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I didn’t understand. I thought back to the story of the Creator and his brother. “This Dark Master, this is what we call Cysgod?”
“Yes. His power is in the empress.”
“Oh.” The horror. She’d be indestructible.
“When I tried to take her power, she exiled me.”
“You? You tried to take it? Why would you do that?”
“I had grown close enough to the empress that I knew the secrets of the chamber where the Dark Master dwelt. She caught me in the passage. Captured me. She thought I was taking the power for myself. She couldn’t understand, or rather, she refused to understand my motives. And power was more important than what I offered her.”
What he offered her? “But you’d become the Vessel. You’d be filled with evil. Why would you want to become this?” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re leaving something out.”
Caedryn turned and stared out the window. “That’s all you need to know.”
I scoffed. “This sounds like another pity story, the prequel to the exile story you told me.”
He rounded on me, ablaze with anger. “Does my pathetic tale make you pity me? Is that where your compassion came from? I don’t need you mopping my forehead!”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Caedryn’s eyes darkened. “That’s exactly what you meant. I’m baring my soul, and you believe I want pity. That’s how the emrys are, aren’t they? Full of empathy.”
“No.” I held my hands up as I backed away from his penetrating gaze. Somewhere inside, his accusation stung. I tried not to choke as Aneirin’s face swam in my mind, as I thought of how I’d reacted to his pity.
“I don’t want your pity. This has never been about pity! Don’t you hear the warning in my voice! Don’t you understand that I’m trying to protect you from danger?”
His warning? He was absurd. “Danger? DANGER! I’m not in danger from you. You can’t hurt me. You don’t have to push me away.”
“It’s inevitable.”
He was insane—prodding, poking, niggling for a reaction from me so he had an excuse for becoming defensive and lashing out.
I yelled in his face. “You can be left to your own devices! Rage through the night for all I care. Throw up walls like before. I don’t want to see your torments.”
“I offered you a place to start over. That’s all. But you unearthed a hole in my heart-center that you feel the sudden desire to fill. There’s nothing but a black pit. Blackness, Niawen! I won’t relinquish my darkness. It’s too much of a part of me.”
“You don’t have to suffer.”
“I’ve suffered for centuries.”
“So this talk of a clean slate is rubbish. You don’t believe you can change, so why would you think I could heal?”
“I don’t want your light to be dimmed. That’s why I gave you purpose. Your light is healing, but for a while, we were the same. I thought the darkness would give you perspective so you’d understand me.”
I scoffed.
“I want you to heal,” he said. “Despite my inability to do so, I swear it! I believe you can.”
“How could we ever be the same? I have a smudge on my heart-center; you carry a cauldron of dark matter!”
Caedryn raked both his hands through his hair, pulling the strands back slowly, as if buying time, considering his next sentence. When he spoke, his words were forced—harsh—but purposeful. “I might have done horrible things.” His eyes flashed. His chest rose. “I might use my darkness and relish the strength the energy gives me, a strength you could never understand”—his final words fell out of a mouth contorted from the darkness inside him—“but even in all my deceit, I didn’t kill one hundred and eighty-nine people.”
I just stared at his cruel mouth as the meaning of his words became clear. One hundred and eighty-nine people? My heart exploded in my chest. I had killed one hundred and eighty-nine people.
In my rage, and horror, I didn’t hesitate. I lifted my arms and blasted Caedryn across the room. He smashed into a table and slammed his head on the top edge. My body throbbed. My face felt hardened and distorted with ferocity. I heard laughter. A masochistic, rasping cackle. The cad was laughing!
He rolled onto his side while clutching it. “You broke my bottom two ribs.”
