“Why should it be me?” I said. “What gives you the right to decide that?”
“You have a gift that can take back the power the Light has been stealing for years,” Elliot said. “If you can change the balance… why wouldn’t you?”
I snapped my gaze back to him, something sharp and immediate cutting through the nausea still sitting heavy in my stomach.
“You don’t understand the cost of what you’re asking of me.”
His eyes narrowed.
“My son was killed in a dark magic raid seven years ago. His name was James. He was only fifteen—he’d barely taken the APA. When he did, they saw he was sixty-two D. Too high for them.”
His voice dropped, deadly quiet.
“When he stepped in front of me, they shot him.”
He met my eyes.
“I paid my price. So don’t you dare talk to me about costs.”
My chest tightened. My hands curled into fists before I realised I was doing it.
“I’m… sorry,” I said, the words catching in my throat.
“What happened to your son was unforgivable,” I said quietly. “And I won’t pretend it isn’t.”
Elliot held my gaze, waiting.
“But your pain doesn’t buy my obedience,” I went on. “And it doesn’t give you the right to decide what I become.”
Something flickered across his face. Not anger. Calculation.
“I’m not asking you to be a weapon,” he said. “I’m asking you to make your power mean something for this world.”
“That’s the same thing,” I replied. “You’re just using kinder words.”
Kieran opened his mouth, then stopped. His jaw worked, frustration clear, but he didn’t interrupt.
Sy shifted closer to me, anchoring me.
“You think if you take the power back from the Light,” I said, “if you even the scales, everything fixes itself.”
Elliot didn’t answer.
“Tell me something,” I continued. “After James died—did it help? Did tearing yourself out of that system make it hurt less?”
His silence stretched.
“No,” he said at last.
“But it gave it purpose.”
I nodded slowly. “That’s the difference between us.”
He frowned. “Explain.”
“I don’t want my pain to have purpose,” I said. “I want it to end. I want it to stop being passed on to the next child, and the next, and the next—just because the APA says they’re different.”
I glanced back toward the camp in the distance. Toward the children bent under tools too heavy for their hands.
