Page 70 of Claim the Twilight
Looking Ezekiel straight in the eye, I spoke to Loviator. “Give them back to me.”
Ezekiel smiled. “Always so demanding.” He shook his head. “But I’m happy to oblige if you stand down. Send the white wings away, and we can make this transition a peaceful one. Negotiate boundaries and territories. No one need die. Well, no one except those that mean harm.”
“Youmean harm.”
Ezekiel’s eyes flared. “I haveneverended an innocent’s life. Your white wing can attest to that. But there are those that hold evil in their hearts. It lies dormant in their blood, hidden, waiting. I can seek it out and eliminate it before it takes root.” He moved forward to grip the bars. “I can make this world a better place. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what your Order is all about?” His tone,hertone, implored me to understand. To empathize and agree.
I wanted a safe world. Of course I did. But not her way. “I don’t condone killing innocents just because they may do something bad in the future. The dark path is one of many paths, and people can choose not to take it if given the chance.”
“And then it will be too late!” Ezekiel threw up his hands in exasperation. “Darkness is stronger than light. It always has been, no matter what the white wings tell you. Its lure is an aphrodisiac—the whispering in the back of a person’s mind, insistent and enduring until it wears them down. I will not wait for that inevitable conclusion. I will not allow the evil deed to be exacted. I will not let them hurt me.” Ezekiel blinked sharply and stood straighter, his chest heaving.
Of course.Thatwas where it began. “I know what happened to you.”
Ezekiel’s mouth tightened. “You know nothing.”
“What those gods did to you was?—”
“Silence!” The room shook with the boom of her command, and my insides quaked. “Do not speak of things you know nothing of.”
“Fine. Why take Hemlock?”
“You know why.”
“You could have just uncursed him. Cut him off from all the power you forced on him as punishment.”
Ezekiel’s eyes narrowed. “Where would the fun be in that?”
I could taste the lie in her words, and realization pricked at my senses. “You can’t undo it, can you?”
Ezekiel lifted his chin. “You have three days to decide whether to accept my offer of a peaceful transition. Three days in which I give you my word there will be a reprieve. No attacks by me or mine. But after those three days, I will have your answer, and if you refuse me, then I will take this territory by force. This territory and then…the world.”
Ezekiel dropped as if someone had cut his strings, crumpling to the ground in a heap.
“She’s gone,” Kaster said. “For now.”
But she’d be back in three days for an answer, so that was all the time we had to find her faith army and eliminate the mark or the carriers. The idea of killing a bunch of people for their misguided faith made my stomach churn, because didn’t that make me just as bad as Loviator? But the lives of the many were at stake here. I’d do what needed to be done.
I just hoped Padma came back with a solution soon so that we didn’t have to exact mine.
Chapter 28
PADMA
I’m not sure how long we’re in the empty room where the portal from the mainland dropped us, but I do know that Harald is beginning to piss me off.
“They’re disrespecting you,” he says for the third time. “You’re a Lantana.”
“I was a Lantana, but I’m not one any longer.”
“You have a claim to the blood and the power, no matter where your curse forced you to be born.”
I shoot him a glare. “I happen to like where I was born. I happen to love my life and who I am. Now.”
His lips curve in a wicked smile. “Wait until you’re restored, then tell me that.”
The door opens, and a slender male with silvery hair and sharp blue eyes walks in. “Good day.” He inclines his head. “My name is Gerard, and I have been sent to retrieve you and transport you to the Lantana estate. The matriarch awaits your arrival.”
“Great.” I stride toward him. “Let’s get going, then, shall we?”
