I looked down at the bracelet on my hand. “It feels good.”
Gawain laughed and motioned for me to join him, and we both walked back toward the compound. Abaddon nodded her head toward me as I walked past her, back through the open door.
“You’re going to have to finish your training,” Gawain said. “But I’ll be taking over from here. Ares was such a blunt instrument, although maybe if he’d been there with Mordred it would have only taken weeks and not decades to break him. Still, he started you on the right path. I’m thinking the Harbinger trials to ensure you’re completely loyal. I know you already did them, but they’re a good way for you to undergo years of conditioning in only a few months.”
“Mordred,” I said, and feelings of anger and hate filled my heart, but they were pushed aside as quickly as they came. Killing Ares had not removed the need to hurt my friends.
“Yes, Mordred. He was a mistake to leave alive. A costly mistake, but a mistake that needed to be made. You’ll kill him. Kill all of them. You’ll be one of the inner circle, Nate. The man helping to rule this realm, and all others.”
I stared at Ares’s headless corpse.
“You should give him to your shadows,” Gawain said. “It’s fitting that his power would power you.”
For a second that felt like an excellent idea. I stood and created a sphere in my hand, spinning it over and over again until it was a blur, and only then did I pour in other types of magic, growing the sphere three feet wide. I folded the magic over my arm, down to my forearm, like a gauntlet of spinning power. I looked over at Gawain, who was still smiling.
“You’re feeling the power you have, aren’t you?” he asked. “I bet it feels glorious.”
I nodded and took a step toward Gawain. “Why me? Why not one of the others? Why not Mordred?”
“You had the most potential. Out of you and Mordred, you were the one I actually thought would fight alongside me. You just needed the right push.”
I sprinted forward and launched myself at Gawain, driving my fist into his chest and unleashing the magic. It tore the entire wall behind Gawain apart, throwing debris all over the courtyard outside. Dust obscured my vision for a few seconds, until I cried out in pain as someone grabbed my hand, crushing it.
The dust moved aside in an instant, and Abaddon stood before me, her hand wrapped around my fist, squeezing tighter and tighter as more bones and tendons snapped. She let go of my hand and kicked me in the chest, sending me sprawling into the courtyard.
“You dare!” Gawain screamed at me as he got back to his feet. “After all I’ve done for you, you throw it back in my face?”
I got to my feet, but Abaddon struck me in the stomach, driving her knee into my face, pushing me toward the ruined wall. I flicked a whip of lightning behind me, but her necromancy power threw me back fifty feet. It felt as though a train had hit me.
“How many bones are broken?” Gawain asked as I had trouble standing. Abaddon hit me with another blast, knocking me back toward the fence, shattering bones.
Gawain walked toward me, raising a hand at a dozen blood elves, who ran over to see if he needed help. “You can’t beat me. You can’t beat Abaddon. And even if you could”—he pointed over to Merlin, who stood in the ruined wall—“you can’t beat us all. You’re weak, and hurt, and you can’t have much left.”
My magic went to work healing me, but Gawain was right: I had nothing to fight with. Didn’t mean I was going to stop.
Shadows leapt from the ground around Gawain, who was suddenly shocked at the attack. The wraith’s hand clawed out of the shadows, grabbing hold of Gawain’s leg. I was about to pull him in when the breath left my body in one go, and I looked down to see a curved spirit weapon sticking out of my stomach. It vanished, and I dropped to the floor as pain flooded my body and Abaddon stepped around me, kicking me in the face and sending me to the floor.
“No,” Gawain said as Abaddon was about to give the killing stroke. “Killing him will unleash the nightmare, and frankly I have more important things to do. Take him somewhere quiet, and make sure to kill that nightmare when it turns up.” Gawain’s face appeared in my view above me. “You could have been a god.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“I’m going to make sure that no one ever remembers your name,” Gawain said with as much venom and hate as I’d ever heard a person use. “I’m going to kill everyone you love, everyone you care for. Everyone who even helped you. I’m going to butcher them all so that no one would dare even whisper the name Nate Garrett.”
“You promised me,” Atlas bellowed from across the courtyard. “You promised he was mine to kill.”
Gawain sighed. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? Fine. Atlas, take some men, take him out somewhere, and kill him.” Gawain bent down and removed the bracelet from my wrist, forcing my magic to vanish and more pain to wrack my body. “What a damn waste of time you became.”
Atlas and five blood elves took me over to a van, opened the rear doors, and threw me inside, where several runes ensured that my magic wouldn’t return. They didn’t even bother tying my hands behind my back—I was beaten and broken. My body was a mess, and without my magic I couldn’t even heal myself. So, I lay there on the cold metal floor of the van and pictured whatever horrific death Atlas had planned, hoping that at some point I’d get my chance to escape.
That chance came when we stopped at a petrol station and Atlas got out to fill the van. There were three blood elves in the back with me, and as I moved to sit up, I smashed my elbow into the knee of one and punched the next in the jaw. I was about to hit the third when the rear doors opened and Atlas reached in. He dragged me out by my ankles and punched me in the stomach, dumping me to the frozen ground.
“Just once don’t fight,” Atlas said. “I wanted to offer you dignity in death, so how about you just let that happen and we can call it a day.”
Once I was outside the van, my magic returned to me, and I created a blade of air to drive up into Atlas’s chest, but he grabbed my hand and hit me so hard that I saw nothing but darkness.
I woke up and found myself in the back of the van. A sorcerer’s band sat on one wrist, but I was alone. I moved slightly, and my head throbbed, so I lay back down and tried to figure out how to get out of this shitty circumstance.
I’d thought of nothing when the doors opened and Atlas reached in, dragged me out, and dumped me on the snow-covered field. “You know where this is?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Excellent. Then no one will ever find your body.”
“You suck,” I said as Atlas pulled me to my feet. “You suck so damn hard, Atlas. You’re just a piece of shit.”
He punched me in the stomach as a blood elf came over. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”