Page 57 of Obsession

My jaw juts. I’ve gotten used to the mark blocking Aris from my thoughts. The sudden mind reading is grating, especially as Jaegen explores fears that I have not yet acknowledged. These are private, embarrassing things.

I look back at the fire, swallowing with some difficulty. He is so mean sometimes. He hasn’t even apologized for choking me.

Jaegen makes a sound in the back of his throat. “You are feeling adversarial toward me tonight. I see—Aris told you about Sem, then.”

I don’t respond, watching Aris’ followers in the background. They’re trying to tame the fire now—effectively extinguishing sections of the manor in a matter of seconds.

Ash has begun to fall from the sky like rain, and I catch a piece in my palm, wondering what part of the building I hold. My room? A portrait? One of Silva’s books?

“Why did you kill her?” I ask.

“I couldn’t stand by any longer. She was passive and let Aris destroy. Now, I can make worlds; I can fix worlds.”

In his image.

I crumble the ash to dust and open my hand to release the flakes to the earth. “They’ll notice that I’m gone soon,” I say.

“Very well. I see that you are set on the right path.”

I still don’t look his way, a funny feeling rushing over me, remaining even after Jaegen disappears. It’s a kind of malaise, like the feeling of driving past a graveyard, or the sense a soldier gets before marching into battle. I can’t describe it; I hate feeling it.

By now, the fire has dampened, and a friendly breeze travels past, rustling my hair and cooling my skin. As it passes, I sigh and walk toward the charred remains of the manor, and Aris’ followers surrounding it.

“Half is destroyed,” says Silva when I join him. He is standing by himself, tapping his foot as he watches his underlings scurry about. “I suppose you asked them to perform a rescue effort.”

I shrug. “Why waste a perfectly good house, especially when we have the power to save it?”

“Destruction is their opium.”

“What about homelessness?”

“Point,” says Silva, giving me a once-over. “It’s nice to see you didn’t burn up. Aris won’t be happy about those marks on you.”

I absently look at my arms and legs, my long shirt barely covering myself decently. There are a good amount of scrapes and cuts that’ll heal in about a week, but they look worse than they really are with all of the dried blood. My ribs hurt the most, though the pain has faded after my encounter with Jaegen. His words are what strike me now.

This whole time, I misunderstood. I wasn’t supposed to be a companion; I was to be a seductress.

How many lives could I have saved if I figured it out sooner?

“Where is he?” I ask quietly. How much time do I have to pull myself together?

“He has a meeting with a prime minister.”

That doesn’t tell me much. He could be gone for hours, or return any moment now. It’s all a question of when he gets bored. Aris makes these meetings to amuse himself by watching people plead.

“Can I ask you something?”

Silva glances at me, peering into my soul. Whatever he sees makes him smile, and he nods.

“Why did Jaegen make you immortal? You said that you didn’t want to be.”

“That’s a rather personal question, Miss Dessen.”

“We’ve become familiar, haven’t we?”

He smiles again, though his peculiar eyes go distant. “Very well. There was a group of us. We used to call ourselves ‘the core.’ We tried for many years to summon Aris, but he didn’t answer our calls. He had moved on, given us knowledge and magic before departing, disinterested in our world. But we were desperate. When we realized that a direct channel was not working, we turned to other means to contact the Devourer.”

“And?”

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