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Chapter Fifteen
“For my heart / Is true as steel.”
—Helena, Act 2,A Midsummer Night’s Dream
No.
It could not be happening, Sai shouted within his own fractured mind. He couldn’t be leading Brigid into the dark nether realm of the Master, step by treacherous step.
And yet…
It washishand holding hers. It washisfeet leading the way.
He was drawing her ever deeper into the Master’s clutches. Ever closer to her own undoing.
He, who loved her more than life. More than freedom and release from the soul-crushing pain that was tearing him asunder, atom by atom, cell by cell.
Hewas doing this.
He was her doom.
Yes.
The voice within him hissed. A menacing undertone that mingled with his own resonance.
You have led her right to me. It was my plan all along.
Fools.
There are no greater fools in this universe than those who succumb to love.
Deeper into the black abyss he lured Brigid.
Rotten trees with gnarled branches began to take shape. Snakes of all sorts wove around them, hissing, whispering. The ground they walked upon was solid enough, but swamplands burbled with boiling tar around them. Poisonous toads croaked ominously upon clumps of mud.
Decayed hands and heads sometimes bobbed above the oily surface, reaching up with skeletal fingers and stretched mouths. The undead moaned their grievances and protested their fate. They scrabbled at his and Brigid’s ankles as they progressed, like pinching crabs.
She came along willingly; he didn’t have to exert force. Didn’t need to drag her. Her small, warm hand held tightly to his. Not in fear. It didn’t tremble.
No. She held him in faith. Whatever came, she would accept it courageously. She didn’t blame him for betraying her.
And you did betray her, didn’t you?
The voice inside him chuckled with malicious glee.
You knew what would happen if you stayed.
You could have left her at any point. Abandoned this mission and sought your own freedom.
I would have found another way to entice her to come to me willingly. Whether through you or someone else. Her family. Her friends. So many weaknesses to choose from.
This is what happens when you love. Everything that bears that love becomes the albatross around your neck.
And you, dear dragon, are her greatest weakness. So perhaps it is just as well that you are her downfall now.
I do like expediency.
Sai tried to halt his strides. Or at the very least slow them.
