Page 19 of Bound By Darkness

They lied to me! They fucking lied to me!

All three of them—Baron, Dragan, and Eilish.

They knew what she was and they kept it a secret. Why? Aren’t we all on the same team? Dragan wants my help with his suicide pact, and he still can’t even manage to give me a modicum of fucking truth!

My rage is enough to make my focus fail, and there’s a small shift in the air as I hurry to correct my mistake.

“Shhh,” Baron says urgently, “someone’s listening.”

I freeze, certain I’ve been caught.

“There he is!” Eilish shouts. I whip around, but I’m still out of sight from both of them, thus I realize she can’t be referring to me.

Then, I hear it, Flumph’s tinny voice joins the scene.

Relief washes over me, but it’s not long before my anger returns. I open my eyes and detach my focus from the ring, taking long strides toward the vicinity in which I saw Dragan heading.

The forest is empty, the dawn of a new day casts its eerie blue over the still trees. Dragan is nowhere to be seen. I useLocate Creatureto sniff him out and my attention is directed nearby, up the branch of a tree not ten yards from me.

Sitting on the lowest branch, so still he could be a statue, is Dragan.

“I have a fucking bone to pick with you!” I say. I feel like sucker-punching him but I know better. Punching Dragan is like trying to punch a grizzly bear.

With an impressive leap, he lands in front of me, rattling the forest.

“What’s up your butt?” he asks before stalking off deeper into the forest. I follow him.

“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that everyone is fucking lying to me.”

He scoffs. “Lying to you?”

“About the angel,” I continue. “If we can even call her that anymore.”

“You know, then?” He stops in his tracks and turns to face me.

“Yes, I fucking know! And you know what else I know? This whole fucking thing is now a doomed mission!”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“It doesn’t matter what you would or wouldn’t say, you cock! Look at the fucking facts!”

“Calm down.”

“Calm yourself down!” I glare back at him. “The three of you fucking lied to my face while trying to sell me on this team shit, that using the power of the angel we could defeat Variant. What a load of fucking shit!” I spit at his feet and when I look up, there’s fire in his eyes.

“We had no other choice.”

“Fuck no other choice!”

“Revenant and I haven’t known long,” he asserts. “We found out right before we crossed the River of Souls.”

“So why the fuck didn’t you tell me then?”

“Because… it was complicated.”

“Fuck complicated!” I pause to take a breath. “You owed it to me to tell me.”

“And give you even more reason to hate her?”

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