Page 22

Saeran

Watching my Fae grow and find themselves again—have families, find love, teach the next generation as much of our legacy as we can—is a particular kind of nightmare. It brings me pride, and envy in equal measures. Gluttony should be here to witness this, to be part of it. I miss him every day with a ferocity that brings me to my knees.

Emrys, one of the two Seven Sons born under the sun, and once a close friend and confidant, looks down at himself. There’s a smirk on his face that I’ve never seen on him before. It looks wrong, twisted. This isn’t him. It can’t be. It has to be an imposter wearing his face.

“It was you.” The pain in my chest hurts worse than the dull ache in my shoulder. “You’re the one who helped them, the reason they got in so easily.” I knew that someone had to have betrayed us. But I didn’t expect it to be one of us . It never crossed my mind. Even the idea of the Sins being involved never struck true for me.

The smirk deepens, a dimple appearing. “Don’t sound so shocked, Saeran. You’ll hurt my feelings.”

“No. No, this can’t be right.” My mind reels, trying to make sense of this. Emrys is the one who doomed us all? He wouldn’t. It’s not in his nature. He was loyal to us. “I refuse to believe that you would betray Greed like that.”

His bright sunset eyes flicker. “A regret.”

I laugh mirthlessly. A regret? Is he fucking kidding me? “You killed him.”

“Not by my hand.”

“He fucking died anyway!” I yell furiously. Movement is difficult after that knock, breathing a struggle. Somehow I manage to get myself to a standing position. The sheer power that Emrys commands isn’t his. I’ve never felt that from him before, from any of us. It’s more than he was ever capable of. It has to be part of how they were so easily able to kill us all. Where are they getting it from? What forces have they called upon, and what did they sacrifice to get it? No power like this is gained without giving up something in return. Something important.

“Why are you doing this?” I choke out. I thought he’d died in the flames of our home. He’s never resurrected, and I’ve never been able to work out why. I thought maybe his soul had needed more time to heal. He’d always been the most vulnerable of us. I’d give everything to remain ignorant and stay in the dark.

“How are you alive?” Emrys asks. “I felt you through the shroud. You’re supposed to be dead, along with the rest of you.”

So casually throwing all the Sons into the bowels of the beyond, like he doesn’t care. How is this the man I once would have laid down my life for? “You did this. You destroyed everything . Our home. Our people. Your own guardian! For what? Tell me what was worth this.”

Emrys approaches and wraps a hand around my throat, lifting me off my feet and slamming me against the wall. I’m powerless to stop him. If he wants to kill me here, I can’t do anything about it. Not with the strength he possesses now.

“I didn’t betray anyone.” He hisses as if something I’ve said has offended him. “I did what I had to.”

“You had to kill your own? You had to betray all of us and hunt us to extinction? You would have felt your soul ripping out when Greed died! That’s ‘what you had to do’?”

He squeezes my throat harder. “You wouldn’t understand. Why didn’t you stay hidden? Why couldn’t you leave it alone?”

“You know why.” The moment my hand touched Gluttony’s, there hadn’t been any way to stop this. I should have stayed away, and I couldn’t. Not anymore. “I tried,” I say brokenly. “I tried so hard, Em, I spent so many years alone.” Lonely, miserable years thinking that all my family and my friends were dead because I was too weak to help them.

And here he is. Alive. And a traitor.

Emrys curses in Gaelic and lets me go, throwing me down to the ground in disgust. “We weren’t here for you. The power we felt across the shroud, it wasn’t yours. It was someone else. Not anywhere near your power.”

“I know who it was.” Conor has no idea what he’s doing with the magic he’s been given, and the havoc he’s causing has consequences he can never imagine. If the Light are coming for him, he’s already dead. We all are.

“You aren’t going to tell me.”

I laugh again, borderline hysterical. “You expect me to help you kill more of us? Go to hell, Emrys. I’ll never forgive you for this.”

“I don’t need your forgiveness.”

“What do you need? What made all this worth it?” How could anything be worth betraying the person that was meant for him? Greed was his guardian, his protector, his lover. How could taking action that led to his death be worth it? I can’t imagine it. I could never do anything that I know would lead to Gluttony’s death. I’ve flayed myself alive to keep him safe. To keep them all safe.

The idea that someone I considered family could be the one that did this to us… The pain is unbearable. Why would he do this? What possible reason could he have to justify it?

“You won’t understand. You should have stayed dead.”

I want to throw the words back in his face, tell him that he should have stayed dead. But I wouldn’t mean them. How could I? I thought I was alone with my memories, and it turns out that I’m not. I share them with the man responsible for this. His intel would have been invaluable and paved the way for our end.

All I can do is stare and hope this is some kind of nightmare.

“I could kill you right now.”

“So why am I still breathing?” Part of me wants him to. I’m so fucking tired.

Emrys’ hand does that weird twitch again, and a muscle in his jaw moves. “Consider this a warning. When I tell them you’re alive—”

“I know.” They’ll be coming. After all this time trying to avoid this, it looks like Emrys is destroying everything a second time. The harbinger of everything that’s killed me every day for centuries.

Emrys takes one more look at me, and then he’s gone out the window. The urge to follow him is fleeting. What would I be able to do? He’s more powerful than me, especially right now. Whatever’s giving him power, it’s unique and painful. There’s nothing I could do even if I did find where he’s going. I have more immediate problems; he’ll have to wait.

The door bursts open, Riordan rushing through. “Saeran, the Sins are fighting the chimeras downstairs. I’ve sent for Diarmuid but—”

I’m already moving, heading for the stairs. I won’t make the jump, not if I want enough energy left to fight. I’m almost quite literally on my last legs, especially after the knock from Emrys. Whatever he did took more from me.

What is Gluttony doing? I gave Gyro instructions, and she wouldn’t have failed to deliver them.

The carnage outside is mayhem, and it takes me a few frantic moments to find Gluttony. To my far left, taking on three chimeras, with Gyro at his shoulder. Envy and Lazarus are nearby, with Lust, Deacon, and Wrath on the other side with the remaining chimeras. Contained mayhem, maybe, but we could have gotten out of this without a fight. Has no one ever taught them that the kick-in-doors method isn’t always the best way?

“Gyro was supposed to tell you to hang back!” I yell as soon as I get closer to Gluttony. I punch a chimera trying to bite me in the side of the head and pull my bow from my back. I’m lucky Emrys didn’t break it.

“You actually expected us to listen?” Gluttony asks. He grabs one of their faces and rips their jaw clean off, tossing it to the side. It gets back up in seconds, still snarling and biting. It runs straight for us, uncaring about the blood and sinew dripping from what’s left of its mouth.

Gluttony creates an illusion to his side, another version of himself. The chimera falters, looking between them, and then changes tracks, heading for the fake instead. It goes straight through, and lightning hits its tail. It yelps and twists around. Another strike, this time between its eyes. My nose wrinkles at the strong smell of burning flesh.

I fire an arrow into its side, knocking it off balance. Gyro jumps onto its chest as soon as it’s down and scratches around where its heart is, her claws digging in and ripping out flesh.

“There are innocents in this building, and I can’t have them getting hurt because you rushed in!”

“We weren’t planning on letting them get away alive,” Gluttony snorts. With a grin, he dodges a claw and then returns the favor, slicing its stomach open and then grabbing its throat, electrocuting it from the inside. “No faith in our abilities?”

“I don’t know,” I shoot back sarcastically. “Are they as good as your ability to listen?” Spreading my wings, I somersault over the chimera and sweep its legs out from under it. I stumble a little from the force of it, and Gluttony grabs my arm, steadying me.

“Should you be out here?”

“I’m not leaving you out here while I cower inside.” I’m not so useless that I can’t stand by his side, in all things.

Gluttony lifts a hand, and the illusion of a brick wall shields us. The chimera growls, stopping right before it, and then paces back and forth, looking for some kind of break in it to get through. It snaps its teeth in the air in frustration.

“That won’t hold for long.” What’s the purpose of it? Sneak around and surprise them from behind?

“Take a breath. Stand up. If you’re a liability, the only thing you’re doing out here is trying to get yourself—and others—killed. If you gave in and let us have what we both want, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Really? You’re bringing that up now?”

The second chimera joins the first and sniffs the wall. It’s working things out. It won’t be long before they come through. Some illusions can be made solid; this one is nothing but hope and dreams.

Gluttony cups my cheek and tilts my head up. “Let me heal you. If you want to fight, then do it. This half existence you’re living for some fucked-up-martyr reason? You aren’t of any use to anyone. Show me how good you are.”

I have no words to reply. All I have is me. He meets me halfway, our lips meeting hungrily. He lifts me up and into his arms, cupping my nape and holding me in place. He feels like an illusion as well, a dream conjured by my wildest fantasies, memories that have kept me warm all these years. Freedom from the chains that have weighed me down since that horrible night. He doesn’t look at me the same way he used to, but there are years of friendship, and then love, accompanying that look. He’s here, with me, wanting me, and that’s enough. It’s more than enough. The rest will come, just like it did before.

“Could you two focus, please?” Envy yells. One of the chimeras jumps through the wall, disrupting the illusion, but it doesn’t get more than two steps before poison-spiked vines wrap around its hind legs. The creature howls, and then Envy finishes it off by wrapping it completely in the vines and squeezing until it’s nothing but a pulverized mess on the ground. His self-satisfied smirk drops slowly, eyes un-focusing.

“Envy?” Oh no. I recognize that look. I’ve felt it before. He used too much magic, and he has no reserves left. How long has he been this bad without telling anyone?

Envy falters, knee wobbling, and then he goes down. He hits the ground before any of us can get to him, falling unnaturally still.

“ Envy!” Lazarus yells and gets to him first, scooping him up and into his arms. He presses fingers to Envy’s neck. “He’s not breathing. Envy, wake up. This isn’t fucking funny, you asshole.” He looks up at me, eyes wide. “Fix it!”

Why is he directing that at me? I’m no healer even if I had the energy to do anything. Besides, it doesn’t look like we need one. “You already are.” Color’s returning to Envy’s face, and the ebb of his magic that had all but disappeared a moment ago is replenishing. Powering back up. Because of the demon?

All the Seven Sons are Fae; they can’t be demons. Our blood doesn’t mix well with their kind. And yet I can’t deny that it’s Lazarus’s touch that’s reviving Envy. Only one person in existence can do that.

“What the fuck?” Wrath breathes out as he, Lust, and Deacon join us.

“I’m more concerned about what happened in the first place,” Lust says, frowning. “Was he injured?” Deacon moves closer to Lust, who rests a hand on his hip, keeping in contact.

“He just dropped,” Gluttony replies gruffly. “One second he was fine, next second he was dead.”

“Dead?” Lust’s eyes widen.

“He’s alright now,” Gluttony says, shrugging. “Ask Zara; I don’t know what happened.”

“He collapsed the other week as well, didn’t he?” Deacon says, glancing between us. “Is that normal for him?”

Wrath shifts his weight from one foot to the other, scowling. “No.”

“He’s depleted,” I explain. “We all only have a certain level of magic inside us, and especially for us—the Seven and their guardian Sins—we need constant replenishing. None of you have had that for a long time. Envy is worse off than you because he uses more every day, just dealing with the dead haunting him.” Trapped with them while they feed off him. He used to be able to shut them out, had ironclad control over them; they worked for him, not against him.

There’s only one way for him to get back to that place. I look down to where Lazarus is still holding Envy, cradling him against his chest. Murmuring something to him that none of us can hear.

Unfortunately, his recovery involves someone who’s married to another. What a fucking mess. How did they get themselves here? I don’t understand it.

“How does he ‘feed’ himself?” Lust asks. “He suffers enough when he raises the dead; I won’t subject him to more of that.”

“That’s the opposite of feeding him.” Every spirit he raises only adds to his burden. I don’t think he realizes just how many souls he carries. Not just this lifetime but the one across the shroud. He and Sloth were always the ones with the most volatile magic, not so easily contained as the rest of us.

“So what do we do?” Lazarus asks through gritted teeth. “All this information is useless if you can’t tell us how to make him better.”

“It’s… look, I can explain more, but we can’t stay here. More chimeras will come.” And along with them, Conor. Complications we don’t need right now. They need to leave, and I need to finish evacuating the building.

“ Tell us now ,” Lazarus demands.

It’s not really a conversation I want to have on the sidewalk, surrounded by chimera corpses. Apparently, we’re doing this here anyway.

“He’ll die if his sin isn’t fed.” Without his other half, Envy won’t make it much longer. He’s already too weak. If I’d known how close he’d gotten, maybe I could have done something about it sooner.

“And how do we feed it?” Lust repeats, frustration leaking into his tone.

“By silencing it.”

“I’m starting to get real sick of your riddles,” Wrath growls, taking a step forward and lifting a hand like he wants to strangle me.

Gluttony steps in his way without a word, standing tall and acting as my shield. I don’t need one, but it makes me feel warm and protected. Loved. I want to hold on to that feeling as long as I can.

“Lazarus,” Lust says slowly, catching on quicker than I thought any of them would.

“What?” Lazarus raises an eyebrow at Lust. “I don’t know what he means either.”

“Envy said that when you touch him, when you’re near him, he can’t hear the dead. You give him silence.”

I’m still not sure how this happened, how one of ours ended up as a demon. What will happen to him if his Fae blood activates? He could die. Worse. Or nothing could happen. We’ve never attempted it before, because the two races have never been compatible. Not that way. A union between the two has never resulted in a child, so there’s never been someone mixed. Lazarus will be the first. If he can tap into that half of him. Without a connection to Envy, a real one—not the one they’ve clearly been dancing around for years—he never will.

They’ll both eventually die because of it.

“Was Envy there when you created Zara?” I ask Wrath.

“Yes, why?”

His soul must have been pulled here because of him. “He drew you here.” The odds of that happening are astronomical. In fact, nonexistent. In all the possibilities I ever considered about reincarnation, demon was never one of them. What does it mean?

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lazarus asks.

“You’re his solace; you feed his sin. The same way that Deacon feeds Lust. That I feed Gluttony.” The way they feed us in return. Symbiosis that once kept us all sane and powerful. It didn’t save us before, but it should have.

“Nobody feeds me,” Gluttony says, affronted.

I beg to differ, though now isn’t the time to debate it.

“The point is that you’re the key to strengthening him. You need to be in contact with him, stay close.” Love him. I know better than to say that. With the addition of Raven, the entire thing is sure to blow up in everyone’s faces. Raven doesn’t belong, has no place here. Not in the middle of these two. But I can’t blatantly point it out that way. It’s clear that Envy and Lazarus aren’t where they need to be. Not yet. Soon if they want to survive.

Just like their souls, they’ll find their way back to each other. They have to. Any other outcome would be catastrophic.

“What do you mean by ‘stay close’?” Lazarus asks suspiciously.

“Preferably physical contact. Like what you’re doing now, when you brought him back like that.” It wouldn’t have worked if Lazarus hadn’t grabbed him so quickly. We’d been scarily close to losing the youngest Sin. I know more than anyone how everything can change in the blink of an eye. It hits so quickly that there’s no time to process until it’s too late. “It’s a slow process, with him being this bad.”

Lazarus’s mouth flattens, and he stares down at Envy. He looks peaceful like this, restful in Lazarus’s arms. There’s no evidence of what has to be eating him from the inside. A feeling I’m intimately familiar with.

“Now it’s time for you to leave.”

“For ‘us’ to leave?” Gluttony says, scowling. “And where do you think you’re going?”

“I need to help the others move the rest of the Fae here. There are—” I hesitate and glance to where Diarmuid’s hovering in the doorway, wings out. He missed the party. “There are tunnels below the building we use to move them around when we can.” It’s not always possible, as their locations are limited, but we use them when we can so that we don’t have to bring any attention to ourselves. There aren’t many of us—only a few hundred or so—and we try our best to keep to ourselves. With Conor on the rampage, and now Emrys back, it’s going to get harder and harder to keep ourselves in the dark.

Emrys. Alive. And a traitor. I rub my chest absently, wishing that particular ache would go away. I don’t know how to match the man I saw upstairs with the one I remember.

How do I tell Greed?

I don’t have to, of course; Greed doesn’t even remember. I owe it to him, anyway, even if the betrayal he would have felt won’t be there. Those memories don’t exist for him. There’s nothing for him to feel betrayed over. Greed will look at me with a blank face and not care that the man that’s supposed to love him, that he’s supposed to protect, killed us all. I’m not sure which side of that coin hurts me more.

“I have to help get them somewhere safe and secure. I’ll meet you at your estate when I’m done.” With Emrys on the board now, and with the fact that there are Dark Fae in the city exposed, safety is relative. We have to try and keep going the way we always do.

“If you aren’t back in three hours, I’ll hunt you down,” Gluttony promises, eyes hard.

“I’ll come back.”

I always do.