Page 138 of The Incendiary

This isn’t what she’d want for you…

Run…

“I love you.”

“Only once.” I heard her soft voice and silenced my conscience. “No innocents.”

His response was immediate. “Agreed.”

Once was easy if the target was guilty. Perhaps I was more like him than I thought. The life of another was a fair price for her freedom. I couldn’t accept a future where no one put her first and she was used for power. Where her smile was directed at someone else and her soft body moved beneath the hands of another. Her beautiful mind was erased and controlled. Her pure heart dragged back and forth through a vicious storm of manipulations and lies.

I remembered all the times that she showed me the most vulnerable pieces of her, and I saw the quiet plea for freedom trapped inside of her.

“I don’t get to choose what I want!”

“I have a responsibility, Gavin!”

And I’d heard the secret terror behind those words. I had felt her fear in every crevice of my heart. Her fear of being alone, misunderstood, used, abused.

I remembered my promise to her.

You will never need to know a world without me.

Unbound hope had peered up at me through those gold-speckled green eyes. I had given her many promises. I had meant every single one of them. But one promise gripped me like a vise I would willingly die in if I had to.

I will never, ever let you go.

The thought of her, full of pure light and life, darkened by confusion, despair, and loneliness was my gravest fear. She had given herself to me, wholly and without reserve. I knew in my soul that she hadn’t wanted to leave.

“Promise you’ll never let me forget who I am.”

I would not abandon her. I would not leave her terrified, used, and alone.

I had promised.

Whatever it takes.

“Do it,” I uttered.

Molochai withdrew a dagger, opened his palm, and made a straight, slow slice through its center, then gestured for me to give him my left hand.

I offered my hand. The blade sliced slowly through my palm, but it wasn’t the physical pain that made me flinch. Rather, it felt as if any natural goodness of my own was evaporating out of my skin and was now suspended in the air, defying gravity just to escape me.

“Repeat after me.” He reached to clasp my hand in his. “I grant you the magic to live forever, frozen in your current state. When I give you a name, you will kill them.”

“You grant me the magic to live forever, frozen in my current state. When you give me a name—” I pressed my bleeding palm against his, flinching at his cold fingers as we sealed the oath. “—I will kill them.”

I felt the oath snap into place and my soul break into pieces. I mourned the loss of each piece, even though the strongest one would always survive in this world as long as she existed. I had given it to her, along with my heart, the first moment I saw her. With her it would stay, sound asleep, safe wherever she was.

I just prayed that when the time came, I wouldn’t be so far gone that any attempt to take that piece back would obliterate her, and us. I shouted that final, desperate plea to the gods.

Then I offered my soul to evil and never looked back.

THIRTY-NINE

ARYELLA

No one will ever deserve your heart. But if you choose to give it to him, swear to me you’ll make him earn it.