Chapter 38 Ezekial #2
“Easy, mate. We’ve got you.” Sai’s on his knees, markings flaring once more, covering Kane’s body in blue.
Julien crouches beside Sai, lifting Kane against him, slicing his wrist to pour blood into Kane’s mouth.
“We have him, he will heal,” Julien assures me, his voice steady, but his eyes aren’t.
My brother is alive. The rune worked. So why do we feel…
The woman—Jasmine, collapses.
I flit to her, catching her unconscious body just before she hits the ground.
She’s breathing, barely. But thank the Goddesses, she’s alive.
Why does that fill me with bliss? She almost killed my brother, us all…
Sai flits beside me. His eyes narrow as he peers down at her, tilting his head. “She should be dead,” he mutters, more to himself than me. Then in our minds. “Do we... Do we take her to the Pit?”
A normal response, standard protocol. We always take high value targets to the Pit, a middle realm, a prison. A place of torture where time is slower, and the interrogations can last longer.
So why does Sai even ask? And why does he sound so… revolted?
“She’s a threat.” I didn’t even notice Julien flitting to us. “We should—” He pauses, hesitating. It’s so unlike him. “It would be wise to… not let her wake.”
Why can’t he say it? If she wakes, she could send us all to the ground again, she could kill Kane. So we need to ki—
She murmurs, and every head turns to her. Even Kane, pale and weak, flits to us at the sound.
Her words are so soft, so broken. They don’t quite reach my ears yet… they reach somewhere deeper.
I feel them.
My fingers brush her bloodied cheek, I don’t even remember deciding to do it, I just… wanted to touch her.
Prospero’s beside us, looking down at her in my arms. “It’s done. The rune is settling.”
I stare at her.
At the woman who nearly destroyed us.
At the woman who is an enemy.
At the woman I am terrified to let go.
“What did they do to you?” I murmur.
She was running, I remember. Something had entered the district, and we tracked it to her. She flitted so quickly, like her life depended on it, because the Cloaks were after her too. We intercepted them, killed them and she finally stopped flitting. And then… we were in The Divide.
And now…
She’s wearing our enemies’ clothing. A heavy green cloak.
She’s my enemy. Our enemy.
We’ve killed countless before, so why can’t I—
Why can’t I?
She convulses. Horrified, I search her body for the reason, desperate to stop it.
“What the fuck is happening?” I rush out, seeking out Prospero. “Is it the rune?”
“No,” he breathes, looking just as scared. “No… that’s already settled, this is something else.”
“A compulsion.” Julien kneels, studying Jasmine’s shuddering body. “We’ve seen this before, death before capture, it’s the Order’s fail-safe.”
He touches her throat, his fingers lingering. “She’s dying.” His hand twitches. “I could ki—”
No.
“I’ll erase it.” The words are out before I fully think them.
“Ezekial…” Julien warns, but he doesn’t say no.
No one does.
A fresh start. That’s what I can give her. I’ll erase all of her memories and give her a new life far, far from this. From them. From whatever hell my father’s followers inflicted upon her.
“She won’t remember,” I whisper. “Not this. Not us, or them. She’ll get to start over.”
Prospero stiffens. “Ezekial—”
I cup her shuddering face in my bloody palms, and without hesitation, without listening, I step into her mind.
Blockades. Walls. Endless mazes. I can’t access anything.
Her memories are buried so deep, tightly locked away in a chasm of shimmering webs and shadowed stone. Light pulses through the cracks like veins of molten gold, winding through the dark.
Just like mine.
Because we are the same, her and me. She and I. Light and dark entwined.
The further I push, the more I see it, the way her mind flickers between opposing forces: warm glows of silvery white clashing against oily swirls of ink and shadow.
It’s beautiful chaos.
Powerful.
She wasn’t built to belong to either realm. She shouldn’t exist.
And yet, here she is.
Just. Like. Me.
I wish I had more time, I wish I could just speak with her—
But she’s dying, still convulsing in my arms. There is no time. I need to erase the compulsion and with it, everything attached to it.
Everything.
I push deeper and deeper until I feel something pull. A thread unravelling—
Outside of her mind, I can still hear and feel. Sai gasps, his markings explode, the heat grazing my skin, then they dim, snuffed out like a dying flame deprived of oxygen.
Julien mutters something in another tongue, gripping my shoulder tensely.
But I keep pushing, and the thread keeps unwinding.
“Ezekial—” Kane’s voice, distant yet urgent. “Stop… don’t…”
His fingers wrap around mine. He’s trying to pull me back, away from her, but I can’t. I can’t let her die!
Then I feel it, that thread, taut and invisible, the one winding through her and… us. Not just me, but the five of us—binding us together.
I still.
There.
I should’ve noticed it before.
She’s there.
In The Divide, the way it tugged at me, called to me.
She’s…
I realise it now, too late. I’m always too late.
When the rune had finalised, when she collapsed to the ground, caught between life and death, her shattered pieces reached out for ours and she…
She tied herself—to us.
We…
She’s ours.
We…
We bonded.
It’s there… a flicker, an ember… but now it’s smothered.
Buried beneath something ancient… The rune.
The rune I ordered.
I did this.
I created this hollow, agonising, never-ending ache we all feel.
It’s all because of me.
And now, it’s too late.
No.
I’ve already pulled too hard.
No… NO!
The compulsion gripping her lungs snaps, and with it—
“Ezekial.”
Her voice.
Not spoken aloud, but… inside me. Inside my head. Through our bond.
But it’s too late.
I realise it all.
Too.
Late.
No, no, no…
I’ve erased it all.
Come back to me.
Every memory.
Please come back to me.
Even the ones we had of her…
Please…
Darkness descends.