25. Willing Captive #2
Had I waited even a fraction longer—who knows—but I don’t. I tear my hands apart, latching one around her throat, the other shoving her hand away, forcing the rope off my skin. The instant it breaks contact, my power surges back in a violent rush.
I gasp and stare up at her.
She stares back with undisguised fear shining out of her glorious pale eyes, which tells me all I need to know but don’t want to believe.
I hurl her off me and flip her hard onto the bed, bearing down—only for her legs to snap up between us. She kicks and catapults me across the room. As I crash into the shelves, books rain down on top of me.
I stare at her in shock.
She climbs off the bed and retrieves her blade from the floor at the foot of the bed. It’s as if she placed it there sometime recently for this possible outcome. Then she rises, slow and beautiful and deadly, to face the chain reaction she set into motion.
“Why?”
It’s the only word, the only question, I can give voice to.
Because how in the fuck has this day turned on me so completely? Why has the greatest moment of my immortal life fractured into a mirror of my past, into the same familiar horror I once lived through before everything went black?
Pollock, my twin, the other half of my soul, had done the same in the end.
He betrayed me.
I had given him loyalty far and above anyone else, revering our bond, believing it unbreakable. And he saw me as his rival for leadership—as something standing in his way of taking our father’s place as head of our clan. Had he simply asked, I would have gladly stepped aside without hesitation.
When our world fell into chaos and war followed, when those we loved died around us, one by one, and the strain of it stretched our bond to its breaking point, my fealty remained with him.
Instead of pausing—of speaking to me, of seeking counsel—he chose his own path. A swift, solitary one. A future where I was neither at his side nor guarding his back.
That was when I understood, too late, that my twin was not the man I knew him to be.
Not after the days.
The months.
The years we had shared.
Something had twisted inside him. I thought it was our uncle’s influence then, but I never had the chance to learn the truth. Or time to pull my brother back from the edge. Pollock would not listen to reason. He would not hear me. And in the end, he became a stranger wearing my twin’s face.
He buried the blade in my belly with a quiet, broken I’m sorry. And he watched me bleed out at his feet because he could not see past his own desire for power to understand that I would have given him everything. Leadership. Legacy. Loyalty. All of it. Freely.
Now, in this rebirth, he remembers none of it.
The end.
The betrayal.
My death.
Only I carry those memories.
And it is this cruel symmetry—this echo of fate repeating itself—that shatters the last of my restraint and sends me into a rage I never believed myself capable of, one born not of anger alone, but of grief that has been waiting centuries to be set free.
She moves fast, faster than I’ve ever seen a woman move before. The rope is clenched tight in her right fist.
Her blade flashes up a heartbeat later as she closes the distance between us. I step into her space instead of retreating, catching her wrist before the knife can find purchase. I drive her backward with my body.
She twists, fast and practiced, the rope snapping out toward me.
It brushes my forearm.
Power drains from me in an instant. It’s disorienting. My breath stutters, my balance falters, and she uses the opening to shove me away, forcing space between us.
I snarl, advancing again, refusing to give up. “Why are you doing this?”
She ducks beneath my reach and slams into me from the side, the impact knocking us both off balance.
I catch her mid-fall and turn it into momentum, lifting and forcing her against the wall harshly enough that it cracks.
She hisses, but the sound turns into a growl as she fights her way free, never loosening her grip on her weapon.
The rope comes again.
I barely avoid it.
Every near touch is a threat—every brush a reminder of how quickly she can reduce me to something else, a killable and breakable human, what I once was. I crowd her deliberately, pinning her in, forcing her to react instead of plan.
She answers with fury.
The blade scores shallow across my side, just enough to burn. I slam her into another wall, trapping her between it and my body, one forearm braced beside her head.
“Answer me,” I demand, breath ragged now.
With a humorless and breathless sneer, she says, “Because I don’t believe as you do.”
Her knee drives up, catching me hard enough in the groin that I groan and buckle forward.
She takes a step back and glares down at me. “You think this is justice?” Her voice cracks with emotion. “You think ending lives at the whim of any being—even God—is righteous?”
I lunge, catching her around the waist and hauling her against me. I cage her arms down. She fights like she has nothing left to lose, the rope sliding dangerously close to my thigh.
“It’s enough,” she continues, breath burning between us.
“What you’ve already done has set things in motion you can’t undo.
You’ve left them desperate. Of course, they turn on one another.
Of course, they steal and hoard. War will break out over the smallest thing because it’s what they know. They’re just trying to survive.”
She swings the rope.
My strength buckles.
She wraps it quickly around my neck as she pushes me back. The blade is pressed tip-first into my chest, and for one terrifying moment, I’m back there, and it’s Pollock, not her, and the memory of the pain is a shadow pain to her actions.
“This isn’t fair,” she says, quieter now but no less certain. “It’s cruel. The most unjust demand ever placed on the world.”
“Eridessa. Listen to—”
“No. You listen. Because the way I see it, you either don’t serve the God you think you do,” she whispers, unafraid, “or the one you serve has lost His way.” She practically spits the words at me.
My gut churns. Is this what she truly believes?
After all the time we’ve spent together throughout the night and this morning—was this her plan all along?
“Humanity should come first,” she says. “The righteous must survive. And there are righteous among them. I’ve seen it. It’s not as you said.”
The room feels too small for what tears through me.
Not just rage.
Not just betrayal—because this one cuts differently.
I could love this woman. And still she stands here determined to stop me from fulfilling the purpose that defines me.
Her face gives her away. The tight set of her jaw. The fire in her eyes. This isn’t fear driving her—it’s belief. Conviction so deeply rooted that it has shaped her bones.
“I believe that you believe that,” I say, my voice lower now, strained. “But what if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not.”
“But what if you are?”
The tension bleeds from my shoulders despite my better judgment.
“Eri,” I say quietly.
“What?” Her voice is guarded, wary.
“Give me a chance to explain it all then. There’s more to this—more than what I told you.”
She studies me then. Really looks. Searches my face for deception, for weakness, for any sign that this is another lie meant to trap her. Whatever she finds there makes her hesitate.
“Wear the rope,” she says at last. “It won’t kill you, but it will make you human. It’s the only way the two of us leave this room alive.” Sincerity bleeds through her voice.
“You won’t kill me,” I ask, “if I relent?”
Her gaze softens. “I hadn’t planned to,” she admits.
“I did—before, but I realize there is information I'm missing. I know that much at least. And I want to know more before I make a decision that could cost humanity hope.” She draws a steady breath.
“My goal today was to stop you. Not to kill you. Because I need to know what you know.”
My hands lift, palms open—not in defeat, but in peace. Or perhaps in warning. An unspoken I will not advance hangs between us.
Her grip tightens on the blade, but she doesn’t move.
“I’m trusting you,” I say quietly. “Don’t make me regret it.”
My gaze drops to the rope on the floor. I hesitate only a moment before walking toward it and giving her my back, fully aware of how exposed that makes me.
I bend and retrieve it.
My fingers close around it, and the moment the woven strands brush my skin, I feel the familiar dulling—my power receding, my humanity taking hold once again.
I don’t hesitate to wind it around my wrists, deliberately crossing it above them. When finished, I spin on my heel and hold them out to her.
“I’m placing my life in your hands,” I say.
“Risking everything. My purpose. My vow to God to serve him in this. To my brothers. Everything I am.” My voice roughens despite my effort to keep it steady.
“I’m asking you to keep your word. Give me enough time to tell you what I have come to know while serving in Heaven—all of it—before you decide whether I deserve to be put to death. ”
Her eyes flick from the rope to my face and back again. This is not what she expected.
“This is trust,” I continue. “Tenuous. Fragile. But it’s real, and I offer it up willingly.
You need only accept so we may start again.
” I step closer, just enough that she can see the truth in my gaze—how overcoming my fear of betrayal is the cost. And how I’m willing to pay it if it means what we’ve built here doesn’t die here.
The silence stretches, thin as a blade. And in that space, something settles in my chest—quiet, terrifying, undeniable.
She is worth the cost. The hope for more with her is, and I won’t see that crushed under the weight of who we are and who we serve in our own ways.
Her God is my God; I just need time to help her understand his ways.
I remain still, wrists bound, my fate in her hands.
Waiting.