Chapter 55

55

SYLAS

"The others will kill me!" the boy protested.

I wanted to shake him so hard I broke all his bones, but if I did he wouldn't be able to talk, so I waited. "That's what the last man told us. And yet he was left to die alone, strung up on a—Mina?"

"Goal post, baby."

"Ahh, yes. Goal post."

"Mina!" the boy shouted past me. "I didn't want to!"

"Then why were you first!" Mina shouted right back at him.

"It wasn't my decision," he said, with a sob.

She made a sound of disgust, before arching her eyebrows and tapping a finger on her lips. "Was it, or was it not, your dick? 'Cause it really seemed like it was attached to you, at the time."

"I could detach it now," I offered, and that broke something in the man .

"I don't want to die—I don't want to die," he started blubbering, and I knew he'd reached the point of madness there was no returning from, and thus was useless to us. I set him down while still maintaining a hold on him, and Mina walked up, frowning.

"I have had to deal with all your shit in my head, and on campus, and in my life, for six months now, and you can't handle a minute-thirty?"

That didn't stop him from blubbering—he just reached for her ankles in supplication. I yanked him back. He didn't deserve to touch her, not now, and not then. I bound him up completely, so he could neither hear, see, or speak. "I'm afraid I need to eat his memories, my queen. He's past the point of reasonable interrogation."

Her flashing eyes met mine. She knew what that meant. "Yeah. Get to it."

"Here, or..." I said, offering to portal him away.

"No, please don't open a sewer lid again, this room is too small. Just do what you have to do. I'll be waiting," she said, and turned her back on me.

I reached for him, and then I hesitated, for the first time in centuries.

I didn't want to know his thoughts or read his mind. Kill him, yes. Know him, no.

"It's okay, Sylas," Mina said, looking back over her shoulder. Her arms were crossed but she gave me an encouraging nod. "I love you."

"And I love you," I told her—and then reached into the shroud of my smoke to begin chipping away at the top of the man's skull like I was entering a hard-boiled egg.