“Come where?” he asked mildly confused.
“It would be good of you to leave,” Reveca seethed using the time-honored manners her heritage had tattooed on her blood, but her life had washed away.
Pricus’ candor deflated. “I’d never leave you alone in this final walk.”
“Fuck you,” Reveca said not bothering to slap him with her vim, she had little, and it did even less good when she used it on him.
“You have a right to be angry. Everyone believes they have more time than they do,” he said serenely.
“I’m immortal. Do you know what that means, or have you been dead too long?”
“Immortals fear mortality far more than mortals.”
“Because mortals think there is something on the other side of death. I know better.”
“Do you now?”
“Apparently, you haven’t been watching me too closely if you are questioning how personal I am with death.”
Pricus tilted his head pondering. “Are you referring to the Veil?”
“No, the McDonald’s down the fucking street. Yes, the Veil. You are not the first dead person I’ve fought with. Though I’d admit you are the last I care to see.”
“The very last?” he taunted the way he did when she was a girl. It wasn’t to belittle her but to make her think about the power of her words.
Instantly, Crass came to mind along with all his other Lord of Death buddies—the things she had seen in those prisons. Maybe he wasn’t the last one, but he was damn sure at the bottom of her list.
“Get on with it,” Reveca said crossing her arms. “What is to happen now? Are you to take me back to the day you delivered my first and most memorable rejection? A big day for me now, wasn’t it?”
“You were just a girl.”
“A girl? All but Saige and me had been betrothed. Most our age were married.”
“And miserable.”
“An old hag, or nun. Is that what I was to become? A vision on a shelf until the Rapture called me to the stage.”
His boyish smile was enough to make her want to puke. What did she see in him so long ago? He was nothing like the men she had in her life now. Words never stalled with Pricus. Conversation flowed with him, and he spoke even when she didn’t want him to. He had kind eyes and looked at the world as if it were full of beauty and possibility, not like it had raped him and left him for dead. He didn’t crave revenge when he was wronged but stood by with confidence that his revenge was already in play.
She never saw a single violent act come from him. His manners and nobleness was inspiring. Light hair, pale eyes and smooth unscarred flesh. Pricus was her first crush, the first time she had ever brushed up against the idea of sharing a life with someone, a life she imagined deeply day in and out.
He was everything the men she held in her heart weren’t. Reveca ran far and fast from anything or anyone who even slightly resembled Pricus. If she wanted to be honest with herself, the reason she always had a rough edge around Jamison was because of Pricus. A stranger full of mystery and calm patience who had zero interest in her. Been there, bought and burned that fucking t-shirt.
“Reveca, the Rapture called you to the stage before you ever graced your mother’s womb.”
“I said get on with it. What lesson are you— the ghost of Christmas past? Should I see that your rejection and my reaction set me on a course of destruction?” She slowly began to circle him feeling the power of audacity swell within her. “One act, one second, locked in one moment, is all it takes to change the world, is it not?”
“You did not kill me on purpose.”
“I didn’t bring you back either, did I? Nope. Not a noble my people admired, a great teacher who could have calmed the fires of greed the world swelled with as the years went by, and the return of the Throngs never occurred.”
She smirked. “Not King, either. Fucking Revelin pulled him right out of my hands like I was a wayward child, barely seen or heard.” Reveca bit her lip holding back all the emotions she wanted to feel but couldn’t if she wanted to hold on to her rage, the one emotion protecting her from the grim realities she felt stealing the air from her lungs as she stood there.
“I waited until I found a drunken warrior with no heart and nothing to lose. A man who I could charm with seduction. He is who I saved first. He is the one my magic decided to kick in on.”
“Talon,” Pricus said as if they were speaking of an old friend. Reveca smirked knowing if Talon ever met him he’d probably take a swing at Pricus just to ‘toughen him up.’
“My suicide squad,” she said as her eyes reflected deep into her past. Truths she had long forgotten and covered with lies that made sense burned through her. “I couldn’t take it anymore. The coven was surviving, not living. And for what? To die in a Rapture if they didn’t properly play their cards? What was the point to it all? A new city, a new story. But the same game. It was all the same.”
Pricus nodded along in agreement. Something she once found charming, now it was annoying as fuck. “In a state of depression it is easy to lose sight or purpose. Purpose is felt in joy.”
“I wasn’t born to be happy,” Reveca said coldly still keeping her pace around him but now gazing at the remnants of the city she knew as a girl.
“The greatest of leaders come from a position of lack. They feel the absence of what they are meant to accomplish. This hunger will serve as a constant reminder to keep the cup full for those they are charged with protecting.”
“I said get on with it,” Reveca persisted. “What lesson happens now?”
“It has already begun. You are breaking apart lies you have turned into your truth. As you do so, you will understand more was at work than you were aware of.”
“Breaking apart. That is the purpose of this isn’t it?” She stopped pacing in front of him. “I don’t even think you are real.”
Pricus held out his arms inviting her to touch him as she saw fit.
“Whatever,” she said narrowing her stare. “I have built illusions that would break the strongest of minds. So real my victims never wanted to leave.”
“And who is the creator of this illusion, sweet girl?”
“I’m a fucking woman and you would do good to remember that. No girl for you to toy with.”
“I never gave you any reason to feel the way you did. Our conversations never strayed from the teachings.”
“For a wise asshole you sure did miss the obvious, didn’t you? A girl my age, with you day in and out, hearing others speak of how wonderful you were. What was I to think?”
“Who is the creator of this illusion?” he pressed in his kind way.
“Fucking Toril.”
“This female you see as beneath you?”
“Somebody get this man a bozo button.”
Her slang perplexed him once more, but she wasn’t in the mood to explain herself. “I bet she’s a buddy of yours. Are you not in tight with the Throngs?” She sneered. “Bet it stung your rep with the almighties when one of your students not only killed you but totally fucked up that girl’s life. Last standing or some shit.”
“I have not had the pleasure. Tell me, why would she offer such a beautiful prison? Fine company? Do many of your enemies do the same?”
“In your time they did,” Reveca said as she glanced at her father’s home, one she had claimed as her own. “I suppose they still do now. Sit downs are part of business, but at least when I do them with my crew they know where I stand, and they respect it. None of this smiling in the face of someone you will slander the moment you walk away like a coward.”
“And how did she create me?” Pricus asked. “Can she reach into your mind and see this deeply into your past?”
“You are trying awfully hard to prove you are real,” she said with a lazy wink. “She promised this day. A day my regrets would rise and slay me. She promised to have the last blow...she’d take my life.”
Pricus carefully asked, “And how many regrets do
you have, sweet girl?”
“I’ve lost count,” Reveca answered honestly, now content this conversation with Pricus was an illusion. Thinking so also made Pricus less of a threat, it stopped him from pulling her back into a time she’d rather forget. It wasn’t Reveca’s beginning she ever focused on. At least, not entirely. It was her tomorrow. Only unlike her twin, she was not waiting for glory to come. Reveca was outrunning the death of glory she had known.
In theory, it should have all been magically solved when she first found King in Crass’s lair. Her fight should’ve been over. For once she could fully share the burden of who she was deep inside with another who never let her hide from what made her who she was.
The fight only got harder. Talon was no longer a warrior for her to use as a tool to quench her thirst for an end. He was something more. Something the cruel mistress of time had used to change Reveca. It was more than him, it was the Sons. Even without them, it was hard to fall for King. Hard to embrace something that she knew could vanish at any moment.
She was right about it all. Only now it would not be King leaving, it would be her. The thought of him or Talon, her entire family moving on with their lives with her as nothing more than a memory ripped her up inside. Life had always been cruel, but it had never been this unfair.
“What made these moments regrets?”
“It wasn’t moments,” she snapped. “It was people. Souls.” She clenched her fist. “I was fucking high, okay? I didn’t know what I was doing, and that is the irony of it all.”
“What is?”
She sighed. “I was happy doing it. When I felt glory, I was dangerous...I was lethal.”
“Have you learned from this? Would your regret not state as much?”
Her gray stare flicked up at him. “Did I learn from it? No, I didn’t.” She stepped forward. “Do you want to know how I know? I’ll tell you why. I promise you that I will rip Toril to shreds. I will destroy any and every likeness to a Throng. No one threatens me and lives to tell about it.”
“If regret fails as a teacher, pain must arise.” He sorrowfully stared down at her. “You have given it little choice.”
With his last words, he vanished only to reappear on the ledge she had first seen him at.
With a curse, she pondered why lately it was the simplest questions that left her stuck with no answer to grasp.
Does she follow him, or not?
***
Sometime during the tense silence, Talon slipped back onto his throne chair at the head of his table. He could still feel Saige looming behind him. Scorpio had never bothered to leave his seat or drop his stare from Saige.
What was there to say? What problem should he face first? There wasn’t one that would not test him to his breaking point if not passed it. Just when he thought life was finally going his fucking way. What did he get? A few seconds of bliss? Not even.
Talon’s mind kept going back to the first night he saw Saige, how one glance changed him. He’d always told himself it was beauty, this electric charge between them. He knew it was more. It was more than her sister, more than the war and politics that were churning the air at the time. Saige brought the haunts.
In his mortal life, for however brief it was before he died, after meeting the twins for the first time, it was easy to drink the haunts away. To drink the stir of his emotions that made no fucking sense away. Talon was sure he was a broken man. Why else could he fuck the living daylights out of a female, laugh and soak in life one second and feel sick the next? How else could he feel sorrow when he had every reason to smile?
Life was a game. A female ditched him— lucky him. She had a salty sister who knew exactly how to move him in the right direction. He should not have been a miserable sod. It would be easy for him to blame the mind fuck on her, and to think that half of what Scorpio and Saige were saying now— that he was an empath and only feeling her misery, not his. But he wasn’t a fool. If there was one thing Talon knew, it was what his sorrow felt like. His was laced with anger...Saige’s had always been laced with sacrifice.
Moment by moment, he started clicking through all the bickering matches he had with Saige over the years and how her anger never fit the moment. Neither did her joy. When was she happy? Next to never. Was that his fault? Could she not have come out with it? Sit him down and tell him what was what. I feel you, you feel me, but for right now you have to protect my sister because you are the only one who speaks her language. But hey, be faithful to this real thing between us. It’s my vibe keeping you rockin’ not hers, no matter what sis says.
Would he have listened if she had the nerve to cut to the quick of it?
Fuck no.
Furthermore, there would have been no staying in Reveca Beauregard’s life unless you were in her bed. Not the side of her life Talon needed to see to protect her at least. Very few saw her vulnerable side. At times, he doubted he had seen how deep and fragile it was, at best he had only laid eyes on the weakness for seconds at a time.
Knowing this, why did he feel so sick? Why did it seem like the room was spinning and he was drowning? Simple. A man deserves to have the right to make his own mistakes. He deserves to fumble over emotions and feel the wrong ones, so he knows what right feels like. Fuck he’s not sexist— she had the right, too. Only she knew the consequence and he didn’t. She knew if she touched another, let herself explore the idea that Talon would feel it, and when she ever did come about there would be a wall of pain between them. One word conveyed perfectly could not wash it away.
The scariest fucking thing out there is the truth. Especially when it waves its fucking ass between you and yours.
So now what? He was the ass holding the bag of sins? When she looked at him, was she remembering how her sister made Talon feel, was she constantly comparing? They were fucking doomed, and they’d never even had the chance to start.
“You don’t know that,” Saige whispered.
When Talon looked over his shoulder at her questioning if she had the power to read his mind, if every single shred of his privacy as an individual was gone. He didn’t see a powerful witch clinging to her faith. He saw the barely twenty-year-old girl he found in a garden outside of a dinner party. Scared, in love, impassioned...his.
His hands tightened into fists, a physical reminder to not pull her in his lap and say to hell with it all.
“I knew what I was getting into. I knew the sacrifice,” Saige said quietly.
“But you didn’t tell me, did you?” Talon said with a rasp wishing he’d had the strength to shout at her. “You know it all, and I can only wonder.”
Saige eagerly stepped forward but stopped when the cold of Talon’s glare narrowed. “You can,” she said. “It’s right there. If you open up, you will see it’s not to be feared. It is a weapon. A righteousness.”
Talon turned his glare on Scorpio. Talon connecting with Saige and coming to terms with all his sins was one thing, but having this fuck in his head—or any other— it was too much. There were things Talon planned on doing and seeing that no fucking body in this universe needed to experience but him.
“She’s not wrong. At least not about what this is. A powerful sense, more or less.”
Talon leaned forward. “I can’t turn off my senses. I can’t block them. It’s best whatever I have in place to keep you out stays that way.”
“You close your eyes to sleep,” Scorpio said. “When you dream you hear less of the world around you—,”
“Sleep?” Talon interrupted. “You think I’m going to spend the rest of my life sleeping to avoid you and whatever this is?”
“It was an example,” Scorpio said as he relaxed a bit into his seat. “I came to it as you have, through a woman. It was a gift, knowing her like no other.”
Talon flicked his stare up at Saige then back. “Debatable.”
Scorpio leered. “I suppose if I came the way you did I’d feel the same. I don’t think you have a choice anymore, Talon. You participated in Ambrosia’
s death. It was your core essence and intent. You connected with us once. The power will have no choice but to come now.”
Talon narrowed his stare as he pondered his next move. “Where is this rage of yours coming from?”
Scorpio was slow to answer and didn’t bother to hide his disdain when he did. “Toril saw me as an outsider from the night Reveca fucked with my essence. Toril blocked me from the others. She was sure Reveca could find and hurt them through me.”
Talon slanted his head in vague agreement. He had no idea what Reveca knew of Throngs, but he knew her, and if the woman thought her back was against the wall, there was not telling how low she would go to win a fight. Even if it meant killing her own sister.
As the thought registered, Talon unconsciously leaned forward as his worst fears rushed to the surface. Reveca’s ‘once mine always mine’ card would be a hard one to squash on any given day, but her sister with Talon? She’d never allow it, not without a fight. He and Saige linked to one of Reveca’s enemies. Hell now had a new definition.
“Then you best keep me in the dark,” Talon said as his defenses started taking root in his strategic mind.
“I can’t say that I agree with Toril’s actions of dividing us all,” Scorpio admitted dryly. “Clearly it has put us at a disadvantage now. But I will say if you plan on protecting these sisters from one another, you need all the power a Throng can give you, if not more.”
“I will not hurt her,” Saige chided.
“Was that your plan?” Scorpio asked in a chilled tone. “You did what you could to calm Toril down back then, let her see into your book of fates then sent her on a crash collision with me? One that forced me to use magic I should’ve never touched. Only for you to stand here today and say my agony, and hers was not enough. You will still end her life.” Disgust and anguish washed down his expression. “You know how this works. If Toril dies, the mother seed of our Throng, we will weaken. We are already scattered as it is. Akan will strike, and with enough luck and time bending tricks, he’ll have us all. There will be little hope for the mortals about and none for the rising sovereigns, for in time they will fall to the same greed the dark ones have.”