“Good girl… now stay still, and nobody has to die. I’m just going to take a little trip inside your head. And you’re going to let me this time, or I might just decide that you aren’t worth all the effort and slit your throat right now.”
Without warning, he dove into my thoughts, his presence heavy and painful, clawing along the walls of my brain and shattering my meagre barriers. It seemed that I couldn’t have stopped him even if I had tried, and I wondered if Silas had felt this amount of pain on all of the previous occasions that Weston had tried diving into my head. I had thought it was a shield of my own making, but Silas had claimed that it was him.
Would I ever stop causing him pain?
“I’m going to give you a choice, little creation,” Weston rumbled from behind me, his voice echoing inside my head. I cried out from the pain of it, but his presence only swelled, pressing against the constraints of my mind as though he could devour everything inside my head without the slightest bit of effort and move casually onto the next person. “You can choose to do exactly as I want, exactly as I say… to be my little puppet. You can choose to be the champion of my people, as I always intended you to be. You can choose to never see my sons again, to allow Miro his birthright as Voda and to never again pursue a relationship that might upset his position. You can choose to keep your remaining, fake brother from the fate of your real brother. You can choose to keep your little list of friends safe, and for much longer than eight months. You can choose all of these things, or you can choose to die.”
It wasn’t implied that I had to choose my fate in that very moment, but the bite of a knife at my neck and then despair in Silas’s fiery eyes as he watched on helplessly was enough to hint at it. Silas couldn’t interfere in this. He couldn’t risk it, because Weston was more likely to kill him than he was to kill me, it seemed… and both deaths would lead to the same thing. By that logic, the safest place for me was at the tip of Weston’s knife, because at least it kept his attention away from Silas.
“A-all of them?” I rasped.
Weston grunted, annoyed at my request. “Is that all? Again? Disappointing… but yes. All of them.”
“E-even… Silas?”
The knife pressed closer and I bit my lip to keep from whimpering in pain.
“No,” Weston growled. “Not him.”
“I need him. I’m bonded to him. I c-can’t do anything for you if I’m dead.”
The knife dug into me with a renewed purpose. The sudden flash of pain was enough to convince me that Weston had done it. He had slit my throat… but he was still waiting, breathing heavily against the back of my head and trembling with a rage so great that it shook right through to me, sending my body into intermittent hot and cold spasms.
“I’ll consider it. Choose, Seraph, before I change my mind.”
It should have been simple. The way Weston put it, it almost was simple.
I could save myself and my friends. I could save Silas from any more pain. I could save the people that I cared about.
It was the alternative that had me pausing. The reality of my other choice.
I could save the Zevghéri people from what Weston was determined to put them through, just to prove that we were stronger than the humans.
I could save the humans from whatever show of strength Weston decided to use against them.
“I… choose…”
The knife fell away from me. I watched it bounce around on the stones as though it moved in slow motion; I watched Weston’s arms slackening and falling away from my body. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t understand until I turned and Weston was being pulled back to the stone parapet by a very alive Danny. Danny, with blood still trickling over his face. I watched, stupidly, as Weston’s eyes turned blind and sightless, as his shouts were cut off into a gurgle, as he was pushed atop the railing and then further… over…
I watched as Danny pushed him clean over.
I raced over to the parapet, but there wasn’t any point. The drop was too far. I caught a brief glimpse of a bloodied body on the cobblestones of one of the winding roads below, and quickly turned away, my stomach churning with acid. Danny stepped back from the stones and dusted his hands together, casting his eyes over me and Silas.
“What did I miss?” he asked, raising an arm to wipe the blood from his face.
“You died,” Silas informed him. His voice was natural. He was still staring at the spot where Weston had disappeared over the railing.
Yvonne and Tabby…
I could see the realisation swimming behind the darkness of his eyes. I could feel it cracking through his chest.
I wasn’t the only person that he had endured pain for. He could have ended Weston long ago, he could have ended the torture, but not without hurting Tabby and Yvonne.
“I did? Hate when that happens.” Danny rolled his eyes and walked up to me, his head tilted to the side.