Page 83 of Reap the Night
“The power that I can channel, the power that rushes through me, comes directly from the weave which is a skein of magical threads. I can see it when I look inward. I can feel it. But my curse, even though I can access it and use it, it also controls me, and the thing about that level of power is that it wants to be released. To be used. It needs to be vented, and several centuries ago, I did just that. I expelled a burst of power, hoping to cure a village of a plague they couldn’t shake. It worked, but it also changed them. It connected them to the weave in a way that allowed them to tap into it and manipulate it without being vulnerable to the excesses of power I experience.”
“Witches…”
“Yes. The first.”
“But witches were wiped out by some catastrophic event, weren’t they?” I stifled a yawn.
“That’s enough, sleepyhead. Close your eyes now.”
I wanted to know more, but my eyelidswereheavy, so I let them drift closed and slipped into darkness where I’d wait for Ezekiel to find me.
The lamplight shining in from the small cell window leaves everything in gloom. When it’s like this, quiet and dark, the pain is either due to begin or over for now.
I spot Ezekiel huddled in his corner. He doesn’t see me. His attention is on Arabella, who lies on the flagstones, her body at an odd angle.
So still. So silent.
Dead?
Oh God…
But in the next moment, she twitches and contorts, the motions accompanied by cracking and popping sounds as she’s remade, bones snapping into place.
Ezekiel cries out in anguish.
Finally, Arabella lays still and wide-eyed, looking up at the stone ceiling. “No…” she whimpers. “No…”
“I’m sorry,” Ezekiel says.
“Are you?” she demands.
“You know I am.”
“Not enough to end this for me.”
Silence stretches between them until Ezekiel breaks it. “We don’t know that it will work.”
“No, that’s not the reason, is it? The real reason is that you don’t want to be trapped here alone. You want to keep me with you. You selfish bastard. I hate you. I fucking hate you!” She lunges across the room at him, battering him with her fists and clawing at him, and he lets her. He simply lets her beat him until she’s too tired to do any more damage, until she falls into his arms sobbing wretchedly.
“Please…” She looks up at him with tearstained cheeks and cups his face. “Please kill me and set me free.”
Ezekiel looks right at me then. And there is a deadness in his eyes. A chilling numbness that steals my breath.
“Very well,” he says to me. “I’ll do it. I’ll kill you.”
Arabella sobs in relief as his hands close around her throat. She begins to choke and claws at his hands, but he holds fast, his gaze locked with mine as he crushes her windpipe.
She finally falls limp, and he holds her in his arms.
“One hundred and ten days,” he says. “I kept her with me for one hundred and ten days. She’s died twenty times. Killed by Loviator, but she always returned. But this time…this time she doesn’t come back. When I kill her, she stays dead. I could have released her sooner. I could have let her go, but she was right…I didn’t want to be alone…I’m a monster…a fucking monster. Do you see now?” His gaze is bright and lucid as it bores into mine. “Do you see what I did?”
This is what he’s been wanting to show me. Not the murder of his lover but the delay in it, and I finally understand what anchors him here.
Guilt.
And the reason why the curse has yet to be broken also becomes clear. Deep down, Ezekiel doesn’t want to be free of it. He doesn’t feel he deserves it.
I approach and kneel beside him, focusing only on him and not the body in his arms. “I forgive you.”
