Apollyon

“I hate this,” Aiden admitted so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard him. He twisted around, giving me his back. “I hate that Seth has done nothing but play you—lie to you—and you trust him. I hate that this connection is more important than everything else going on out there.”

I was about to argue, but my Seth had lied to me. He’d probably been playing me right from the moment he’d discovered I was the second Apollyon. No doubt Lucian had.

Unease slithered up my spine, leaving cold shivers in its wake.

“It… it doesn’t matter now,” I said.

Aiden whirled toward me. “What doesn’t?”

I met his stare. “That Seth lied to me. It doesn’t matter. Because what he wants, I want. If I—”

“Shut up,” Aiden growled.

Surprised, I blinked. I couldn’t recall a moment when Aiden had told me to shut up. Wow. I so didn’t like that for a multitude of reasons.

Aiden’s eyes glowed a fierce silver. “You do not want what Seth wants because there is no you in any of that. There is only him.”

Shock rippled through me, stealing any response I could come up with. There was no me. There was only us. That freaking little voice deep inside me roared in fury, then threw itself around.

There was no me. 

CHAPTER 3

When my Seth decided to show up on the other side of the rainbow, I was grumpy and he was…well, he was wound up. There were, uh, things he said through the connection that just weren’t right.

Distracting? Yes.

Acceptable in the mood I was in? No.

I want out of here, I told him, mentally shaking him off. I can’t take it any longer. Aiden… he…

Seth’s disapproval was like razor blades knocking around in my skull. Aiden what?

What could I tell my Seth? That Aiden was making me think? Aiden talks a lot.

His laugh tickled the back of my neck. That he does. Angel, it won’t be much longer. Lucian has done us a great favor.

With who? White Robe of the Month Club?

Another pleasant laugh curled through me. Let’s just say he’s given me an endless supply of bait and leverage.

I gave him a mental eye roll. Yeah, I don’t get it.

There was a pause, and I could feel what Seth was wanting through the bond. He was in a playful mood, but this conversation was too important for screwing around. Finally, he answered. The pures that have stood against us have proven to be useful.

How so?

Do you remember how Telly refused to accept that the daimons could play nice and work together to form a cohesive attack against the Covenants?

Yeah…and Marcus didn’t believe it was just them working against us.

And neither had I. At the emergency Council meeting Lucian had called before my Seth had leveled the Council members, I’d suspected that Lucian had been behind the daimon attacks somehow, but there hadn’t been any real proof. Besides, my hatred for Lucian probably had led to that idea.

Well, Telly was obviously half-right. Without the right motivation—say, an endless supply of aether—they are likely to settle for whatever pure they can get their hands on.

There was another gap, and the intensity of what he was feeling, what he wanted, roared through the connection. For a moment, I really believed I could feel him, and the emotion swamped me, draining my thoughts and filling me with the bliss of the connection.

Alex. His voice was chiding, self-satisfied. Are you paying attention?

Yes. Daimon… aether… stuff…

Good. Let me ask you a question, Angel. Do you really think daimons orchestrated those attacks all by their little selves?

Some of the lovely fog my Seth was creating faded as if icy wind had blown down the nape of my neck. What? What do you mean?

Even reasonable daimons couldn’t pull off what they did in the Catskills. They had to have help, don’t you think?

I couldn’t think as my pulse kicked up. So I’d been right? A sour taste filled the back of my throat.

Don’t be upset, Angel. Lucian needed discord for all of this to happen.

Thinking back to the attack in the Catskills, I tried to remember where Lucian had been in the chaos. I’d assumed that he’d been in the ballroom with the rest of the pures, but I hadn’t seen him. All I knew was that my Seth had contacted him…

All those dead half-blood servants, the Guards, and Sentinels… all innocent…

I jerked up, almost losing the connection with my Seth.

Angel, how do you think the daimons got into Catskills in the first place? You saw the security there. And the ballroom? There were only two entrances, and both were guarded. One of the doors belonged to Lucian’s guard.

Suspecting that Lucian had been behind these attacks was one thing—I didn’t put anything past that man— but my Seth? He couldn’t be okay with that. Believing he was a part of all those innocent people dying was accepting something horrific. What my Seth wanted, I wanted, but the daimons… they were and always would be the enemy.

Foes can be allies in war, Angel.

Oh, my gods. A huge, freaking, crater-sized part of me couldn’t process what my Seth was saying. I fought the pull of his emotions, resurfacing as if I were drowning, then gulping in air.

There were so many innocent people, I reasoned. Appalling images of the slaughter came one after another—the servants in the hall with their throats ripped opened, the Sentinels and Guards who’d been eviscerated and then thrown through windows.

They don’t matter, Angel. Only we matter, only what we want matters.

But those people did matter. We could’ve been killed, Seth. My father could’ve been killed.

But he wasn’t, and I would never let anything happen to you. Nothing did.

We’d been separated during the attack. And if I’d remembered correctly, I’d come very close to being trampled to death. Not to mention I’d had to fight the furies alone. Not sure how he’d exactly prevented my death in all of that.

Angel, we need this to happen. The daimons will help me get to you. Don’t you want that? For us to be together?

Yes, but—

Then trust me. We want the same things, Angel.

Aiden’s words came back to me and I squirmed in my own skin. Seth? You… you aren’t making me want anything, right? You’re not influencing me?

He didn’t respond immediately, which caused my heart to trip over itself. I could, Angel, if I wanted to. You know that, but I’m not. We just want the same things.

I bit my lip. We did want the same things, except the thing with the daimons… I stopped those thoughts. As