Page 28 of Obsession

So Aris possessed Henry and used him to betray what he loved most. My heart falls into my stomach. “And when did Aris get a… form?” I ask, voice notably quieter.

“When did he become corporeal?” Silva says, repeating the question more succinctly. “I haven’t asked the Lord, but I would imagine he gained the ability the moment he transferred into the mage’s body. That was around the time he began communicating with us again.”

I feel numb. The betrayal strikes anew.

All those months.

All that time that I was feeling comfortable, finding a home… Aris was free to leave. Aris was biding his time. Making his plans.

I left my room to get answers, and I got them all right. I shouldn’t have asked. Now, I know, and I am ashamed for the way I felt when Aris touched my cheek, for missing him, for coming back to him at all.

I stand to leave, and Silva abruptly says, “You mentioned Jaegen to me.” His silver gaze rises from his book and cuts into me. “Don’t worry.”

“Worry?”

“The Lord doesn’t appear to know about our conversation, or the favorable way you spoke of his rival.”

Jaegen gave you immortality, I said to Silva as he forced the Grand Mage to his knees. Why aren’t you loyal to him instead?

It was a desperate manipulation after learning of Aris’ treachery, after Henry broke my heart and the mages were massacred. Silva and Aris had just torn the Insitute apart, I met Aris for the first time in person, and I was standing in front of a portal, desperate to escape.

The words had come on their own.

Admittedly, it wouldn’t look good if they got back to Aris, and I’d bet Silva would love nothing more to turn Aris against me. So why is he keeping it secret?

“Am I supposed to thank you?”

“No.” Silva puts a mark down, then closes the book. “I only wanted to iterate that your belief in Jaegen was misguided. He made me immortal, and you thought that I should owe him for that.”

“Was I wrong?” I ask when he doesn’t add any more. The thought feels incomplete, like he’s trying to lead me to something.

“You have been wrong about everything.”

I can’t help a tired chuckle; it’s myself I’m laughing at. He is taunting me, again. “How?” I ask, lips twisted humorlessly.

“You haven’t looked at any of this the right way. Instead of opportunity, you see strife. You have the chance to be on the winning side, yet you refuse to take the ‘golden ticket,’ as it were. I saw this the moment I met you: there was a god inside of you, and you treated it as a burden.”

I’m shaking my head before he’s even finished, walking toward the door. I’ve heard enough. “You really are crazy,” I say.

I think: You kill for him. You dedicate your life to him. Aris, who doesn’t care about you at all. Aris, who will destroy the world on a whim. Aris, who hurt and betrayed the only person who actually cared for him.

“Am I?” he asks. “You distrust my Lord’s abilities, yet you advocate for another. If their powers are truly such curses, why embrace one and not the other?”

I pause. Is he trying to say that he knows I’m working with Jaegen? How could he have figured it out so quickly? There’s no way. “I haven’t embraced…” I drift off, unsure how to continue. I’m too terrible a liar to finish the sentence.

“Haven’t embraced what?”

“Any powers—any gods!”

“Are you sure about that?” he asks, tone patient and controlled. “You’ve got the stink of a deal badly made—it’s written all over you.”

I do my best to school my expression. There’s no way he knows, I tell myself again.

Silva continues, “Do you think that Jaegen is altruistic, that he fights for the good of this world?”

“Well, he doesn’t want to end it.”

“But keeping it corrupted and ruined—is that any better?” He pauses, then says, “Do you think that I asked for immortality?”

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