Page 142 of The Incendiary

“Simeon has serums that ensure someone is telling the truth. That is not your concern. A life for a life is your task,” he pressed. “Show these soldiers you’re willing to protect your people.”

He was going to kill him no matter what I did. I stared at Finch, who looked dejected, defeated, and scared. An idea formed. If he was going to die, could I make it hurt less? The Insidion I’d killed in self-defense had been terrified. Could I make Draven Finch feel something else?

I had no idea if it would work. Unlike Nyxar’s ungraspable spoke, Effusia’s power was available, but I had hesitations. Manipulating the physical world around me was one thing, but tapping into someone’s mind? I’d been pushed and pulled in so many directions, told what to say, how to feel, who to be. I refused to do that to someone else.

Unless it could take away pain. Murderer or not, Finch was a product of this war, too. How could I encourage suffering? Maybe I was too soft, but how hard did I want to be?

I placed my palm on top of Finch’s hair so it looked like my hand was there as leverage for making the killing blow, then reached for Effusia’s spoke on the wheel. When I grasped it, deep carmine flashed behind my eyelids. I felt a little bit of everything. Fear, joy, love, despair, anger. I flipped through them all like cards in a stack until I settled on serenity.

“Close your eyes.” I barely moved my lips while speaking. “I don’t want you to suffer.”

Power trickled out of me, from my body into his. It was much weaker than usual, but it was enough. Finch leaned into my touch, the movement barely noticeable beneath dim and scattered torchlight. I tensed, wondering if he was about to speak, lash out, or react, but he never did.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” I whispered. “Find peace.”

Just when I should have made the killing blow, I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away, back to Elias. All that could be heard through the dead silence of the courtyard was the crunch of gravel beneath my boots, so loud that each retreating step made me wince. “I know you think he has to die,” I uttered, keeping my voice low. “But a life for a life kills us all eventually. I choose to be merciful. Any other way is yours, not mine.” I placed the handle of the blade in his hand. Before turning away, I added, “If mercy means I’m packing my bags, then I will go gladly.”

Only once I was concealed by shadows alongside the wall of a building did I let silent tears fall for the man I knew was about to die. Elias Winterton still hadn’t earned the right to see me cry.

I didn’t look, but I heard a blade puncture flesh, then the thump of Finch’s dead body on gravel while I moved toward the shower hall. Once I was inside, the water was soothing, the candlelight was only just bright enough to see. This had become one of few places in the fortress I sought refuge.

“Shera?” I called down the pathway I shared with her. “Shera, are you there?”

I always felt the urge to run to Gavin, especially tonight. But my pathway with Shera was silent. If she was with him, they were nowhere near me. I rested my forehead against the shower wall, then my hands, supporting myself as weariness fought to send me to my knees.

After I was finished, I dressed and trudged numbly back to the cabin, avoiding the bloodstained center of the courtyard. Finch’s body had been hauled away, and Eli was nowhere to be found.

I crawled inside Gavin’s black sweater and beneath the covers. I thought nothing would make me feel better after what had happened, but the smell and warmth of him wrapped around me proved me wrong.

When the sun rose, I lay awake waiting for orders to depart for refusing Eli’s order to kill Draven Finch.

The sun rose, and the orders never came.

FORTY

GAVIN SMYTH

I don’t know who or where or how I would be if you hadn’t shown up in Warrich that day. For me.

You weren’t perfect, but you showed me my own strength.

I could thank you for eternity, and it would never be enough.

—UNSENT CORRESPONDENCE FROM QUEEN ARYELLA I TO THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA

391 Years Ago

Blood oaths were fickle things. I learned far too late that the only binding terms of a blood oath were those spoken and repeated by both parties during the ritual itself. I’d told him no innocent blood, but what I’d unwittingly agreed to was killing any name he gave me.

It was compulsion. I had no choice but to obey.

Some kind of bond had formed because of the blood oath, and it allowed Molochai to speak directly into my mind. It had been only one name at first. And then he named them all off, one by one. Often, he made me kill the men first. He forced me to witness the horror in the eyes of mothers and children as I slaughtered their protectors.

Some tried to fight back, but I’d become too consumed and unrelenting, driven by corrupted darkness within my blood, too powerful for them to overcome. I didn’t understand it. All I knew was that evil and bloodlust had always lingered within me. Now my father wielded it at his will.

I stopped hearing their screams quickly. Whatever conscience I still possessed needed to preserve itself, so much that it allowed my awareness to break and recede into the hidden corners of my mind while it happened. Their cries were silenced. The children, especially. It was a small mercy.

Now, standing in the middle of a small, blood-soaked village northwest of Brinnea, hands shaking violently at my sides, the sound of screaming returned, but I couldn’t leave. To leave their bodies felt like abandonment, like I could just forget. I forced myself to memorize what I’d done.