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He sucks in a breath. “I knew you’d say that, but Lennon’s been perfecting her spell.”
He’s delusional.
“I do hate this, Anora. I'd like to think we might have been friends.”
I grit my teeth. We were friends, I wanted to say, but I know now that's not true. Instead, I ask, “How long?”
“How long what? Have I been working with Lennon or do you want to know when Influence took me?”
It is strange to hear him talk of Influence, as if he's fully aware of the darkling inside him. I stare, waiting. Answers to both questions will suffice.
“Influence took hold the day my mom died,” he says. “Lennon approached me shortly after. We are united by our hatred of the Order. I introduced her to the death-speaker Underground. She has a following there.”
A following? I try imagining Lennon rallying the death-speaker troops to defeat the Order. Prior to tonight, I'd have said it wasn't possible, but you never know who or what you're dealing with. The Lennon I witnessed today is completely capable of such a feat.
But it's not even her presence that makes her a threat. It's her story. She lost her mother to the Order, she was rejected by Valryn society, forced to go Underground, if found out, she'd have been killed. Yet, she's survived.
People rally behind stories, and hers—it is powerful.
“You didn't have to do this. You had friends.”
“You never consider that I might like what I've become.”
“Do you?” I challenge.
“It wouldn't have worked anyway, Anora. We share two perspectives on the world. You think it's worth saving. I do not.”
I didn't always care. Before coming to Rayon, I wanted to hide, lead a normal life, let the world spiral out of control around me if it meant I could continue going to school and coming home to a mother who didn't look at me with disappointment in her eyes or question everything I say out of the belief that I'm lying.
But I can't live each day turning on the news to another horrific disaster perpetrated by Influence, knowing I can change it.
What kind of person would that make me?
No better than the thing that killed my poppa. No better than Influence.
Thane lingers in my periphery like the dead on the edge of campus. I wait until I catch him on his phone and bolt, charging out of the mausoleum door. I slide on the slick cement, wet from dew, and land right in the middle of a dead man standing at the end of the steps. My chest seizes and I can’t breathe. My arm goes numb, and I think for a moment that my he
art might explode. I manage to stagger to my feet, but don’t gain my balance before falling again. This time I tumble through a dead woman in a long skirt. My stomach turns and I hit the ground, vomit, and black out.
I wake to Thane lifting me from the ground. I feel like a child, cradled against his chest, my hands bound in front of me.
He returns me to the mausoleum and sits me down on top of a tomb in one of the adjoining rooms. From outside the mausoleum, I hear the howls of my hounds. They’ve found me. It means two things—the Valryn can find me faster, but Thane’s also running out of time.
He leans over me, eyes wandering over my face as if he’s trying to memorize me. I wonder if, for a moment, Influence has lessened its hold. Then he says, “I really do care about you, Anora.”
For a moment, I spy the other Thane, the one buried deep under Influence's control. Then he says, “Which is why I'm going to try and do this without killing you.”
Then Thane lifts a knife and brings it down into my shoulder.
I scream as the blade pierces my skin and hits the tomb beneath me with a clunk. He draws back and waits, as if expecting something to happen—and suddenly, I understand what he’s trying to do...summon Charon with my death.
My face is wet, stained with tears and hot blood gushes from my wound, soaking my clothes and matting my hair.
I think of stupid things like how much blood I have to lose before it’s too much, and where major arteries are located. This can't be my end. Where the hell are Shy and Natalie? Mr. Val? The Order?
He draws the blade over his head again, aiming for the other shoulder. When the knife breaks skin, I swear it hits bone and the impact makes my screams a thousand times louder. My ears ring.
“Stop, please, please, please,” my words turn into a whispered, breathless prayer and Charon doesn't come.
