“Why?”
I told you. There’s a very high chance you won’t walk away without them.
A very high chance? “That’s not good enough.”
Okay, let’s look at this from a different angle. You know how cold you’ve been?
“Yes.” Kinda hard to forget.
Well, that’s actually been a lifesaver for you. Right now, strong emotion is your enemy. The pills will help you remain unemotional.
“I don’t understand.”
Yeah, me either, Caleb said.
Just take the pills, Aden, Elijah insisted again. Trust me, emotion is not your friend.
Was anything, anymore? “All right.” Elijah was never wrong. Or rarely wrong, he guessed he had to say now. If Aden needed the pills, he needed the pills. “I’ll—”
Sorin materialized at the edge of the clearing, already marching forward, two of his men holding a banner that stretched over their heads, the rest holding torches of their own. Torches the rain did not affect. They were a collage of shadows and light, menace and redemption.
The wind kicked up, whistling…closer and closer…footsteps…
“It’s too late. I can’t send her now.” He would appear weak. Vulnerable. To vampires, appearance was everything, and if he appeared weak and vulnerable, he would lose this fight even if he won. “We’ll have to find another way to bring home the victory.” Elijah groaned. I was afraid that would happen. Just try to stay calm. No matter what. Okay?
“Okay.” Easily said. Probably impossible to do.
Then Sorin and his men were there, standing just inside the ward, and Aden could see each face clearly—as well as the faces of Seth, Shannon and Ryder, his human friends. They were bound with rope. Prisoners.
To their credit, they didn’t appear to be scared. Seth, with his red-and-black hair dripping into his scowl, just looked pissed. Shannon’s darker skin blended into the shadows, but his eyes…his eyes were so green they glowed. And they were narrowed on Sorin, throwing daggers of hate. Ryder was the calmest of the three. Maybe because he looked shocked to his marrow.
First things first. “Let them go,” Aden demanded. “Now.”
The rain slowed to an icy trickle. Sorin nodded, as if happy to oblige. “Of course I’ll let them go. Their freedom in exchange for the crown. Simple, easy, and you don’t have to die.”
He could accept, but as the new king, Sorin could later kill the boys anyway, and there would be nothing Aden could do to stop him. “Only a coward would offer such a bargain.”
“Is this the part where I erupt into a rage and attack you? Sorry, no rage from me. Call me whatever you like. It doesn’t matter. Very soon everyone here will call me King.”
“Cocky.”
“Confident. But all right. You don’t wish to save your friends. I understand. Callous of you, but let’s see if you’ll relinquish the crown to save your girlfriend.”
During Sorin’s speech, one of his men had snuck through the crowd and closed in on Victoria, grabbing her by the back of the neck and forcing her to her knees. She tried to fight, but her strength was clearly no match for his.
“Before you ask, she can’t teleport away,” Sorin said. “She came to see me last night, and I drugged her drink.”
Victoria trembled and gave her brother a look of cutting betrayal. Aden felt a twinge of betrayal himself. She’d left him and gone to see her brother, might have even told him secrets about Aden.
After the way you treated her, could you blame her? Elijah said.
Way to help me remain calm, he thought darkly. Not that the souls could hear him. “How can you treat her that way?” he asked Sorin. “She’s your sister.”
A negligent shrug. “One thing I’ve learned over the centuries. Everyone is expendable.”
Victoria’s chin trembled, and Aden knew she was fighting tears. He stiffened. No matter what she’d done, no matter what had gone down, he hated the thought of her upset. Strong emotion? Yeah, if anything could cause it, he realized, she could.
Any questions he might have had about his feelings for her were answered in that moment. Aden didn’t just like her, he loved her, and he would do anything to protect her. More than that, he trusted her. She might have gone to see her brother, but she wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize Aden’s health. Just as, even at his worst, he had not jeopardized hers.
Aden, Elijah began, nervous again.
“No,” he said. No more distractions.
“He’s without his beast,” Victoria called, the last word emerging on a cry of pain. The man must have increased the pressure on her neck.
Elijah cursed as fury sparked to sizzling life inside his chest. In the back of his mind, he heard the plaintive cry of a newborn. Just like before. Only stronger this time, and as angry as he was. The souls began to argue, Caleb and Julian demanding answers, Elijah refusing to give them.
Aden tuned them out as best he could and focused on Sorin. He would pay for Victoria’s pain. In blood. “Swords?” he asked, because that was the method the warrior had chosen in every vision Aden had had of this fight.
A moment passed as Sorin unraveled the meaning of his question. There would be no surrender. They would fight. Surprised flickered in those blue eyes before smoothing into eagerness. “Let’s make it sort of fair. Hand to hand.”
Aden nodded, surprise flooding him. Nothing was happening as he’d seen. What did that mean? What had caused things to change? The fact that he hadn’t taken the pills?
“If anything happens to Victoria or my humans, I’ll kill your men when I’m done with you,” Aden said to Sorin. And he meant it.
“Now who’s the cocky one, hmm?”
“I want your vow. No harm will come to them. Now, during or after. No question, no matter the outcome.”
Sorin nodded. “You have my word.”
The ease with which he offered the concession made Aden think he’d never planned to hurt the foursome. That wasn’t going to save him, not now, but it did defuse the hottest threads of Aden’s fury.
With a shrug, the black robe draping Sorin’s shoulders fell to the ground, leaving him as bare-chested as Aden. Difference was, Sorin’s torso was covered in fresh wards. There was not an inch of pale skin visible. Only black ink on top of black ink, circles on top of circles. Aden briefly wondered what the guy was warded against before clearing his mind. He had to concentrate.
Together they approached the center of the metal ring, then stopped, only a whisper away from each other. Aden had been in more fistfights than he could count, but they’d always been spur-of-the-moment, his mind lost to whatever emotion or insult that had brought him to that point. He’d never coldly, calculatingly planned to brawl like this.
“I think I would have liked you in other circumstances,” Sorin said. Just before drilling his knuckles into Aden’s eye socket.
His arm moved so quickly, Aden registered only a blur before tumbling backward, pain exploding through his head. He managed to remain on his feet as the entire world went silent, black. There was no rain, no crowd, no souls. No…anything. Not even time. He was deaf, dumb and blind, his brain completely shut down.
Aden just stood there, lost, barely breathing, until he saw a sudden flash of white. A return to black. Another flash of white, one that lasted a little longer. Black. White. Black, white, as if someone were playing with a light switch inside his head.
Then he heard a little whoosh of noise, the only precursor to the sudden boom as the world slammed back into focus. He heard, he knew, he saw, but there was no time to react. Sorin was on him, fists pummeling like a jackhammer, over and over again, raining down, never stopping.
Come on, come on. Get in this thing. Using all of his strength, Aden kneed him in the balls. And if Sorin had still possessed his beast, the creature would have come roaring out at exactly that moment in a bid to protect Aden from further damage, because Sorin hunched over and screamed with unholy rage.