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Sinner’s End (Forgotten Shadow Lords #1) Chapter Twenty-Two 62%
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Chapter Twenty-Two

The Sins of Us All

Lethe

Harken’s walls drip with silence and death.

The wake of the succubus is worse than any of us could have imagined. Gore of every description sprays the stones that no longer speak. Their tears have been covered with the stench of ultimate, unhinged indulgence—and not just that of the creature we let roam the halls while we hid away and defiled the most beautiful sacrifice offered to us.

What I gave to her, before Mana shoved his way between us.

I could have sworn I saw something precious that stirred in the soul-deep pools of her eyes before he cut into our peace, something that wrapped itself around us. I love her, and for a moment, just a brief space in time, I thought perhaps she recognized the link between our souls long enough to love me back.

Now that connection has shattered, and all I was is … lesser. What I was meant to be for her isn’t anymore. Yet here I kneel on the blood-drenched stones that refuse to chatter, drowned in their silence, scrubbing away at the souls of others that are too shell-shocked to recognize their own demise just yet.

Perhaps that is my penance in this place. To be the shepherd to these lost, pithy creatures and guide them into whatever afterlife they have earned for themselves when I can’t remember the fate I created for myself.

“Wallowing gets you nowhere,” Bowen coos from his place above me where he scrubs lightly at the walls. His work does little but spray extra goop across the floor and at me, diluted by pink foamy suds.

Gray matter and glistening entrail remnants drip onto my filthy sleeves. I shake them off or try to, muttering to myself, but the color sticks. Soon enough I’ll look like him, another tarnished, vagrant soul endlessly wandering this plane.

“What do you want?” I don’t look up, unwilling to allow him to decorate my face with the same decrepit offering in a parody of Mana’s playtime with our mutual obsession last night.

“Why do you let Mana treat you like you’re worth less than a shit stain on his floor?” Bowen asks, dropping his darkly playful manner.

I blink at him. “Why do you suck his cock and let him treat you like his bitch?”

Bowen stares at me for a moment before his head tips back. He lets out a barking laugh that echoes along the corridor that should remain silent in this time of mourning. “Touche, little cherubin. It’s good to know you have heart. You’ll need it.”

My eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

His crooked smile comes too easy and sits far too wrong on his filthy face. “She’s not safe with him. With either of them.”

I scoff. “I suppose you think she is with you.”

That smile sharpens, along with fangs that extend to dent his plush, bruised lips. “Oh no, broken one. She is most definitely not safe with me.”

“What, then?” I swallow, unsure where he’s leading with this line. That he called me “broken” hits too close to home, though I don’t claim one of those, either. “What do you want?”

Bowen watches me for a long moment before he drops to his knees at my side, his head bowed with grief, or at least the facade of it.

With him, I never know what to believe, and with his next words, I can’t accept the risk, only the responsibility he places at my dirty, worthless feet.

“You must take her away. Because here, she’ll die.”

****

The eerie silence that follows my muted footsteps annoys me in ways I can’t fathom as I stalk the lower halls. After hours of ruminating on Bowen’s well-laid comment—no doubt as the man designed—and scrubbing every stone that refuses to give me its secrets, I follow my sense of unease to Harken’s underbelly. Not in search of the woman who consumed me, but toward the demon I despise but cannot escape.

I find him strapped to the chair he hates almost as much as he hates himself, his mortal flesh already sagging as his life force drains away into glowing beakers lining the bench beside him. Tubes stick out at all angles from his body like something out of one of Kaleb’s beloved horror movies.

The human might like to pretend he’s normal, but his dark streak will be his undoing with Adreana. I know this as much as I know Bowen’s disturbing words are true. But I cannot force myself to act on them.

Yet.

“How long?” I murmur, tracing one of the green, fluid-filled tubes with a fingertip as Mana deflates visibly before my eyes.

One finger flicks on the arm of the wooden chair that used to suck souls from this world via the conduits of electricity and a steel arm situated above his head, all in the name of therapy and lies. Now, it serves as a torture chamber for a demon who made a deal he cannot unmake.

The longer I stay on this plane, the greater clarity I gain, the more truths I understand.

My own penance for falling in love with the creature I am supposed to protect. She will die here. Now that I’ve heard those words, I will not easily forget them. But neither do I understand their meaning. Bowen, of course, chose not to illuminate me before he left Harken to do only deity knew what.

Adreana slept when I looked in on her, and I was loathe to wake her resting form. Her body draped over Kaleb’s, and the human half-spawn winked at me as he toyed possessively with her hair. A growl embedded itself in my chest and I turned away before I ripped him apart, one hair at a time. By the time I stopped staring he passed out beside her, his humanity a weakness that left him vulnerable at such a time.

But shredding him would only earn me a tortured place beside Mana, and not with her.

My touch drifts from the tubes attached to the mechanical equipment draining the demon and over Mana’s dulled flesh, the contact giving me the answers I seek with a finality that makes me want to rip my hand away. But he chooses to suffer alone, and that gives me a sort of pause that makes me want to stay and share his pain.

“It’s as much an addiction for you as it is for them, isn’t it?” I muse, brushing his thick, black hair back from his face.

A rumble of visions slides across my mind like a broken film: Adreana becoming a twisted puppet like her sister, unable to act for herself, dancing for him, with the crowd in his nightclub, each only an empty vessel. Losing herself over and over, giving more of herself to him until there is nothing left of the woman I protect. Of the woman I love.

The demon gliding through her home at Sinner’s End but unable to step foot across the hallowed ground beyond, bound by the tethers of the agreement with his master. A weakness amongst a plethora of strengths.

Mana stares up at me through listless eyes, and I wonder if he sees what I see. Regardless, I make my decision on the spot.

“She is so beautiful, but she’s not for you. You understand that, don’t you,” I whisper as the Chemist does his rounds, making his passes across Mana’s body, collecting his payment from the demon’s body. He pays me no nevermind, as though he is not there at all. Even his body shifts, gliding semi-transparently across the floor. “He is not our concern,” I wave him away as Mana’s eyes seek out the only other assistance in the room that will not help him. “I’m taking what you want most, and you will not be able to reach her. You’ve shown yourself to me, you see.” I touch his forehead in a sort of benediction, a blessing. “You can’t cross by the graves beyond the house. And so that’s where I will take her. Beyond your reach. And you will live this life and die without her.” I press a kiss to his temple and whisper in his ear as his body flattens beneath mine, depleted.

“I won’t let her die here because of you.”

I walk out of his dungeon, the place where Mana has trapped himself with his little Chemist’s toys, and stop to scoop Adreana from beneath Kaleb’s arms. A light prayer carries an unnatural, deep sleep as I wish the human spawn sweet dreams, and carry her unscathed out of Harken to where Bowen has placed a car with a note tucked into the windscreen: I’ll see you soon.

I smile at no one at all as the sun rises high above Harken Asylum and shake my head, tucking Adreana into the back seat and wrapping a blanket around her prone, exhausted form. She curls into my touch, a sweet sigh eliciting from her tainted lips as I kiss her gently.

“No, Fallen. You won’t.”

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