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He took a step backward, his hand dropping to his side. “We’re below a children’s hospital, Ada.”
“What?” The word choked out my throat.
Impossible. There was despicable, and then there wasdespicable.The lowest cockroach of all cockroaches.
He nodded, pointing upward. “Nineteen stories above us, each floor a haven for the most ill. The most innocent. All those sick, sick kids. Babies. Babies barely able to breathe, their lungs so tiny. Just a few levels up.” His lips pursed, contemplative. “Maybe it would be best if you sent out death. Delivered all those little beings from the pain. A blessing, really, what you could deliver to them. Death like yours could be welcomed into the world, Ada, if only you would embrace what you are.”
He turned from me, walking over to the silver cabinet closest to me and opening it. “But know, whatever you choose to do, it won’t kill me. You couldn’t do it last time.”
Exactly. Which was the only reason I hadn’t already exploded on him, and thank the heavens I hadn’t for where he had brought me.
Cletus’s attention went to the cabinet and he started pulling items from it and setting them on the stainless-steel table. A dagger. A plastic box that looked like it held a motor of some kind.
“Once you love me, Ada, we are going to rule the malefics, hand-in-hand. Take control from my small-minded brother. A brother who wasted four years building a monument to you with that godforsaken castle, instead of finding you. We could be so much farther along if only he had looked for you earlier. A shame, truly. He really should pay for his idiocy.”
Panic set in when he mentioned Damen. I was rather hoping he was going to leave his brother out of all of this.
My head shook. “You cannot hurt Damen.”
“He knows what’s coming for him.” Cletus shrugged. “Why do you think he’s worked so hard to make you love him? Damen knows we are the same—the same thing, destined to be united once more. Together we’ll be unstoppable, and he knows that. He knows he’ll be unseated. And he’s managed to take time away from us.”
He pulled out a what looked like a dentist’s drill and fiddled with the cord of it, attaching it to the plastic box. “But fear not. My brother has only delayed us. I admit, he has made this more difficult for me—it will be an achievement to turn that love you have for him toward me, but I can do it. I am confident. Though I cannot fault him for falling in love with you. Who wouldn’t? And he did find you in the first place for me, after all. Find you to deliver you to me.”
“Damen was never going to let you lay a hand on me.” My words snarled.
His brows crinkled above his close-set eyes as he looked up from the cord he fiddled with, uncurling the kinks in it. “He told you that, did he? He does like to lie, my little brother. Always. Ever since we were children.”
“He doesn’t lie to me.”
“Oh? Did he tell you we are the same? He knows we are.”
My teeth gritted. “We arenotthe same.”
“We have the exact same skin, Ada. The exact same. Unbreakable.” He grabbed the dagger from the table and rushed to me, his forearm held up to my face, and he started sawing at his bare arm. Back and forth like a maniac, his eyes wild, spit flying from his mouth. “See. Do you see? Look at it. Do you see? We were one, broken into two, and we will be one again. Do you see? The same skin. Do you see?”
I swallowed, the bile scratching up my throat again. I nodded.
“He knows. Damen knows everything about me. And he didn’t tell you.” The sawing stopped and his arms dropped to his sides. “He knew all about me. You tell me if he’s a liar.”
My lips pulled tight and I turned my head from him, pressing my left cheek into the cold steel support of the cross behind me, my head pounding so hard I was starting to lose consciousness, the world getting blurry.
“Good. Now that you understand how it will be, I want to start with something I should have done long ago.” He waved the dagger in the air in front of my face. “Remove that tattoo from your skin. It marks you as theirs, to do with as they will. You are not theirs. You are mine. And together we are going to create a new world. A world we will rule over. We will be the gods our ancestors always wanted us to be. Gods that will last through the ages. Our descendants will inherit this earth we have created for them. Only this time, I’m not going to wait to create those descendants. That was my fatal flaw last time—not driving my seed deep into you.”
With those words, I went numb, hoping the pain under my skull would drag me quickly into the darkness.
Cletus removed the titanium cuff from my right arm, and I didn’t even feel the pain as he set the blade to my skin, carving away the flesh that bore the triple infinity scar. He flayed it off my upper arm, holding it like it was a rotten fillet of fish.
I didn’t watch it, didn’t even think about it, because my eyes were locked on the stainless-steel table directly in front of me. Staring at the silver dentist drill and the attachment Cletus had added to the tip.
A long, flexible arm, and at the end of it, a ring of tiny silver hooks.
He was going into my brain again.
Chapter28
{ Damen }
Halfway to the coordinates Aiden was given, my phone buzzed.
