Page 84 of What Is Dark Within Me

“I’m afraid so,” Liam—no, Roland—sighed. “You know, I really started to like you this time. You’re more tolerable when you don’t have the Knowing One by your side.”

“I saw your body.”

“You saw my brother’s body,” he said, voice nearly breaking. “Scorched beyond recognition, the way you intended when you burned him to death in his home. I hardly needed to glamour his face. You and the Knowing One were too damn arrogant to consider the fact you might have been tricked.”

“I trusted you,” Aleja snapped.

“Trusted me so much that you betrayed me to Nicolas?”

“Turns out, I was fucking right to,” she said as Violet sagged against her. “Was any of it real?”

“The magic I used at the borders of the Hiding Place to draw your Knowing One away? The weak, dazed Remnants I placed in your path?”

Roland held up a golden vial, filled with the bones of an Otherlander, and slipped the necklace over his head. “This,” he said, “was clever. I’ll give you that. I told my brother not to give Violet the relic. He insisted he couldn’t convince the girl otherwise. That she was a difficult, but especially powerful, case.”

Violet’s body was tense, but she didn’t speak. If it hadn’t been for Nicolas’s power within her, Aleja knew she would have already collapsed from the exhaustion of carrying Violet.

“I can’t fight you,” Aleja said, hardly able to breath through the throbbing pain in her torso. “Let my friend go. If you need a sacrifice for your well, I’ll do it.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m tired. I wish this dream would end,” Violet muttered, her voice weak. Aleja felt the basket of her ribs moving with each labored breath. She searched the village behind Roland.

“He’s not here to save you, Dear Lady of Wrath,” Roland said. “Come. I have something I’d like you to see.”

“Fuck you,” Aleja spat. She turned her face into Violet’s hair and whispered, “Go. Get as far as you can. There’s a dog waiting on the other side of the ironsalts that surround the village. You can trust him.”

“Why would I go anywhere?”

“Violet, you need to wake up. Go!” Aleja snapped, this time shoving her friend hard enough to force her onto her own feet. Yet Violet didn’t move and before Aleja could say anything else, Roland interrupted.

“If either of you tries to run, you both die. You know what I am, Aleja. You know it would be nothing for me to kill you. Now, follow me. There is something I want to show you.”

Aleja’s dry mouth tasted of smoke—not the comforting scent of Nicolas’s skin, but something deadly. The fire light from the cabins behind them was impossible to ignore, sending red shadows dancing across the grass, but Roland seemed unconcerned that sparks might spread to the surrounding buildings.

Violet leaned against Aleja, and in a low voice that again sounded like herself, muttered, “You have a chance of surviving this, and I don’t. If you get an opening, run.”

Aleja didn’t answer.

She and Violet trudged after Roland as if they were in a three-legged race, and Aleja realized she was afraid for Nicolas. Sure, he looked at her as if he would light the match that would set the world aflame if she simply requested it, but along the way, they’d also becomefriends. Despite what he’d done, if she could withstand the breaking of the bond, she would miss him.

Violet’s hand curled around Aleja’s as Roland led them toward the well. She didn’t dare attack Roland with her fire, not yet, but if she got one more chance to get them both—or even just Violet—out of here, she would take it on a moment’s notice.

“I admit, I was curious about you,” he said. He half-turned to face them, his hands clasped together behind his back as if he were confident neither Aleja nor Violet was a threat. A few of the villagers had left their houses, glancing anxiously from him to the young women, before rushing toward the fire with buckets.

“No need to worry,” Roland said, addressing them. “Our visitor means no harm. She’s come to look upon the wonders of our well. Put out the flames. Soon, all will be back to normal.”

“Help us!” Violet shouted with a force that surprised Aleja. “He’s going to kill us.Please. Help us.”

But that Violet was gone a moment later as her dazed expression returned. Keep fighting, Aleja pleaded silently.

She expected some murmur from the crowd, a reaction of any kind, but the eyes on them disappeared as people returned attention to gathering water, and rounding up the sheep disinterested in the barking dogs at their heels. From her perch on the hill, she had felt sorry for them—all these people trapped in time, dependent on a well that was running dry, and looking to a Dark Saint to save them.

Any sympathy she had was long gone.

“Aleja? I asked you a question.” Roland’s voice was so soft, so polite, that under other circumstances Aleja might have believed he was offering some shallow conversation to pass the time, as he had done in the woods around the palace.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I was busy watching these people ignore the fact that two women are about to be murdered.”

“Do you remember that you recruited me? Nicolas may have made the final decision, but you pushed for me to take the Trials after I figured out how to take down Authorities.”

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