There has to be a way to save him.
“Sister,” he says with a smile, “I think you’re the one who needs to be saved. To understand. Our pack was weak, and so we were destroyed. Now, we’re not weak any longer. No one will ever hurt us again. If you join me, we can have everything we lost. We can have it all.”
I’m crying. Fully sobbing, although I’m not sure when I started to cry. “We can’t have it all just by pursuing power and using our dark magic. But we cantryto get back some of what we lost if we find more of our people and come back together. Maybe we won’t have Isabella and Mom, but we can have each other. We can be happy again.”
“Asha, I do not want that life again.” His gaze grows harder, colder, and the black webbing that had retreated from his head starts to cover him once more. “I’ll never be that person again. This is what I want now.”
“Think about what Mom and Isabella would want!” I cry out, desperate, feeling everything slipping away.
“What they’d want is for you not to have killed them in the first place,” he tells me coldly. “But I can forgive you for that. Their deaths had to happen for us to become what we are now. I understand that, although it took me some time.”
“Simon–”
“Join me, Asha. Take this town with me. Take the world with me. We can have it all.”
I shake my head, my vision blurred with tears. “Simon, I love you. You’re my everything, but I can’t do this. I canneverbe this. Please just come with me. With time, you’ll understand what I’m saying.”
The oily black has nearly covered his face once more. “If that’s your choice, then you are not the Blood Mage I need. You’re not strong enough. Not powerful enough. And you have no benefit to me. Like everything else that’s weak, you must die.” And then, his face is gone, and it’s only the monstrous creature in front of me.
He lifts a hand, and I feel his powers buzzing.
I lift a hand, calling to my own magic as sobs wrack my body. But even still, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can kill my brother.
The monstrous creature, my brother, smiles, as if he’s reading my mind.