry bubbled up in the back of his throat. He could hear her again.
She stepped over to the table. To the shard.
“These men have stolen so much from me,” she murmured. “From us. From our families.” She looked at Aidan. “They tore us apart. It was never my desire to create this hell. I wanted only to make Eden. A world where death was not the end, but a transition. One that could be postponed. Or reversed.” Her fingers hovered over the shard, so close, yet not touching. “They ended my work. But with your help... I could resume it.”
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