Page 103 of Be Still My Unbeating Heart

“The killer will strike again,” Bastian said.

A ghost of a smile played on Ling’s lips. “They can certainly try.”

“Difficult to hunt a ruin,” Emmeline said.

Bastian frowned. He looked into their blank faces, his gut squirming with dread.

“What are you saying?” he asked, though he already suspected the answer. Whitby had told him what the Obliterati did when they had captured their target.

“We have made certain,” Jared said, massaging the rings on his fingers.

“That we have localized the problem,” Emmeline said.

Cold fear trickled down Bastian’s spine. His mouth gaped at the thought of Vernazza burning, the image he’d feared since he learned the council had been summoned. The worst possible outcome.

He strained, trying to hear the sounds of Vernazza burning, sniffing the air in search of smoke. But they were already too faraway. He had no way to know if the carnage had begun yet. All he heard was the rumble of the van’s tires on tarmac. All he smelled was the faint chemical reek of the Obliterati. It was as if they had been pickled. Preserved.

“You’ve sentenced an entire town to death!” he cried. “Why would you do that? What do you have to gain?”

“We have centuries of experience, kid,” Jared drawled.

“This is the best for everybody,” Emmeline added.

“You’recrazy!” Bastian yelled, anger smoldering through him once more. “You’re monsters!”

“Such rage,” Ling commented, shaking her head.

“Anger is like venom,” Emmeline said.

“It kills you from the inside,” Jared added.

Bastian struggled with his restraints again, but that only caused the silver to cut deeper. He bit down a pained cry, thinking about De Luca and Whitby, the people of Vernazza, and feeling that scalpel-sharp prick of rage at the injustice of it all, at the Obliterati’s unnatural calm.

In that moment, as rage sliced his insides, a simple truth suddenly became clear, as if the ripples in a pool had stilled, revealing an image.

The anger he had been fighting to control wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It wasn’t a burden that needed to be kept under lock and key.

Anger was pure in its purpose.

Sometimes anger keeps us alive,he had told De Luca.

He hadn’t truly believed it himself until now. Bastian had tried to free himself from anger, but anger had seen him through his darkest days, and it still had its uses. He understood that now.

“Anger means we’re alive even if we’redead,” he spat at the Obliterati. “It tells us we’re alive. That there’s still hope.”

“How human of you.” Jared laughed.

“Soyoung,” Ling added.

“A shame you won’t be around long enough to experience the truth,” Emmeline said.

Jared pressed his palms together in prayer.

“Once you conquer anger,” he said.

“You conquer the world,” Ling finished.

Bastian opened his mouth and hissed at them. “Why would you burn Vernazza? Those people did nothing to you.”