My chest rises and falls as I glance around, and I know exactly what’s happening.
Shifting my gaze back to Tali, I watch as she leaps onto the platform and strolls toward a cluster of people.
“Don’t.” It’s Kairhyse that speaks.
“Come with me, Xeraphine.”
Does she think I’m stupid?
I don’t say anything, and watch as she puts her hand on top of some woman’s head. She cries out a plea to be spared, but she’s quickly silenced as she spins her head completely around on her shoulders.
It isn’t me that flinches, but Kai.
I’ve been killing innocent people for eleven years, and have always saw them as collateral damage to my end goal. The act doesn’t phase me anymore, because as I’ve always seen, no one is truly innocent; other than Sydni.
My jaw ticks. “Kill them, my life matters more than theirs.”
Screams erupt, and as though using it as my own personal battle song, I step toward her.
She stares at me incredulously.
“What?” I scoff. “Did you think me moral? You ruined any morality Imay have had eleven years ago.”
“Truly my daughter, and yet you fight what you were meant for. Such a tragedy.” She shrugs her shoulders and goes for another.
Then I push off my heel, closing the distance in an instant, and grab her arm. “I never said I’d make it easy for you to pick them off.”
Chapter 59
Kairhyse
Irun and grab hold of Tali’s neck, just as once more, Xera attempts to thrust the dagger right for her heart. I’d question if she even had one for the callousness of her actions.
Just before the blade breaches her skin, she pulls back and kicks Xera, then pulls me behind her into the crowd of people.
I attempt to get up, but I’m just pushed and shoved. When I hear Xera grunt, even over the masses, I fall into the shadows the bodies have created below them.
Traversing through the shadows has always come easily to me. This ability was always meant for me to control, and as I shift between the confines of this world, I see everyone around me as mere black silhouettes—featureless, shrouded in a white aura.
I can’t step into the light. In this brightly lit space, I’m forced to move along the walls, confined to the darkness.
I spot Xeraphine—Tali has her by the hair, dragging her through the throngs of people toward the stairs. She fights, but not as much as I know she can. As much as my girl doesn’t care about the lives around her, she’s giving them an out by letting herself be pulled away from the chaos.
I stick close, but don’t intervene.
“Such a fucking brat.” Voices are distorted in this realm, where it sounds more like someone is speaking through a phone held under water.
“Fuck you,” Xera spits back at her mother, pulling at her hair and stumbling up the steps as she tries to walk properly.
“Just a few thousand years, what is that to an eternal being?” I hate that she speaks of time as if it means nothing. Every second matters, even to an immortal.
“A year or all of them, I’ll never give you a single one.”
Tali then thrusts Xera forward and as my girl stumbles and falls against the stairs, her mother kicks her. “This is an endless fight. Even if you severe my head I will grow it back inseconds. My body will still function, and that little dagger of yours won’t feel the pumping organ in my chest.”
My heart thrusts forward as she reaches for Xera’s head. The crimson sky is spilling through the stairway, and so I reach through the shadows and grab hold of Tali.
“There you are,” she purrs, and just as her hand is about to grab hold of my arm, I tear my fingers straight through her throat.
