“What?”
“There’s a safe in a church in Oia, Santorini.” He proceeded to give him the address and a combination.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Inside that safe, there’s everything you need to access my accounts… everything you need.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m getting you out of here.”
“Treycore, I can’t recover from this. No immortal could. Can you imagine the sort of life I would have in this body, after all she’s done to me?”
A sad gleam filled Lero’s eyes. “I’ve lived just as long a life as you, and I don’t deserve to go on in pain. Please, Treycore, end this for me.”
Treycore realized what he was being asked to do. It was horrible, but he knew he must. Lero didn’t deserve to suffer like this, and even if he helped him out in this condition, he would be miserable for the rest of his far too long existence.
He snatched a dagger from the table before Lero and pressed it against his comrade’s neck.
At the very least, he could make it a swift death.
“No,” Lero insisted. “She can’t know you were here. You have to suffocate me.”
As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was about to have to slit the throat of his friend, now he was being asked to watch him fade slowly.
“I don’t know that I can,” Treycore said.
“Do it!” Lero exclaimed. “You have to.”
Treycore’s face trembled nearly as much as Lero’s as he thought on the terrible pain his friend must have been in… pain he wanted to free him from.
“Please!”
Treycore nodded, reluctantly agreeing to help his friend in this most twisted, brutal way.
He set the blade back on the table, covered Lero’s mouth with his palm, and tightened his thumb and finger so they sealed off his nose. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to kill someone like this, but it was the first friend he’d done it to.
Treycore pressed his body against Lero’s, feeling the appendages against his torso as he sobbed.
Lero jerked about. It intensified, alerting Treycore to the pain he was forcing his friend through.
He thought the movements wouldn’t last long, but it seemed to last an eternity, and as he checked Lero’s face, hoping to see him entering some sort of delirium, he gazed at him sadly, seeming to acknowledge how awful it was to die like this.
Lero twitched a few moments more before settling.
And Treycore cried against him, comforting his corpse, hoping to soothe it from all the pain Vera had forced his friend to endure.
He wouldn’t have even been here if I hadn’t asked him to help us.
But he couldn’t dwell on that. He knew who was truly to blame. He took a deep breath, a fire stirring in his chest.
I’m gonna get you, you fucking cunt.
***
Kinzer let Hayde shower off in the bathroom, supervising behind the curtain, his sword in hand, ready if Hayde made a move.
They had stopped at another motel.
Kinzer could tell Hayde was becoming increasingly irritated by the surveillance, but he had to make sure he didn’t try anything, as he had before with Maggie’s phone. He couldn’t give him the opportunity to warn the higherling they would be confronting the following day.
