She jerked up. Distantly, he heard footsteps down the hall.
“There is so much to teach you, but we don’t have time. We will though, baby. I promise. Just keep fighting. For me. For us.”
“The shard—”
“Is just the beginning,” she said. “Bring it to Tomás. He needs it. We need it.”
Then, before he could ask anything else, the door opened and his mother vanished in shadow.
Three figures stepped before him. Jeremiah. And the two guards from yesterday.
Aidan could barely focus on them. Had that just happened? Was that my mother’s ghost? The Dark Lady?
“I’m afraid we must change tactics, my son,” Jeremiah said. He walked to the table and pocketed the shard as though it were nothing. Just a stone. A rock. When Aidan was beginning to realize it was so much more. “You have proven that physical pain is not enough to break you. And so...” He gestured to the guards. They moved to Aidan’s sides, undoing the straps binding him to the chair and then hauling him roughly to his feet.
Their hands on his wounds nearly made him black out again.
“What are you going to do to me?” Aidan gasped through the pain.
“Not to you, my son,” Jeremiah said. “Not quite. Just remember...this—all of this—is by your hand.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Aidan tried to keep track of the hallways they trudged through, if only to help him try to escape later. Church members in black and violet robes walked with hoods drawn and faces down. Weapons and furniture lined the walls, as if every single room had been emptied, renovated. Aidan could only wonder if each of those rooms had been turned into a torture chamber. Heavy incense pooled against the ceiling, cloyingly sweet.
As if trying to hide the scent of blood that lingered everywhere they turned.
Aidan lost track of the turns and stairwells. Not that his brain was functioning properly anyway. He couldn’t force himself to believe that the scene with his mother had been an illusion. He’d felt her touching his face. He’d heard her voice as clear as day. His mother’s voice, and the Dark Lady’s. One and the same.
What did that make him?
Then Jeremiah pushed open a door that led outside, and Aidan’s thoughts were burned away by the brightness of the afternoon.
Aidan barely registered what was around him—the rows of sandstone buildings towering up, the ruined street, the stunted trees. He squinted against the light. Of all times for it to be sunny. His brain didn’t want to congeal on what was actually before him. Because here was gathered what felt like the whole of London—hundreds of people, some in tattered civilian garb, others in the black and purple robes of the Church, pressed together in a large outdoor square. The sight of so many people made his head reel. As did what they gathered around.
At first, Aidan thought they were just telephone poles. But no, the thick poles stuck side by side in the mud were surrounded by kindling. Five charred stakes in all, and the scent of smoke and something sicker mingling in the air. He didn’t want to know when they had last been used. He didn’t want to know when they would be used again. Though he had a guess, and the very thought made him struggle against the guards that dragged him.
Not that he had much struggle left, and a swift punch in the gut pushed the remaining fight from his lungs.
A makeshift platform had been constructed on the opposite side of the stakes, civilians and priests mingling at its base, and that was where Jeremiah led him. The crowd parted for the priests, but they made no attempts to hide their disgust toward Aidan. They cursed and spit at him, a few braver men slipping through the crowd to punch Aidan in the chest and face. Aidan’s entourage did nothing to prevent the beatings, and every thrust sent pain lancing through his body and blood spraying from his mouth.
These were the people whom the Guild had kept safe. Innocents who had lived solely because Hunters like Aidan were willing to die for them.
Oh, how fast they forgot.
Rage flared, brief and fierce—he should burn these people to the ground, kill them for betraying him so quickly. So easily. The Dark Lady’s words whispered through his mind: I never created monsters... Mankind itself painted them as demons. None of this was the Dark Lady’s fault. None of this was made by Howls. This was all mankind’s doing.
But the anger faded in a moment, replaced by dread. By the realization that these people who had once composed his countrymen no longer wanted him. He would never get their appreciation for what he’d done. They would never see him as a savior. Instead, abject hatred burned in their eyes.
They had painted him as horribly as the Dark Lady herself.
He couldn’t meet their glares. Instead, he watched the blood dripping to his feet and let the Inquisitors drag him up the steps to the platform, where Jeremiah stood with arms raised in reverence.
Aidan wanted to convince himself that if he was going to die, he would do so with dignity. Public execution or no.
He wanted to, but all he could do was look down and hope it was over quickly.
“My children,” Jeremiah called out, silencing the crowd immediately. “Today, we have cause for celebration. For today, we bring more lost souls to the light. Today, we rejoice in the purity of our Lord, and His continued battle against the Dark.”
He gestured Aidan forward, and the guards pushed Aidan to Jeremiah’s side.
“For too long, our world has been overrun with heretics and magic-users, all of them pawns of the Dark Lady. They parade themselves as heroes even as their work drags the world down to darkness. But you have found salvation. The Church has opened its arms to you, and you, my children, have opened your arms to the Light. Today, we bring that work to those who would deny it. Today, the very leaders who tore our world asunder will pay for their actions.
“Bring them forward!”
On cue, a group of black-and-violet-robed Inquisitors stepped out from the shadows, a long chain in their hands. And linked to it by heavy manacles, Aidan’s comrades stepped out into the light.
If Aidan had thought the jeers that followed him had been bad, the ones that erupted at his comrades’ entrance put them to shame. He felt it—the crack within him as his spirit broke and fell to his feet. Kianna walked at the front of the chain, hands bound behind her, her skin bruised and slicked with blood. One eye swollen shut. She didn’t drop her head, though. Even as people screamed and punched and spit at her, she held her head high, gaze forward. Gaze straight at him.
He knew he should have felt proud. Proud that even now, at the end, she was staying strong. Stronger than he was, at least. If anything, the sight of her just made him feel like a failure. Here she was, end of the line, and she was more composed than he. Because she’d never had magic to be ripped away from her. Because she’d already been through hell and back.
She looked like a woman who couldn’t be broken by the world.
If anything, it seemed to make the world try harder.
Jeremiah didn’t shut up, but Aidan didn’t hear him. His head filled with a high-pitched buzz that drove every thought away. He watched as the Inquisitors chained Kianna to the charred stake. He wondered who had been killed there before. He caught nothing from Jeremiah’s tirade, save for words like “salvation” and “repentance” and the usual bullshit. None of it mattered.
He could only watch as Kianna stood calmly at her own funeral pyre, as Margaret and Gregory struggled at her sides. Like her, they were bruised and bloody. Unlike her, they strained and yelled at the Inquisitors who bound them to the stakes. They weren’t ready to die.
Seeing Aidan on the platform, rather than at their side, made them pause. Aidan couldn’t meet their gazes. The hurt. The confusion. Why wasn’t he up there, with them, when he was the reason they’d all fallen into this hell?
It took him far too long to realize that Jeremiah had stopped speaking. The crowd’s c
ollective gaze had turned toward him.
Aidan started, broke his stare from his comrades. Looked at Jeremiah. “What?” he asked.
Jeremiah’s previous words began leaking into his brain. But no, he couldn’t have heard the man right.
“I said, it is your choice,” Jeremiah replied. “We must cleanse your soul, Aidan. And the best way of doing so is to have you aid in the Lord’s work. By banishing magic and evil from the land, you will be one step closer to salvation.
“I will give you a choice. Not all need burn to taste salvation. One, perhaps, is strong enough to find their way into the light. I will let you choose. One to live in the hope we can save them. Two to burn and let the Lord judge their souls. Who will it be?” He leaned in closer. “Should you decide not to decide, I will ensure that all their deaths are painful and slow. And that you watch every second of it. Either way, they—and you—will be cleansed.
“Choose wisely.”
At those words, a guard dragged him off the platform, through the parted crowd.
The faces of the now-silent gathering blurred. Everything blurred. He wanted to run. Wanted to throw up. Wanted more than anything for this not to be real.
Only days ago, he had killed Trevor to secure his place in history. A man he had slept with. Had maybe even cared for. He had killed without question. Without pause or shame. And now, he was being forced to kill, and he wanted nothing more than to hide away.
He stared between Kianna and Margaret and Gregory. He hated himself for so many reasons right then. But the worst was that this wasn’t even a choice. He should have at least felt a small desire to save the others—and he did, to a degree—but there was no hesitation when he reached the stakes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking to Gregory. Then to Margaret. His eyes teared up again, and his words were a choke. “Truly.”
He pointed to Kianna.
Wordlessly, two Inquisitors untied her from the stake. Kianna once more refused to struggle or show any sign of emotion. The others, however, realized what he had done and began to scream.
Aidan tried to block them out. Margaret and Gregory cursed at him. Screamed his name. But he refused to look anywhere but Kianna. Her face was stony, her eyes boring into him with more meaning than he could define. He knew one thing, though—she wasn’t grateful.
The guards dragged her to the side. She finally looked away. Looked to the two people he had sentenced to die.
For a moment, he wondered if saving her from burning had only damned them both in a different way.
“Well then, my child,” Jeremiah said. Aidan jolted as Jeremiah clapped a hand on his shoulder. “We now move on to the next step of your salvation.” Jeremiah reached down and grabbed Aidan’s wrist, placing something hot and metallic in his palm. Aidan glanced down, his heart dropping to his feet.
A lighter.
“What?” Aidan looked from the lighter to Jeremiah. There was no way he was saying what Aidan thought he was.
“You have led these men and women to the doorstep of the Dark Lady,” Jeremiah said, louder this time. “In following you, they turned to magic, and in turn spoiled the land and their very souls. It is only fitting that you should be the one to help bring them to the Light. Redeem yourself and cleanse their souls. Spark the fire that will bring them to redemption.”
Margaret and Gregory had gone silent. They stared at Aidan with wide-eyed horror. Not only had he refused to save them, he was the one who would murder them.
He couldn’t move. The lighter burned in his hand and he was frozen. Paralyzed.
This couldn’t be real.
Jeremiah’s hand squeezed tighter.
“Either you set the fire, or I do. And then I will throw you and your dear friend on the flames.”
Kianna still refused to look at him. What was she thinking? Did she hate him for this? For saving her, and forcing her to watch her comrades die?
Since when did he care what she thought? Since when did he care about people under his command losing their lives?
The truth struck him harder than he could imagine.
Without Fire, he was still the weak, pathetic little boy he’d thought he left behind on the shores of Loch Lomond.
He looked down to the lighter, and the painful irony of this struck him. A few days ago, he could have done this with magic. Now he needed a lighter to do the trick, and he couldn’t convince himself to strike it.
They were defenseless.
They had relied on him.
And as they watched him deliberate, he knew they were hit by the same realization: even though Aidan was broken in more ways than one, he was going to light the kindling. Because it was the only way to save his ass. He wasn’t about to sacrifice himself to save them. In spite of everything, that selfish part of Aidan hadn’t changed one bit.
It made him sick.
But it also wouldn’t make him change his mind.
“Please, don’t do this!” Margaret said, coughing blood. “Please! We trusted you! We believed in you!”
“You can’t,” Gregory said, and when Aidan looked at the guy, he knew that Gregory was thinking of the night they’d spent together. The hurt of betrayal was thick in his eyes. “Please. Please!”
Aidan didn’t move.
“If this is your choice—” Jeremiah began, reaching for the lighter. Aidan jerked away.
“No.” Aidan gritted his teeth. Lowered his voice and tried to find resolve—if he was going to make this right, he had to live. He had to get the shard and get out of here. That was the only way to make any of this worth it. The only way to redeem any of his actions. He had to live. He had to fight. And even though he hated himself for it, he knew it wasn’t a choice. “I should do it.”
He stepped forward and clicked open the lighter. A thin flame poured out. Weak. Pathetic. Just like him. The flame seemed as unassured as he was, as if even the fire doubted Aidan’s ability to wield it.
Another step, and the two bound Hunters’ pleas turned to screams.
He looked down to the flame in his hands. Knelt before the kindling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Perhaps to himself. Perhaps to his pleading comrades. Perhaps to the memory of his mother and everyone else he had failed along the way.
He held the lighter to the kindling.
It took a while for the straw and twigs to catch. Then they flared, and the screaming of his comrades grew louder, and he didn’t move. He kept his hands by the racing flames, let himself try to find some semblance of comfort in the warmth. Some echo of memory from the heat that seared his knuckles, his tattoos gleaming ominously in the light.
BURN THEM
BURN THEM
BURN THEM
He’d gotten them as a promise to himself. Now he saw them only as a curse.
He stayed there. Kneeling before the fire. Head bowed. As his comrades screamed and choked, as the flames and smoke leaped higher. He stayed there, as if praying for forgiveness, when in reality he was praying to the flames. To come back to him. To embrace him. To help him forget, to help him burn this mortal weakness away.
Fire crackled. Sparks popped. Embers flared against his skin. Burning him. Making his muscles twitch from pain. Sweat broke across his skin. His comrades’ screams finally diminished. Choked and sobbing, gasping into silence.
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t help the tears welling in his eyes for what he’d done. But more than that—for the absence of Fire. The burning, starving flames before him seemed alien, when once they’d felt like family. Every ember that scarred his skin was a reminder of how broken he was. How he was no longer himself.
He should have hated himself, for sitting before his burning comrades and thinking only of himself. He should have, but that was the one thing that the Inquisition hadn’t taken away.
At the end of the day, Aidan w
ould fight for himself. If only because that was all he had left.
Finally, the guards grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him back from the flames.
He didn’t look up. Just stared at the ground as they pulled him away, as his body immediately shut down with cold.
That was a lie. He looked up and back once. To see his comrades still burning on the pyre. And Kianna staring at them solemnly. Her face unreadable. Like a queen, even with her hands bound behind her back.
For a brief moment, the sight of her gave him hope. She looked in control. Like she could get them out.
Then a guard punched her in the gut, and she dropped to her knees, and Aidan remembered she was still as screwed as he was.
They were still going to suffer and die.
And the suffering, he knew, was only just beginning.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“I’m sorry.”
Those were the first words out of Lukas’s mouth when Aidan was thrown back into the cell, the door slammed and locked behind him. Another candle burned in the center of the room, a mockery of the inferno Aidan had just endured.
Aidan didn’t answer.
He collapsed on his bed and curled in on himself. Squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block out the sights and scents of his burning comrades. Tried to find some spark of hope against the suffocating darkness, to block out the pain that coursed through his body and the dread of what would continue to happen.
He’d spared Kianna’s life and subjected her to more torture. All he’d done was buy the Church more time to hurt them. He would never get out. He would never get Fire back. He would never be avenged. Never remembered.
Everything—every death, every day—had been for nothing.
Despite himself, he began to cry. Again. And the amount he hated himself for it just made him cry harder.
He couldn’t stop. Couldn’t muffle the ugly sobs. Not even when Lukas sat once more at his side, hand light on his broken body.
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