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Evan spat out blood. “Fuck you.”

Knox chuckled and turned to Xen. “I’m sure your friend here wouldn’t approve of that.”

When Evan noticed the fury bubbling in Xen’s eyes, he feared he would burn Aaron’s body to a crisp, so he quickly intervened, “Why? Why did you have to choose me to carry out your dirty job?”

Knox turned back around with a puzzled look. “What do you meanwhy? Of course, I chose you. It had to be you. You’re the only one who could’ve broken Xen out of that mirror.”

Evan reared back slightly, the pain in his sides momentarily forgotten. “You’re either foolishly overestimating or brazenly mocking me. I can’t really tell which one.”

Knox’s puzzled expression turned thoughtful before blending into a look of dawning realization. “Oh…you don’t know,” he turned to Xen. “You didn’t tell him?”

In an instant, Xen flashed before Knox, grabbing him by the throat and hauling him off the ground. Although Aaron’s body was equally tall and built, Xen didn’t seem to be exerting too much strength while dangling him a foot off the ground.

“Shut your mouth before I rip the next words out—along with your throat,” he gritted out, a choir of multiple voices rumbling from him. Like a horror movie soundtrack.

“Don’t kill him,” Evan added quickly when fire cracked between the fingertips of Xen’s free hand.

But Knox didn’t seem to mind losing Aaron’s body. He could simply possess another mind if this one was destroyed.

He laughed, straining out through the grip around his throat. “Xen, you’re truly cruel, vicious. You wouldn’t even tell the boy why you’re clinging to him, why you’re so desperate to protect him, why you can’t stay away—” Xen’s fingers dug into his throat, and Knox choked, his face beet red as blood pooled in his mouth. Yet, he continued with a maniacal laugh, “You didn’t tell him that you…killed him a long time ago, did you?”

The words hadn’t fully left his lips when Xen flung him away, and he crashed into one of the trees. The trunk snapped in half under the assaulting impact before Knox tumbled to the ground, spitting blood.

Evan stood still inside the barrier, those words ringing in his ear.“You killed him a long time ago.”

Killed whom? Killed me? But…I’m alive…?

He looked down at his bloody hands just to make sure hewasalive. His eyes unfocused. A ringing went off in his ears, like two invisible hands had cupped him deaf. And inside that closed cavity was a voice calling his name. Again and again.

So familiar.

Evan. Evan. Don’t listen to him… Evan. Evan. Evan.

Shaking his head, Evan stumbled sideways, leaning against a pillar as his pupils dilated and shrank. “What—who…?”

Outside the barrier, Xen stalked towards Knox, who was grunting as he straightened from the ground. He licked the blood from his lips and grinned. “Oops, did I scrape old wounds?”

Before Xen could sink his claws into him, Knox reached forward with one hand, fingers curling as if beckoning something closer.

Through his daze, Evan’s eyes flashed. “Behind you!”

Xen merely shifted an inch without looking back, and a golden light whipped past his side, obediently landing in Knox’s hand.

He gripped the stalk of the golden spear, half of it smeared in Zeev’s blood. Knox licked the crimson off the metal tip, eyes seeming to glow brighter as he tasted a Hellguard’s blood.

Zeev’s chest still moved, only slightly. Blood gushed from the hole in his chest. He wasn’t healing any faster than a human, probably because of his low demonic energy levels.

“Do you recognize this?” Knox held up the golden spear, grinning through bloody teeth.

Xen stared at him, and a flicker of something close to pity surfaced in his eyes. “Give up. You don’t have a place in this world. You will never have a place inanyworld.”

For the first time since Knox had appeared possessing Aaron’s body, his mask of casual carefreeness cracked. His smile froze. Voice dropped. “I won’t?”

Xen’s look of indifference didn’t help his wounded ego, and for a moment, Knox looked like a child who’d just been made aware of the fact that Santa didn’t exist.

Then his purple eyes cleared.

“Did you forget how I came to be, Xen’areth?” Knox smiled anew, but something about that smile was so disturbing that the cult members’ chants faltered for the third time. “I only awakened after consuming the resentment of the many innocent lives who died atyourhands. You brought me into this world, so how could I not belong here?”