Each statue felt like a punch to the gut. It was all too perfect, too clean. Like someone had reached into my head, ripped out my memories, and displayed them for anyone to see. I wanted to break every one of them, to watch them crumble and fall apart like the lies I’d told had.
The whole damn temple had been restored, polished to look like it had in the old days, back when the gods still mattered here. Back when war happened between mortals and the gods were only present in the shadows of their temples. Back when this city belonged to Wisteria. Now that Paesha knew the truth, this place was only a reminder of everything I’d lost. Fucking Aeris.
I hadn’t come here for nostalgia, anyway. I hadn’t come to see how much I used to be worshiped. I’d come for him. And as I made my way deeper into the restored temple, I could feel the universe shoving us apart. We were never meant to exist in the same space. Or maybe we both weren’t meant to exist at all. Maybe it was always supposed to be one. No balance.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d come at all, brother,” Ezarius crooned from my throne, back hunched, elbows on his knees as he looked at me with more hatred than I’d ever known from him.
I probably fucking deserved that glare. In fact, I knew I did. I cracked my knuckles and strode forward. If this asshole wanted to face me, perfect. “I was detained, but I’m here now.”
“You broke the rules, Rev.”
I threw that look right back at him. “I never agreed to your fucking rules, Ezra.”
“Bullshit.” He stood, balling his fists at his sides.
I shoved my hands in my pockets because I knew it would fuck with him. “Tell me you didn’t love her. Tell me you didn’t fucking worship the ground she walked on.”
“Doesn’t that prove my point? Because she loved me too, brother. She loved me until it broke her. That was the deal wasn’t it? If she loved me and not you, you’d finally fucking see that you’re no one special.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t the same, and she’s not dead.”
“Oh, but she will be. Just you fucking wait.”
“You agreed you wouldn’t kill her this time.Thatwas the deal. And you broke that when you tried to have her poisoned.”
“None of this matters and you know it. The terms were shattered the moment you took my memories, asshole. You’re going to pay for that mistake. Fates help me, this is the end of this.”
Rage boiled below the surface. I knew light was bursting from me without having to look down. I couldn’t contain it. Not with him so fucking close and testing me. “Stay away from her, Ezarius.”
He surged forward, gripping the collar of my shirt. “I’ve got something better in mind for our girl, brother. It’s not going to be a swift arrow or a blade to the back this time. It’s going to be so much fucking worse. It’s going to be slow and painful and you’re going to watch every one of her final seconds. Andthenthis shit is over.”
Before I could fully consider the consequences, I slammed a fist into Ezra’s face with all the force I could muster. The satisfying crunch of bone against bone reverberated through the temple halls as he stumbled back, nearly losing his footing. He steadied himself against one of the marble columns. Slowly, deliberately, he reached up and wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
Then, to my utter disbelief and fury, the bastard started laughing. A cold, mirthless sound that echoed mockingly off the vaulted ceilings and polished floors. The floating orbs of light flickered and dimmed, as if cowering from the darkness emanating from my twin.
“Is that all you’ve got, brother?” He straightened to his full height. His eyes, mirrors of my own, glinted with cruel amusement. “A single punch? Honestly, I’m disappointed. But that’s nothing new.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out my Quoralis, the book I’d used to communicate with Paesha, and dropped it on the floor before me. “Run to her, Reverius. Watch her slip through your fingers again.”
It took every ounce of self-control not to throw my power out until it incinerated us both from the inside. Maybe I would die, but he’d go down with me. Right now though, the only thingkeeping me from depleting myself was her. It was the look on her fucking face the moment she’d spoken my true name.
I wouldn’t run.
Not this time.
This time, I was going to rewrite the story, no matter the cost.
8
Paesha
The swell of power I’d stolen churned in my stomach as I lay on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, fighting against the voices that’d continued to haunt me for days. They weren’t my voice. They weren’t my thoughts. I was losing it entirely. No one else could hear them. Unhinged whispers, familiar but not. And the only damn thing they wanted to talk about was Thorne. Reverius. Whatever he truly called himself.
I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing hazel staring back at me. I couldn’t breathe without hearing his grunt of disapproval. Couldn’t think without feeling the weight of his tone hovering above me. He was nowhere to be found and still he haunted me. Still, he poked at that wall I’d put up.
But as I peeled myself off the couch and kicked at the dry wood in the fireplace, I pushed and pushed against the growing sadness. What had I done to deserve this repeated cycle? The pain grew and this time I knew it wasn’t Quill. It was me. It was my own reluctance to feel anything. Battling the wave of everything I pushed down and away. I didn’t love the man. But gods, I wanted to. He wasn’t Thorne though. He wasn’t the man that had claimed a stranger on the street. He was Reverius. The god that’d set every one of those pieces in motion. He’d sent meto a world I was tortured in. He might as well have hung me from those chains in the Maw himself. And gods. He’d killed those Cimmerians simply to look like the hero, to put on his fucking mask and sweep in and save me, when he could’ve prevented it in the first place. His brand of torture was setting everyone up for failure and then coming in to be the hero no one wanted and everyone needed.
My heart hurt. It raged. It broke into a million pieces of betrayal as soon as I let myself feel it. But I needed to. I needed to feel it because if I didn’t, it would swallow me whole even though the pain was endless, an ocean with no shore, and I was drowning in it when I was alone. My chest burned as though someone had carved out pieces of me and left jagged edges behind. The room felt too small, the walls pressing inward, the air thick and cloying. I fell to my knees before the fireplace.
You let him.
