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“No,” he says, swallowing hard. “I was the only one brave enough to stand up to our father—”
“And how’d that go?” I ask mercilessly. “Your brothers buried you alive afterward, and you let them get away with it. Seems like they actually know how to make their way in this world.” I shake my head at him and make the pity heavy in my voice. “You’re just so naïve.”
I turn and start walking away from him, even though it means I’m walking out of my own room. I don’t know where I’m going. I just have to get away from him and the pain I see on his handsome face. The pain I’ve inflicted on him.
But he just runs to get ahead of me, turning to get in my face.
The puppy dog look is gone. Instead, his features are hard in a way that makes my heart break. “Fine,” he says. “I’m too naïve? I’ll go get experience. I’ll give my brothers what they deserve. Will that make you happy?”
“Fuck what makes me happy!” I yell. I grab the vase of flowers from the foyer and fling it against the wall. “Do you hear how fucking useless you are? You sound just like all my fawning admirers. I adore you, Mistress, I’ll do whatever you say, Mistress. I can’t even tell if my fucking compulsion has started working on you or if you’re just this fucking pathetic!”
I see the full weight of my words hit him in the chest. Worse than any blow.
“You don’t want another fawning admirer?” he says through his teeth. “Fine. I’m gone.”
Then he spins and walks away, out of the compound, and he doesn’t come back. Proving yet again he was never under my compulsion at all.
Which is exactly why I have to let him go. Nothing’s holding him here now. Not yet. Sabra might feel like she’s been trapped here and hates me, but I’ll never let that happen to him.
Knowing I’ve saved him from me and my family doesn’t stop the tears from coming. I lean against the wall and slide down as I start to cry. Quietly at first, swiping the tears away quickly and trying to deny I’m even sad. It’s not a big deal. He was only here for two months and two months is nothing considering how long I’ve existed.
But soon, I’m hiccupping from crying so hard, and then it’s outright sobbing. Ugly, ugly sobbing that leaves me holding my stomach in the fetal position because I’m crying so hard.
I wish I could call Sabra like back when we were teenagers and gossiping about the boys we liked. Back when the boys we liked were just faces on the screen of our at-home theater projector in the upstairs wing.
But it’s all different now. I sob into my hands. The things I said to Layden. My stomach cramps, hurting over how mean I was. What I said about his brothers. And his… his father. I cover my face with my hands. Because this isn’t just a crush. And I know the ache of losing someone never really goes away… when you… when you love them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LAYDEN
Present Day
“We sent you back to the realm of the angels!” I stagger away from my father. Phoenix runs to my side, facing off with me against him.
My father laughs in my face. “Which I must thank you for. The angelic hosts were not happy to see my thieving face and did not welcome me back with open arms. But I pretended repentance and ate of their manna and drank of their heavenly ambrosia, refilling my angelic powers to their fullest like they had never been since I was first spawned many ages ago. And I planned, oh how I planned.”
My stomach sinks with every word.
“It was easy to jump back to this world using the same well of realms I came through the first time. I just had to wait for them to let down their guard and not watch me every moment. Then, once I was back here, I sought to take over this world and become its ruler as I did in the ages of old. Except this time, I would rule it fully. Not just an empire for an age or a century or two but the entire world forever.”
“It was you behind the angelic runes that took over government systems last month and launched those nukes,” Phoenix says breathlessly. “You weren’t going to rule the world. You were going to destroy it!”
“And remake it in my image,” my father says, grinning madly. “With every being left bowing down in worship to me. For all time.”
Of course it was him. I should have known at the time. I’d just hoped that when we sent him home through the rune circle I’d created, it meant we’d be done with him once and for all. But Phoenix is right. The only way to deal with a rogue spirit is to kill it. I don’t care if my brothers tried once before by burning my father’s body to ash.
Unbeknownst to them, he regrew from an ember. But it took him years to regain his shape and strength. We’ll have to just keep burning him eternally. I don’t care how. He can’t be allowed to live. He’s a creature of destruction.
“But when you so creatively foiled that plot by creating a crack in the continuum of spirits, well,” my father chuckles. “I realized I’d been thinking too small. Why rule one world when I could rule many? This world is the nexus point of access that is drawing in more powerful spirits than I could only dream of. I no longer have to create an army. The army will come to me.”
He holds out a hand toward Ammit.
“I won’t be part of your army, you bastard! I never wanted any part of this.”
Wait, what? I forgot she was even here. I look toward her now as she backs away from all of us, past the gory scene in the atrium, to the other edge of the invisible circle on the floor.
“Is that why you lured me here?” she asks, looking at my father.
