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“I had planned on mostly feeding and fucking and generally enjoying being free before either Mikalis killed me or the world died.”
His answer was: nothing? Anger poked at Octavius’s instincts. “You’re one of the oldest nyks. You were made by Mikalis, Nyx’s son, and you’re just going to sit on your ass and let the world burn around you?”
Saint’s right eyebrow arched. “I don’t owe the world anything. I believe you understand what that’s like.”
“This world has fucked me over more times than you can imagine, but I will still fight for it because it’s all we have. There’s no Plan B.”
Saint smiled and leaned back. He draped an arm over the couch cushions and Jayden leaned into him. “Not so much of a not-caring Brotherhood member, are you?”
“I care, yes. I care what happens to the people, and I care that it doesn’t all end in chaos.” Frustration and anger simmered in his veins. He had to do something. This had to be stopped. “I’ve always cared, it’s true. I just… didn’t show it.”
“Because, in the past, when you gave your heart to others, it was used against you.”
Octavius’s next words lodged in his throat. How did Saint know that about him? Was he so obvious? “Trying to save people got me turned,” he admitted, but couldn’t say anymore. Even now, thousands of years later, the memory was too sharp, too vicious. It cut anew every time he looked back. So he didn’t look back, and he didn’t care, and he shut others out. It was easier that way.
“We are all nyktelios,” Saint said. “We are all Mikalis’s children. Some are mad with bloodlust, some thrive on control, some thirst for chaos, and some hide in the shadows. We are creatures of his making. The enemy you’ve been told to hunt and kill for millennia is just another nyktelios—like you, like me. Granted, they lack control, but we’re the same.”
“Fuck.” Octavius slumped against the wall beside the fireplace.
“The truth hurts.”
It was all a lie to control them. Mikalis was using them. It fit. That was why Mikalis was trying to kill Saint, and why he’d turned so viciously on Octavius. The members of the Brotherhood were his pawns.
And Octavius had fallen for it. All the Brotherhood had.
“I just… I need to… Some air… ” He left the cabin, walked down the yard, past the table, and kept on walking, striding faster and faster, until his heart raced and the world blurred.
He ran. Ran so damn fast. If he ran hard enough, he might leave the truth behind and go back to the way things had been before. He stopped on the fringes of the nearby town, then pulled his hood up, tucked his hands into his pockets, and walked down the streets, passing a twenty-four-hour convenience store. Humans mingled; not many, as it was late. But they passed by in their cars, talked on their phones, going about their lives.
He entered the store and watched a woman drag a bored little girl along beside her. A girl who thought she had a long life ahead of her, full of dreams and potential.
Octavius almost yelled at them to run, to get far away and hide. He’d tried to save people like them before. Back then, it had been with herbs and fauna, and they’d called him a witch. More recently, it had been with computers and technology. And he’d thought he was making a difference.
It was all a lie from a god who had messed up and was trying to brush his mistakes under a cosmic rug.
He walked the town until the sun rose, and his muscles grew tight from weariness. Mikalis might have been a lie, but the Brotherhood was not. They believed in protecting the world by killing nyks and preventing chaos. That hadn’t changed.
Octavius still needed to get through to them, to make them see how Raiden was undermining them and to plead his case so they knew he wasn’t the traitor they all thought him to be.
He returned to the cabin to find Jayden sat reading on the couch.
“Hey.” Jayden took in what must have been Octavius’s tousled state. “You good?”
“Yeah. Is Saint—”
Saint emerged from the side door and Octavius nodded for him to head back outside. They met at the picnic table, and for a while Saint waited in silence, staring at the town in the valley.
It was good that he was quiet. He seemed to know when not to speak. He knew a lot and had been locked away for it.
“Nothing has changed,” Octavius said.
Saint arched an eyebrow.
“I don’t want to die, and you don’t either, so let’s begin with that.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We kidnap Zaine.”
