87. Scythe

Chapter 87

Scythe

A lmost a year after the fact, I return to the ex-Halfeather House, currently being re-built from the ashes. This time of night, the construction workers are long gone and I'm free to make my way inside.

Me and my horde, that is.

Me and my madness.

Scaffolding frames our entry into the wide darkened interior, where I make my way to the space the stairs once occupied. The burnt wood and melted metal has been removed and replaced with a ladder, and I climb down it quickly, years of scaling up and down a dragon making me limber.

It's pitch black in here, even my shark eyes are not enough to broach this midnight dark. I take the torch out of my back pocket and flick it on, angling it down the chamber.

Though the builders have swept away the debris and ash, the acrid smell of the dead and burnt still lingers. The obsidian bars to the cells are still intact but bent to either side when Xander bent them open to get us out.

I stop outside the cell I occupied during my time here and crouch down, brushing my fingers across the stone.

I'd first met her here. Her ballet flats had stopped right over this stone when she'd gifted me track pants.

It was the first time in memory that someone had sought to cover my body. She hadn't known what it meant to me then, and she still doesn't know what it means to me now. Without even knowing us as hers, she'd given Savage chocolate and Xander music. She'd given me clothes.

And that had started us down the path of tragedy.

A breeze tugs my attention away from the cell. A primal sense of warning. Foreboding.

Something is following me.

I turn around and beckon to my stalker. He appears, a ghostly, translucent grey, the bald eagle in the sweeping black robes, gliding over the stones.

After all this time, Charles Halfeather still haunts his old land.

"I thought we would build an empire, you know," he sighs, looking around wistfully. "Me and the girl. One that would surpass even Mace Naga."

I try to forget the fact he'd ordered my shoulder broken. I'd let him do it, just to see how far he'd go and I'd gotten my answer. I also try to forget the fact that he'd been this close to breeding Aurelia. "Instead, Mace played you."

"As he played us all. Even you. Even now."

The musings of the dead are not always helpful.

"I do what I must. I follow my fate."

"Fate," Halfeather spits. "Men like us carve our own fate. Look at me. The Wild Mother's gift to me was healing, and I flipped that on its head out of spite."

Instead of healing organs, he'd ripped them out of the innocent.

"She is yours now, I suppose?" he says. "Mace will see you and your entire institution dead for it. As he did me. Mark my words, do not underestimate that serpent. He came to me, you know, after my death."

"Who?"

"Mace. And his puppets. They have powers you can never imagine, shark king." Serpents are known for their black magic. I supposed that meant they contacted the dead too. Or perhaps just one of them did. "Look past the surface."

"Be on your way, Charles Halfeather," I instruct. "Go in peace."

"Look past the surface."

He disappears into the ether, and I shake my head, stepping into my old cell. I turn around and look through the opening in the bars, as if I can re-live the memory of her all over again. Before I'd known what she was, what she would become to me and my brothers.

The horde is a continued maelstrom around me. Swarming, raging, screaming.

Soon it will be gone. Soon it will all be gone.

I collect myself and head back outside to the car, where Rufus waits for me.

"Let's go," I rasp, getting into the passenger seat.

Rufus takes me to the ocean, where I hand him multiple envelopes with instructions, as I often do when I'm gone for a few days.

It's just that none of them will know that this time the conditions will be permanent.

After he goes, I stand on the silent beach for a moment, feeling the wind on my face, feeling the sand beneath my bare feet.

Something in my soul feels weary. Something in my soul feels so old. Bent and broken. It was always going to come to this. It was always going to end this way. Regina or not. Love or not.

In pain. In agony. With a bleeding heart and tears in my eyes, I brush a hand over my mating mark.

If you truly love a wild beast, you let it go. We will be free of each other now.

For the final time, I shed my clothes.

For the final time, I head into the sea and let her embrace me, like Aurelia never will, ever again.