He paces around behind me, but I don’t let him out of my sight, twisting to keep my eyes on him.
“I wanted to wait until you assimilated them, too,” he says. “You would have done it under the mistaken belief that you were destroying them.”
He isn’t wrong. If I’d gotten the box open sooner, I would have tried to burn the bones in my fire.
Typhon grimaces. “It was fucking frustrating to discover that only a few supernaturals were still alive who knew about the other bones. Without knowledge of them, you had no reason to go looking for them.
“That serpent, who calls himself James Vanguard, he knew all about them, but he hid them well. I had my work cut out for me, ensuring that the dark entity of New York City would start looking for them to force Vanguard’s hand.”
“If you wanted them to assimilate, why come after them now? Why not wait until after I left the maze?”
He glares at me. “I’m no longer willing to take the risk. Vanguard is too cunning.” His focus flits to the box. “Right now, all of the bones are in one place. It’s time to strike.”
“What will happen once you have them all?”
“I will resume my full power,” Typhon replies, a gleeful light growing in his eyes. “I will reassert my true form.”
He paces around in front of me again, gesturing to the box and its outward-facing symbols.
Each side of the box has a different number of symbols on it. The first side has five. The next has three. The currently outward-facing one has two. The final side, the side with only one symbol, is the only one yet to glow.
Typhon points to the side with two symbols. “Love,” he says. “And power.”
He begins pacing again, but this time, he spirals subtly inward, a path that will eventually bring him right to me.
“True power comes from making people love you,” he says. “If they love you, they will overlook every sign of darkness. They will not question your greed, your hate, your manipulation, or your violence. They will believe what you tell them to believe.”
He gives a self-satisfied smile. “As long as they think you love them back. As long as they believe you’re fightingforthem. As long as they are convinced that your greed, your hate, and your violence are for their betterment. They will ignore the things you do and justify your choices for you.” He closes his fist. “To be adored is true power.”
His pacing has brought him much closer to me now, only five feet away, if that.
“Did you figure out the last symbol’s meaning?” he asks.
I understand what it means. Its meaning came to me when I stepped out from the final realm during those moments when Peyton’s trusting hand remained in mine.
But I don’t yet understand how it fits with the others, and for that reason—well, I assume it’s for that reason—it hasn’t yet lit up.
Once it does, no doubt, the padlock will break and the lid will open.
“It means silence,” I say quietly, thinking again of Peyton.
I take a breath and acknowledge how much it meant to me that she chose for me to be a part of her life for the last few hours.
“Correct.” Typhon’s lips stretch into a smile. “Once you attain power, you must silence all who could oppose you. When their voices are no longer heard, final power is yours.”
His next three steps bring him closer to me still.
“You understand this, yes?” he asks when I remain quiet. “From what I’ve heard about Bloodwing Academy, you lived it.”
I did.
I lived it with the other students. Peyton saw it before I did—that I was their leader. I had power over them. I used violence as a tool. And in those final months there, in my mistaken attempt to protect Peyton, I forced the students into silence.
But the thing is…
They didn’t fall silent.
They fucking wouldn’t.
