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Shaking him, I stand and drag him to his feet, shouting at him again. “Do something! “Fight me!” I shout again. “Fucking give me this!”
He starts sobbing.
Sobbing.
Tears roll down his cheeks, as he sobs and leans against me. “Do it. Hit me more, brother. Do what they did to you to me. Do whatever you need to do,” he goes on, his voice breaking on every word.
“You don’t get to do this to her after all you’ve already done to me,” I growl, dropping him to the ground.
He collapses in a heap, and I step back through the flames to where Ella is watching me silently, still on her knees, but her silver eyes are back. I don’t know how much of that she just saw or heard.
“How lucid are you?” I ask as I kneel, my jaw ticking as I leave my back to my brother, ignoring his sobs.
Kya stands at a distance, like she’s waiting to be instructed, as Ella starts to stand.
“As long as he’s not provoking me, I’m lucid. My instincts won’t let me go completely because I know I can’t kill him,” she says quietly, though her voice is shaky.
I start to turn and beat on the broken shell behind me some more, but Ella grabs my hand, and I go rigid, looking down at the contact.
“I think he’s suffered enough for the night, don’t you? Putting him in that prison you designed will simply give him what he wants at this point. It’s clear he wants to be punished, and at this particularly low moment, he’ll forget he’s trying not to be selfish.”
A muscle jumps in my jaw this time as I resist doing it anyway. I know she’s telling the truth. I can see it with my own eyes, and the last thing I want his for him to get anything he wants.
Doesn’t matter how much he does or doesn’t know. He’s too broken to trust. He could lead us right into a trap, because his mind has been shattered as effectively as my body.
My eyes turn back to Ella, and I lean over, putting one arm under her legs and one around her back. Her arms go to my neck, holding on as I lift her and straighten back up.
Kya comes to us as I walk through the flames with Ella in my arms, and she darts a nervous glance toward Alton.
“Do you want me to—”
“Leave him,” I tell her, feeling the first sense of justice in too many centuries to count, and finding the taste bitterer than anticipated. Almost hollow.
He couldn’t even let me enjoy my revenge.
“Leave him?” Kya asks incredulously.
Alton continues sobbing on the ground, his entire body shaking as he releases centuries of his own pain.
I’ve lived with rage.
He’s lived with guilt.
“He’s too weak to be of any use, and we need to focus on the threat,” I say under my breath. “I can siphon the power from the prison I made and use it against Hannah. It might be enough to knock her out of that body, and then Gavin will tell us whatever in the hell we want to know about their operation if I dangle that over his head.”
Ella is quiet, but I know she’s listening.
“Saving his witch is pointless. She’ll be as broken as…” She lets her words trail off, looking back at Alton.
I don’t look.
Instead, I dematerialize, taking Ella back to my cabin and lowering her to my bed, still feeling my muscles too tight.
“I should go home—”
“You’re going to sit right there until I don’t feel like I’m fighting to keep every beast in me on a leash,” I interrupt, causing her to swallow the rest of her words as her eyes widen in surprise. “Whatever Alton does to block my line of vision to you, you will never do again, do you understand?”
She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again when Kya shows up in the room with us. I look over as she takes a seat, then I arch an eyebrow at her.
