Fuck.
I contemplate trying to communicate with my no-longer-long-lost sister without taking my human form — partly because I’m still not sure whether the cu-sith will give up control to me. My beast and I don’t communicate, other than pushing wants and needs at each other in the most basic ways. It’s true that the beast is more present in my mind whenever Zaya is near. But I’ve never before allowed him this much freedom to roam as he wills.
The beast wasn’t willing to let Zaya walk away from us one last time, and I wasn’t willing to follow her. The cu-sith won. And I let it happen because I’m just … done.
Though not quite as done as I was a day ago. Not with the Cataclysm’s pending arrival and this one last task to perform.
I don’t expect redemption.
I wouldn’t accept it even if offered.
I’ve never done anything I didn’t have to do. And everything I’ve done — every action, every death at my hand — was in the name of toppling the fucking bastard whose pernicious blood runs in my veins. For what he did to us as children. For what he did to Zaya, both to her mother and her. And for what he continues to do to the greater world.
I thought I could take him out if I gained enough power through the Authority. But the ripple effects from Zaya’s return have forced me to reevaluate all my plans on the fly.
And honestly? I’m fucking ecstatic that it’s now going to come down to the two of us shedding blood — and fucking eager to discover which one of us can bleed the other out first.
I don’t give a fuck if anything that Zaya was interrogating her father about is fucking true. Everything I heard through the window — that some sort of creature or otherworldly being took over my father, maybe even killed him to use his body, position, and residual essence to take over the fucking world.
I share a fucking soul with a beast of myth and legend too. What little of that soul remains. And I haven’t wrecked even a fraction of what the Cataclysm has destroyed.
He will never be more vulnerable than he will be the moment he tries to set foot on an intersection point claimed by Zaya Gage.
I would die just to see his end. I honestly don’t give a fuck if that end is imposed by my hand or whether I just give Zaya an opening.
So I push past the cu-sith’s consciousness, and I retake my human form on the front patio of the beach house. Bones and skin twist and realign, pain crackling along every nerve and through all my senses.
I make a choice. I make it here.
Here, where I lived my greatest joy and my worst nightmare. Here, where I tried to protect those I loved and utterly failed.
Here, I choose to accept the fate that was rewritten for me the moment Disa stole my soul-bound mate from me.
I crouch naked on the threshold of the beach house, silently panting. I’m extremely aware of the power of the cu-sith’s voice lodged in my throat, waiting. The power of death unleashed, irrevocable. If only I could risk using it against my father. Unfortunately, it won’t stop just him. Only Zaya was unaffected the last time that voice slipped out of my control.
The box holding the knife sits next to my right knee. Its stench isn’t as intense to my senses in my human form.
A few paces into the house, Bellamy huffs at me like I’m a spoiled child.
“I need to know if this weapon will work on him,” I rasp as I straighten, bringing the box with me. I’m slightly shaky on my feet from the quick transformation and from having allowed myself to get so lost within the cu-sith. My human form feels fragile, breakable, in comparison.
Bellamy grabs a knit blanket off the back of the couch and chucks it at me, not responding. She continues into the kitchen area, not looking at me. Though I have no doubt she didn’t take her eyes off the cu-sith as I transformed.
As if she didn’t try to fuck me in a bar hallway in some twisted attempt at revenge. Or maybe she was just trying to get control of me — through the exchange of fluids.
I don’t know how the minds of the fucking awry work. I never have been able to discern their truths from their lies, other than what’s obvious. So it’s a good thing that I want all of Bellamy’s fucked-up focus channeled into an already seriously malignant purpose.
“A weapon?” she finally says mockingly. She’s at the counter separating the small dining area from the only slightly larger kitchen, brewing something. Multiple cast-iron pots are on the stove, with various herbs and reagents spread across the counter. It all stinks, but it isn’t putrid. Not like the knife, whose stench still plagues me.
I know there’s no way Bellamy is brewing healing potions. I don’t doubt that every fucking pot is filled with liquid fucking death. I don’t have to move closer to know it.
No blood, though.
I don’t see or scent even a single drop. Which is interesting, but not currently fucking relevant. Not unless it will take more blood to fortify the weapon I need.
I wrap the blanket around my waist. Annoyingly, it itches in all the wrong places. I don’t whine about it, though, because I’m already a fucking disaster in my twin sister’s eyes.
I mean, I hate her just as much as she hates me. But dwelling on that isn’t going to be helpful right now.
