Page 307 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘No, not probably. Most definitely. You are losing yourself to an agenda you would not have drawn up one year ago. That island,’ Danya tells him, finger raised for emphasis, ‘has fucked you up and got inside your blood.’

‘I’m doing the best I can.’

‘You are writing your suicide note all over me,’ Danya whispers.

‘No.’

‘Then what else is it? Huh?’

‘You’re… you can…’

‘You think because I carried my brother’s body out of that place, I won’t mind doing the same for you? Fuck you, Lachlan. I won’t do it.’

‘That’s not what I want.’

‘You cannot see what you want anymore. You have lost yourself.’

‘You’re better than me, stronger and sharper. You can—’

‘I am not your fucking weapon!’

‘But you can be theirs!’

Danya spits on the floor. ‘Says the coward.’

‘I’m not a coward.’

‘What even is the core of this, huh? He wasn’t your blood!’

‘You can protect them better than I can!’

‘No one can do that.’

‘You can! You would have kept him safe. You’d have protected him! And I didn’t. I fucked up, I made the bad call. I… I know I’m unstable now,’ he says, for the first time able to admit it. ‘I don’t know what it is inside me, but it’s like… there’s something evil growing inside me like ivy and it’s pulling me from myself.’

A line forming between his eyes, Danya quietly says, ‘Lachlan.’

‘I can see it happening. I can… feel myself trying to shut down around it, but I can’t. The only way to contain it… to kill it…’

Danya closes the gap between them.

‘There’s nothing evil inside you.’

‘No, there is. There is, Danny.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘It’s…’

How to say it, how to use words in this way, how to paint a picture like this when he’s unable to even think it himself?

That ever since Alistair Penhalyx punished him, he feels like a piece of the old man got stuck inside him, left behind, trying to grow itself.

That sometimes he sees eyes in the dark.

That he hears the door creak when it’s still.