Page 23 of Soul of Thorns
Another reason I’m not so sure I’ll make it through that wall of flames that apparently destroys you if it deems you unworthy.
We’re quiet for a long time, just listening to the pattering of the rain outside.
“It drives me a little crazy, thinking how I’d judged you. How I hated you for so long. I imagined your death more times than I care to admit. And it’s funny now, I have those same dreams sometimes. Where I kill you. My hands are wrapped around your throat and I squeeze the life out of you, or I carve out your heart the way you did his.”
I ignore the clenching pain digging into my chest and force my face to remain neutral.He still has those dreams.
“Only now,” Rev continues in a near whisper, “those dreams are nightmares. I wake in a cold sweat, panicked that you’re gone. Guilt-ridden that I’d done it.”
My lips parted in surprise. Gone is my mask of indifference, though I couldn’t possibly name the emotions running through me now and so I have no idea what my expression tells him. Iwatch as he speaks to the ground. Puddling with pools of water.
“If only I’d known,” he whispers.
“Rev...”
“I’m sorry,” he tells me, dark eyes flashing to me.
“What?”
“I’m sorry for thinking those things of you. I’m sorry for hating you.”
“Stop, Rev.”
“No,” he says, eyes watery. “I hate that you went through all of that. I hate that you spent your whole life protecting me while I only made it worse for you.”
“Stop!” I shout. “I am not some saint, Rev. I deserved my punishment. And you did nothing wrong.”
He shakes his head. “I thought you were evil. I let myself believe it because it was easy to hate you. But I saw what he did to you, or part of it, during the first orb challenge. I didn’t believe it. I refused to see what was right in front of me—”
I bite my lip. “Rev, you were wrong to think me evil, that’s true. But you’re wrong now too.”
He pauses. “What do you mean?”
I sigh. “I’m not evil. But I’m not good either.”
His eyes pierce me, the way he always does, and I look away.
“My soul is tarnished. Scarred. Deformed. He was right. The Night Bringer, when he trapped me... he told me things about myself. He said I was like him. That I desired power. That I thirsted for it. That I’d bring pain to the world to achieve it. Those things scared me as much as he did— because he was right.”
Rev’s eyebrows pull down.
“I am a victim. In a lot of ways. But I was selfish and stupid and power-hungry and vengeful too.”
Rev stares down at his hands as he wrings his fingers.
“And you think I’m not?” he says, his voice husky and pained all at once. “You think I didn’t choose power over... shit, everything else. You think if I had a monster whispering in my ear that if I complete one terrible deed, I’d have all the power I’d craved—that I wouldn’t have done it?”
I swallow. “Would you?” My voice breaks.
“I don’t know. It would depend on how it was presented to me. But I don’t think it would have been difficult to make me cave.”
I lean my head back against the stone. A drop of water lands between my eyes and I flinch. The cool water is a welcome distraction though.
“You didn’t know me before the trials, but you saw some of it. You saw how power-thirsty I was. How I’d plow through anyone to achieve my goals. How I’d destroy anything in my path to prove myself.”
“And how many people did you kill?” I ask sharply. I don’t need him to convince me that what I did wasn’t bad. I don’t even want that. I just want this conversation to end.
“No one. But I didn’t save any either. You did.”
