Chapter 64

64

SYLAS

The Not-So-Distant Past

Braden went upstairs while I considered what my fate would be. If I used my stone to facilitate their powers, absorbing everything bad that was going to happen to them, I would be able to keep Mina—and our child—safe from me.

Forever.

And when Braden returned, it was with Trent in tow.

I sensed the other man's apprehension. "He just wants to kill us both at the same time, you idiot."

"No. Only one of you," I said, appearing solid enough to sit on the altar-tongue, casually holding my hourglass on my lap. "I don't actually care who it is. I just assume that the weaker one of you will die—and the other will get to be the one who replaces all of this," I said, gesturing downward, "with an actually functional system. All I need is Mina's safety, and fresh blood." I ticked my two requirements off on my fingertips—and Trent reached into his pocket.

He produced a switchblade and jabbed it into Braden's throat, before the other man could turn to give him a look of surprise. Braden sputtered, his hands flailing over Trent's, trying to remove the weapon.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," I counseled. "Unless you'd like to bleed a whole lot faster."

Braden gave me a haunted look, and I gestured Trent to bring him over. "I want his blood in the grooves," I said, just to make the man work for it, and Trent warily lugged his friend forward, planting his neck in the right spot, before reclaiming his weapon.

"So you're the ruthless one?" I said.

"I am," he answered, cleaning his knife's blade on his jeans before folding it shut again.

"What a pity. I was hoping most you would die," I told him. "So listen to me when I tell you this. If anyone in your organization so much as injures a hair on Mina Moore's head, I will consider our pact null and void, and I will come out and kill all of you all, on my way to kill her."

"Hmm. It seems like I have the upper hand."

"Only for as long as you don't fuck up. So—don't. If you like living, and providing for the rest of your fraternity, that is. And you never sacrifice another girl again. In fact, if I were you," I said, leaning back to pull the pit's door open with the chain, "I would forget that this place even exists. I would write it out of your histories, and fill the rest of this cavern up with dirt."

"And what about the ink? To connect us to you?"

I let myself drop into the tangled morass of fate below, taking my hourglass with me. "Conserve it as you have been. The theory will be the same—I will take on all of your bad fates, commingling them with mine—but you will not ever have any more ink to create with, because this pit will be locked. From the inside. Irrevocably."

I lay down on top the bright and twining strands, feeling them welcome me, even as what was left of me that was real felt old bones grinding beneath me below.

I opened my arms wide, grabbed hold of the edges of the pit's covering, then hauled it closed above myself, hearing stone grind over stone, as I fell into my fate.