“This time he’s really dead. He made the mistake of paying the dungeons a visit to taunt Silas, and Silas overpowered his guards and attacked. It served Gerald right.”
I groaned, letting my head fall into my hands. “I’ve been through this before. It’s like history repeating itself.”
“You can’t really be mourning that man. He was an idiot. If Silas hadn’t killed him, I was planning on having him convicted or killed myself.”
“He’s my brother’s father. I care about Tariq—”
“Tariq isn’t your brother—”
“And, it’s not Gerald I’m mourning for. It’s Silas.”
Weston shook his head, but this time there was a glimmer of hardness to his expression, a sliver of hatred in his eyes. “Another lost cause.”
Not wanting to hear any more, I hastily stood. “Just tell me why I’m here. Tell me what you want from me, and we can move onto me accepting or refusing.”
“You won’t refuse. I only want you to be yourself. You’ll be allowed to attend school as usual, but you’ll need to return here every night. You may treat this as your home. There’s no need to fret over my presence, as my permanent residence is in Seattle. I only stay here when it is needed… though I will have my staff reporting back to me, so that is in no way an invitation to renege on our deal. No more sleeping around with my sons, unless you decide to seriously date one of them. Any of them, except Silas. You need to drastically improve your reputation. I can’t have you championing our people if our people all think that you’re a dishonest slut.”
I balked, my face rapidly turning red, but Weston held up his hand to cut off my spluttering protest, shaking his head again.
“I’m not testifying as to the truth of the rumours, but they’re rumours we can ill-afford. You aren’t the only one receiving constant threats, Miss Black.” Oh, really? “I have my people to protect, and you are my means to protect them, so you must now present yourself in a way that they find trustworthy. Every day I receive an anonymous threat from some human or another. Maybe tomorrow it will be a wannabe military hero with nothing better to do than chase after a race of people that some conspiracy blog on the Internet has deemed impure, or maybe it will be a teenage hacker, who wishes to be rid of us because we won’t respond to their constant, childish blackmailing. Maybe it’ll be a former Zev, who was expelled from our society and resents that the benefits of our society are no longer accessible to them. Whoever it is, I need to be able to burn that threat knowing that our bluff is as great as theirs.
“You probably haven’t thought of our situation in these terms yet, but over the centuries, the humans have only grown stronger while the Atmá power in each passing Zevghéri generation grows more diluted. They tried to wipe our people out completely in the middle ages, and now they’re gearing up for another genocide. Dominic knew it, I know it… they haven’t conceived of us growing stronger, so they think that it will a simple, clean operation. It won’t be. And once we train you and the other test subjects up, you will stand at the forefront of our race for all the humans to see: pillars of strength and power.”
“I get it,” I croaked, wanting Weston to stop talking more than anything. I retreated in silence, pushing upon the door that Weston had indicated earlier and disappearing into the room.
Weston was insane.
His plan would never work, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to prevent it… but I would. I wasn’t an instrument of persuasion, or a symbol to rally around. I was… I was just Seraph Black, and what that meant was something that only I could decide. I wasn’t a test subject without parents, searching for purpose, desperate to protect the underdog—the way Weston apparently saw me. I had family, I had purpose, and I was well aware that I couldn’t protect every person out there needing protection. Weston had invested too much in a desperate plan to change the world, and now it was too late for him to admit that the plan was a failure, so he was going to force it into being, and the rest of us would suffer.
I would have to be the one to stop him.