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71

Need to Spill Blood

JEDIDIAH

I watched her go, my chest hollowing into a sinkhole as the reality of what I’d just said set in.

Holy fuck, I’m a piece of shit.

The walls breathed. The floor rose and fell. I wanted to hurl myself into the fireplace and let the flames devour me, ending my miserable existence once and for all.

I’d vowed to protect her and had done the exact opposite so far.

“Well, that was abysmal,” Solaris muttered darkly.

I breathed hard, refusing to look at him. The insufferable cunt was right. What an absolute cosmic mockery.

“Yeah,” I rasped, scrubbing my hand over my face.

“She was assaulted and you blame her.”

“I don’t!” I snapped. I looked up to glare at him now. “I—it—that came out wrong. I just needed to know if—”

“If they raped her while wearing our faces?”

The weight of those words dummied me. I stood there with my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Solaris regarded me, his expression steeled, but I could see the wrath simmering behind his eyes.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I admitted, hanging my head. “Why would I say that to her? I—”

“It’s your fire,” Solaris supplied. “You have yet to master it. Fire makes people impulsive and rash. Fire makes it difficult to see the full picture where our emotions are concerned. You weren’t born a fire elemental, so you’re going to have to work extra hard to master it.”

I wanted to argue, but fuck, he was right again. I hadn’t felt like myself in months. I’d always had the potential to teeter on the brink of madness, but my earthling power had always pulled me back from the edge. With fire in my veins, nothing was stopping me from falling. And falling I was. Endlessly. I hadn’t stopped since my father pushed me off that cliff.

They assaulted her.

The ground under my feet trembled.

“Easy,” Solaris murmured. “She will be avenged, and it will be brutal and glorious. But not here and now. Rein it in.”

I clenched my jaw, attempting to quell my ire. The ground shook anyway.

“Of course you’re fine with it,” I hissed. “The idea that she would have us both. You’ve been pushing for this demented threesome this whole time. You sick fucking cunt. You must be thrilled.”

His face twisted with disdain, shadows whispering around his arms and hands. “It is you who is ruled by carnal urges, not me. That is not how I see us.” He stepped closer, glaring demonically at me. “And if you think her being assaulted would thrill me, you are hopeless.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing sharply through my nose. “I need to spill blood.”

“And you will. Just not yet.”

My heart crashed, my entire body scorching. I managed to still the earth, but flames crackled over my fingers. I couldn’t just sit inside this mountain and do nothing. I needed to have a pile of dead vampires at my feet. I needed my father’s severed head mounted on a pike. I needed to tear gold masks off monstrous faces and send the pretenders back down to the Seventh Hell.

“You two need to reconcile,” Solaris declared. “You best go and try and redeem yourself.”

“You tell me what to do one more time, man, and I’m going to cave your skull in.” I stepped closer to him, a cruel flame igniting in my stomach. “Are you sure you want the three of us in close proximity? Are you actually prepared for that?”

He watched my face, saying nothing.

“You do know we fuck, her and I, right? Sometimes she demands it.”

A whir of black came at me so fast I didn’t have time to blink before he crushed me against the wall, his forearm pressing against my throat. His lips tore back into a snarl, his eyes gleaming with fury. “Watch it.”

I snapped a laugh, not bothering to fight back. “It’s just the truth. You’ve been trying to wrangle the three of us together but I think the reality of what that means will drive you mad. She is a needy little thing, and I’m more than happy to —”

“Mind your fucking tongue when you talk about her.” He pressed me harder into the wall before releasing me and stepping back. He glared at me, his chest rising and falling. “As I said. It is you who’s ruled by carnal urges, not me.”

“Me and her,” I taunted.

He sneered. “Are you trying to make me jealous, Jedidiah? You think I am unaware of your relationship?”

I scoffed, smoothing out my shirt.

“Besides, after the egregious stunt you just pulled, I’m not sure she’ll be so open to you anymore.”

My face fell.

He grinned. Turned away and strode to the other side of the table. He stared down at it, at the different lit-up landmarks. Though I suspected he was seeing something else, lost in thought.

I sighed. Decided to throw in the towel. For now.

I snapped my fingers and the glass doors to the liquor cabinet opened. A bottle of bourbon trailed by two short glasses floated over on a gust of my kinetic power, landing gently on the war table. I pulled out a chair and sat down, motioning for him to do the same across from me. “Sit. Drink.”

He cocked a brow, suspicion festering in his glare.

The liquor bottle opened and tipped itself over to pour us each a glass. I grabbed mine right away and swallowed the contents in one go. Waved my hand so the bottle poured me another.

“Fucking sit down, Solaris. Have a conversation with me, man to man. No games or gimmicks or fucking ulterior motives. Just be a person for once.”

He didn’t move.

I scoffed. “Figures. Nyx told me once before that you’re not a person. She said you’re a character. I see what she meant now.”

A flicker of hurt flashed across his face but it was gone in a blink.

“If you think I should go after her right now, you don’t know her. I crossed a line. If I don’t let her cool down, she’ll drop this whole mountain on my head.” I sipped my drink. “Not like I wouldn’t fucking deserve it.”

Solaris pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. Slowly, gingerly, as if he might set off a bomb if he moved too fast.

We sat across from each other, neither of us trying to pulverize the other, and the entire universe seemed to take a wistful breath.

“I don’t think you know her at all, actually. You think you do but you don’t. You don’t see how good she really is. She’s a good girl, deep down. With a good heart. Her personality is armor, but there’s more to her underneath.”

He almost grinned. “She said something similar to me about you.”

I tried not to let my face show what that did to me. Even though she was wrong. There was nothing good or redeemable about me. I kept proving that over and over.

Solaris stared down at his drink as if it were a cup of dirt and worms. But he grabbed it anyway, bringing it to his lips hesitantly. Grimaced as the liquor burned down his throat. He even coughed, which made me bark a mocking laugh.

For a while, we said nothing. We drank instead.

Only when I could no longer stand the inner suspense, I asked, “What are they?”

He blinked those freaky silver eyes at me blankly. “What are what?”

I looked into my glass, trying to find the words. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl. I didn’t want what I’d seen in the shadows to change how I felt about Solaris. I didn’t want to empathize with him. No matter what he’d been through, it wasn’t an excuse for his evil behavior. I mean, we were sitting in the remains of the academy he’d vanquished! Hundreds of people— my friends—dead—erased from existence, like nothing.

Even before I’d been shown, I knew he’d grown up in a hellish environment. Seeing it for myself, though… I couldn’t help but imagine myself in that situation.

What kind of person would I be if I’d grown up that way?

Worse than him , my conscience taunted.

I balled my hands into fists. “The Gold Masks…”

“Ah.” Solaris swallowed. “So you do remember what you saw.”

I glanced up at him. His face was unreadable.

“Yeah.”

“I cannot be sure. The voice in the dark told me they were invaders from a red star. Most of them did not physically survive the descent. The ones that did were incredibly disfigured. Except for one.”

A cold sweat trickled down my spine. “The voice in the dark ?”

“Mhm.”

I let that one roll over me. “And it told you…that they are not of this world?”

“Right.”

“The one who survived the descent… Aries?”

“Of course.”

I felt like I might tip over. I clutched the glass of bourbon as if it would steady me. “And you believe it? The voice in the dark?”

Solaris’s expression was wistful. “I didn’t always but I do now. It is the light that deceives. Darkness is the truth.”

My mouth opened and closed. It took me a minute to form a coherent sentence.“What it did to that child…”

Solaris waited for me to elaborate or form a question.

“Is that…do they still…?”

“They have to, I believe. I don’t know how often. Eventually, their decrepit form begins to rot, and if they don’t consume life force—the purer, the better—they will perish.”

My skin erupted with goosebumps. I had grown up around those fucking monsters. They were always lingering in the castle when I was a kid. Sometimes I’d catch their masks fixed on me. Watching me. I’d always sensed the hunger. I just hadn’t realized it was fucking literal.

“Christ,” I muttered, swallowing the last of my drink.

“For now, we don’t need to focus on Aries or his phantoms. What we need to do is secure an army. We will steal my sister’s.”

My face crumpled. “What? No fucking way. I’m going to kill every single one of—”

“Only Ra’ah, Varian, and Luc need to die for what has been done. The rest must be spared. You saw them yield to Nyx. They bowed their heads to her and her dragon. They’re already second-guessing their loyalty to Ra’ah. All we need to do is move in at the right moment.”

I sucked in a sharp breath through my nose. “Even if we did get them on our side—on her side—what good are they? There were only a hundred of them, and a bunch died. That’s hardly an army.”

“Oh, there are more. Many, many more. Powerful vampires, Celestials, and mortals alike.”

I scoffed. “Mortals? What the fuck do we need mortals for?”

His expression turned grim. “We need the numbers. It will only be a matter of time before Aries starts playing his cards and he has more at his disposal than you can possibly imagine. He can turn the entire city into a weapon if he chooses, so we need as much of the city on our side as possible. The only reason he has left us alone all this time is because he believes we are going to be the catalysts into his much-awaited apocalypse. Once he realizes we aren’t… Well, then the war will begin. A war that is far bigger than the divides between Celestial and mortal.”

I had so many fucking questions. My head was going to explode.

“Aries is…hoping for an apocalypse ?”

Solaris nodded. “Yes.”

“ Why ?”

“I have theories as to why, but I do not know for certain.”

“And he thinks we are going to bring it on?”

“The voice in the dark told me he believes in an old prophecy. He thinks Nyx and I will bring about the End Times. In fact, he’s counting on it.”

“Who the fuck is this voice in the dark?”

He shrugged. “A great and terrible mystery.”

I scrubbed my hand over my face. Fuck, I was too exhausted to process all of this information. Still, I kept pressing. “Why don’t we just go straight for him, then? If he’s the king of the world and he wants to see its end, all we need to do is take him off the board.”

The edges of his lips curved upward as he leaned forward. “It would be nice if it were that easy. But another would rise in his place. There are many, many beings loyal to his cause, and it is in our best interest to keep him at the head of the beast. For now. Our object now is to gather armies of our own. Nyx and her dragon will inspire loyalty. Everyone from Luna and Veneficus will drop to their knees when she returns as a dragon rider with an army of rebels at her back. It’s just the kind of revelation to finally wake them from their pitiful slumber.”

I grimaced. “A dragon rider? The dragon isn’t big enough to ride. You intend to wait for it to grow?”

He glanced out the window. “The moon is nearly full.”

“So?”

“When you found him down in the crypts guarding her tomb, was he the same as you’d seen after the Clash of Spirits?”

I thought about it. How much impossibly bigger he’d gotten so quickly. I swallowed and cracked my knuckles absently. “Are you saying he grows each full moon?”

“I believe so.”

“How do you know? The voice in the dark?”

He sat back, his silver eyes once again becoming guarded. “Never mind the many ways in which I know things. “All we can hope is that he will be great enough to bear Nyx’s weight. It shouldn’t be hard. She is exceptionally minuscule.”

Those words struck anger in me. “Yeah, she is. She’s practically emaciated. She needs to be eating properly, which she doesn’t. Both of you—I mean, my god.” I gestured sharply at him, at his ashen, ghostly appearance. “Just because you’re immortal doesn’t mean you don’t need food. If you are going to insist on the three of us sticking together, in this pit of a fucking mountain, no less, we need to take care of the basics. We need a stocked kitchen. She needs to eat and sleep and have a semblance of routine. She needs structure and—why the fuck are you looking at me like that?”

His lips were pressed together, his eyes shining. “You truly care about her.”

My mouth twisted. “Of course I fucking do.”

He nodded. Nursed his drink. “Good.”

“And she, for some unexplainable fucking reason, cares about us. She refused to leave either of us behind—nearly killed herself to save us. So, we need to man the fuck up. All this time, when we should have been protecting her and her peace through all this bullshit she’s been going through, we’ve been making it worse. I let my hatred of you cloud my judgment but I’m done. Don’t get it twisted, Solaris, I don’t fucking like you. But I’m not going to keep stressing her out by fighting with you. We’re going to put Nyx first now, yeah? And you—you’re not going to treat her like a caged bird. You’re going to allow her free will. Do you understand?”

He looked both impressed by my testament and close to slitting my throat. Finally, he gave the slightest grin, void of any warmth. “A conclusion I already came to myself long ago, Groundshaker. Congratulations on finally catching up.”

Punching him was tempting. I suppressed the urge, flicking my wrist for the liquor bottle to tip over to pour me another drink. “Good. And we need to get those manacles off. Your suffering hurts her. You…” The next words on my tongue should have been swallowed back, but the liquor had them rolling off of my tongue. “You should have seen her when you died. I thought…well, I didn’t know if she’d ever recover. I’ve never seen her like that before.”

Solaris winced as if he’d been slapped. His jaw went slack, his eyes shiny.

We stared at each other.

Then, quietly he asked, “Why would you tell me that?”

“You need to know. Maybe you’ll stop being such a demented piece of shit if you know.”

He nodded. Looked pointedly at his now empty glass. I cast a wave of kinetic power at the bottle so it poured him another. “She cares for you, too.” He looked into the brown liquor as he spoke. He didn’t elaborate.

“I know. I know she does. But she’ll never be mine, just like she’ll never be yours. Not wholly. She belongs to that dragon. Any shreds that are left of her belong to her coven. You realize that, right?”

He sipped his drink and gave me a sour face. “She is ours.”

I had to laugh. Harshly, humorlessly. “I wish I was that delusional.”