Page 29 of Beg the Night (Mystics of Ashora #1)

TWENTY-NINE

sinner

I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing in hopes that I could actually get some rest. I’d been lying here for hours when Athena shifted in the bed. She silently rose and crept toward the door, closing it behind her with a quiet snick.

If I were a normal, non-obsessed man, I would have minded my own business. But I wasn’t. I had completely lost my mind, had thrown all common sense out the window.

So I silently stood, made sure Mags was still fast asleep, then crept toward the door just as Athena had.

Rather than open it, I pressed my ear to it, listening.

“What do you want?” she whispered.

For a moment, I thought she’d heard me. But before I could respond, another whispered voice cut through the night air.

“I’m giving you one last warning, Thena. We can sneak out of here. We can be gone before the morning. They’ll have no way to find us.”

Katherine.

“Are you joking?”

A beat passed.

“I’m not leaving.” Athena said again, her tone full of fury. “These people need me.”

Katherine let out a derisive laugh. “You’re seriously choosing these people over your own family?”

“These people are my family now. Not that you could understand that kind of loyalty. And aren’t you the one who left your family in the first place?” The hushed whispers grew more intense.

“Oh, please. You wouldn’t know family if it was staring you in the face! It’s why you have none left! You killed Mother. You killed Kylar, then Father. That’s when I knew I had to get out of there. You even killed sweet Jasmine. I never could have imagined you’d be capable of that. And in less than thirty-six hours, you’ll have killed me, too.”

“Stop.”

I had to fight the urge to rip the door open and strangle the last breath out of Katherine’s pesky throat. She had no idea what the weight of a gift like Athena’s cost.

Athena had paid the price many, many times. In fact, she paid the price every time she closed her eyes, every time those tortured memories crossed her mind.

I would know.

“Have you told him all of it?”

“Stop it, Katherine.”

“Does he think the two of you are alike?” Katherine laughed, her tone pure malice. “Does he think you’re both death wielders, gifted with a curse and ready to slay the whole Ministry?”

“I said that’s enough !”

Neither sister spoke again, but there was a rustling of fabric and the sound of footsteps moving closer. “You’re a monster, Thena. You are worse than a death wielder. Worse than any tier three. You know that, don’t you? People like you have no redemption. Not after what you did.”

“Then why do you care? If I’m such a lost cause and you really think we’ll fail, then why not let me do it? Why not let me get caught? Why are you even here?”

“I’m trying to convince you to work for the greater good. Help the Ministry. At least then you’ll be killing for the right reasons.”

“What would you have done?” Athena asked, her voice wavering in a way that made my chest ache. “If you were me, what would you have done?”

I pictured the way Katherine scowled at her sister. No respect. No love. “If I were you, I would have killed myself a long time ago. The world would be a better place without you. And once the Ministry has you again, they’ll see it.”

I could barely hear the sound of her retreating footsteps over my own pounding heart. The door was opening before I knew what I was doing. Athena stood in the hallway, shoulders slumped, feet bare, her eyes glazed over.

When the door clicked shut behind me, I gently grasped her arm. “Hey,” I whispered. “What are you doing out here?” I wouldn’t stir up more pain by telling her I’d heard that entire, gut-wrenching conversation.

Athena opened her mouth, then snapped it shut without replying, her focus fixed on the floor in front of her. She was lost somewhere I couldn’t follow her, somewhere deep in the caves of her mind.

It killed me to see the pain, to know that I couldn’t follow her. I hated that Katherine had pushed her there with nothing but lies and hatred.

“Athena.” I ran a finger down the side of her face, trying to make her snap out of the trance. “Athena, come back to me.”

“I don’t want to be a monster.” Her voice had never sounded so weak. “I never wanted to be this person.”

“You’re not a monster. You know you’re not.”

She finally looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. “I killed my family.” The words were barely audible. “I wanted them dead. That’s why they are dead.”

A single tear crested her lashes and tracked down her face.

Without hesitation, I scooped her up and hugged her tight.

She was so tiny, yet she looped her arms around my torso and held me equally as tight.

Fuck, I could have died at the relief.

Like that, she cried. Her entire body shook. The tears came and came until they soaked my shirt. She buried her face in my chest, muffling her cries. Still, I held her. I would have held her forever.

“I hate who I am,” she whispered. “Katherine hates me, but it doesn’t even matter. Nobody hates me more than I hate myself.”

I didn’t think I had a heart, but I felt it breaking in that moment. Shattering. Icing over.

“Don’t worry.” I kissed the top of her head as if it would help. As if I could break through the numbness that had enveloped her. “I hate me, too.”

Her sister was wrong. We were alike. There was nothing Athena could do that would make me turn on her. She was part of me now. Her soul was part of my soul.

People like Katherine would never understand us. She would never know the feeling of standing in the darkness alone at night, wishing for pain, wishing for an ending.

Because even pain was better than living in this void. The apathy that spread like a disease, that called me home. That summoned me forward.

I couldn’t slip back into that trap. Not now. For years, I’d lived in the darkness, in the abyss. But then I met Athena.

And when she clung to me, when she sobbed against me, her body shaking, I realized I had escaped it. That was strange, wasn’t it? That we never knew we were out of that hole until we threatened to slip right back into it?

Part of that realization was terrifying. But the other part was comforting.

Like coming home.

I held Athena until her tears dried. Until her sobs were silenced. She didn’t try to explain. She didn’t have to. I wouldn’t ask. This was her battle, and she had been fighting it alone for so, so long.

She would never have to fight alone again.

“What are you doing awake?” she said, finally peeling herself from my grasp.

“I need your help with something.”

Before she could ask questions, I slipped quietly back into our room, tugging her along with me. The moonlight trickling in from the window was bright enough to illuminate all the lists and plans Benedict had written out. I took a seat on the floor beside them, and Athena followed my lead.

“What are you doing with these? You’re not changing the plan now, are you?”

I inhaled deeply, eyes closed, then blew the breath out and zeroed in on her. “No, I’m not changing the plan.”

She eyed me carefully, her eyes puffy and red. “Okay, then what?”

I picked up what I believed was the list Mags and Benedict had compiled of all the other known gifts in the army and handed it to Athena. “Read this to me.”

Lip caught between her teeth, she eased the paper from my grasp. “You want me to read you this list?”

“Yes.”

A beat passed. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to know what’s on it.” I nodded at it. “Now, please read.”

She looked down at the list, then back at me, then down at the list again. When her gaze returned to mine, her brows were drawn together, her eyes more focused than they had been all night. “You can’t read it?”

“If I could read it, I wouldn’t be asking you to do it for me, now would I?” The words were harsher than I had meant for them to be, but Athena didn’t flinch away. She didn’t laugh at me, either, which was a relief.

Not like I cared, dammit.

“But I’ve seen you reading. You read that book in the dungeons almost every night.”

I forced myself to keep my eyes locked on hers. “Pretending like I knew what the hell those words said was more entertaining than staring off into space. Please.” I motioned to the paper. “We don’t have all night.”

She cleared her throat, the sound loud in the quiet room. “Fine.”

And then, without even a snicker, she began to read.

Jumper

Earth manipulator

Water wielder

Mind reader

Advanced strength

Healer

Unknown—?

It was a decent list, but there would surely be more. More we’d yet to come across.

More like me.

“Does Margaret know?” she asked after a while.

“Does she know what?”

“That you can’t read? She clearly can.” She glanced at the page, then back up at me. “Considering she wrote this list.”

I shifted, stretching my feet out in front of me. “Like most people, she assumes I have the basic skill of literacy. My father taught her how to read. He taught me other things. It’s not important.”

She studied me a little too intently. It took more strength than I’d like to admit to not squirm under her inspection. I had never told anyone. It had never come up, really. Until now, I hadn’t been forced to read for survival purposes.

But now that she knew, would she see me as weak? As less than? I was Sinner, the terrifying tier three with literal death magic who couldn’t even read the damn list.

But she did not look amused.

She looked sad.

And somehow, that was worse.

“Okay.” I plucked the sheet from her hand and gave her another. “Now this one.”

She read every word from every sheet of paper on the floor, even the labels on the diagrams. Every note. She didn’t laugh once. Didn’t bring up anything about my deficiency.

She simply read.

And then she read them all again.

And again.

It wasn’t until the sun was nearly rising that my eyelids grew heavy. The last thing I heard before I drifted asleep was the sound of her voice.

And it replayed in my dreams, chasing away the nightmares, chasing away the horrors.

And I slept.

Thank god for shoes. Mine and Athena’s.

The others changed, too, no longer wearing those ridiculous white outfits. We packed the few items we had gathered over the two days at the inn, ate as much as we could handle, and hit the road.

I wouldn’t miss this little town. Crowded places weren’t for me. But I would miss the way Athena and Mags gawked at every tiny thing they passed, laughing and holding on to each other like they’d never seen anything better.

One of the delights they encountered was a dog wearing a sweater. It was fucking ridiculous.

We walked through town and into the woods, the same way we had come from. Benedict said it would be easier to jump from an open space.

Katherine remained silent. Thank fuck, too, because I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t draw blood if one shitty remark left her lips. Not after how she’d treated Athena last night.

The fact that every person in Athena’s family but Katherine had died?

It perplexed me. Deeply.

“All right,” Benedict said as we reached a small clearing. “There’s no going back once we’re there. We’ll be in range of the Ministry. There’s nothing we can do but move forward with our plan after this.”

Nobody spoke.

“Great. As long as we’re all on the same page.” He adjusted the strap of his bag across his shoulder. “Everyone hold on.”

Mags immediately wrapped an arm around Athena and held a hand out to Benedict.

Athena turned to me and smiled.

I twined my fingers with hers, ignoring the shadows that wanted to break free at her touch.

God, I hoped this worked.

“Three.”

I took a long breath.

“Two.”

Katherine pulled a silver object out of her pocket. I didn’t realize until it was too late that it was a small dagger.

No, no, no ? —

“One.”

She stabbed Benedict in the gut.

Shit.