Page 99 of The Devil In Blue
She snorted. “She was just a lost soul from the Labyrinth.”
“No, she never came from the Labyrinth. She was made for me. To balance me because I was wandering too far.”
She shook her head, eyes reddened. Purity snorted, taking a step back now when I took another forward. I slowly spread my wings, letting them cast a shadow over Elanor and putting her right in the center of my darkness.
“Love has distracted you,” she said, her voice breaking. “You are not meant to love others. Others are meant to love you.”
The corner of my mouth quirked at her words. They were words I’d never said but still, they were familiar.
Because Elanor was me.
“If I do not love, I cannot guide. And to be king of this place, Imustlove.”
Elanor took an angry step forward, showing the emotions she’d always been so skilled at hiding.
“Phariel doesn’t love! Phariel corrupts and manipulates.”
“This isn’t about my brothers.”
“You are different. You are better than—”
“Enough!”
When I finally raised my voice, Purity shrunk under my tone. Elanor remained tall, watching me as I unlocked all that I was. All that I’d suppressed. All that I had become over centuries and centuries of existence. The monster. The devil. My wings spread wider. My skin became ashen. My eyes drowned in a black and blue storm of power I hadn’t touched in a hundred years.
“Don’t,” Elanor said, shivering in my shadow, but staying planted where she was. “You made me to be your companion. To guide you. To help you. Iamyou.”
“And I can take it all back.”
“Briar could not remain. She would have destroyed you. Love is the death of duty. You must see it.”
“I created you for love!” I roared the words so loudly that the remaining foundation of the temple shivered. “And I see now that I got you all wrong.”
Slowly, I took another step forward, my eyes seeing Elanor for what she truly was. The piece of my soul that did not see anything outside of that skewed idea of justice I’d cooked up when I created her. She was the part of me that was a machine with no capacity to love anything but herself. Me.
“The day you surrendered Briar to Father Eli,” I said. “Did you feel anything? Regret? Empathy?”
She hesitated and I knew exactly why. I had not given her those things when I made her.
I had been such a fool.
“Answer me, Elanor,” I whispered.
She remained silent, the tears in her eyes conveying something I doubted had anything to do with regret.
“I felt…” she began. “Relief.”
I wanted to ask why. I wanted to choke the false life out of her just to get an answer, but in the end, I was to blame for all of it. I made her and not with enough precision and thought to prevent her betrayal. She had wounded me so deeply and still, I hatedmyselffor it.
“Please,” she whimpered, her shoulders hunching for the first time since the day she rose out of the shadows of my essence.
“You do not fear punishment,” I muttered, my hand slowly raising to her cheek. “You fear being nothing. And I cannot and will not try to make you understand how wrong you’ve been because I was too stupid to give you the capacity. I never thought it necessary. But I see now that when I created you, I had no need for a raven with empathy or the ability to care. It was not jealousy or hatred that drove you to condemn Briar to human hands. It was this fucked up self-obsession I gave you. The idea that you are the universal right and not to be questioned. I created a zealot… and I’m sorry for that.”
My hand clamped around her slender throat and I watched her blue eyes go wide with shock. But her hands remained by her side. As I took in the fast flutter of her pulse under my fingers, I watched her. She was obedient as ever even in her last moments. Slowly, I raised her up, feeling her weight tug on my grip when her feet left the ground. She was so beautiful. At one time, I even thought her perfect. A flawless creation made from my magic, but I’d given her too much of it and not enough of what made a thing whole. I realized that now.
“There is no sense in making you suffer, as much as I long to see the fear and pain in your eyes that you caused Briar these fifteen years,” I said. “But it no longer matters. I am as much to blame as you, Elanor. And you feel my pain just as I feel yours. And you must feel it so strongly now. I will be your prison where you can wade in that guilt and heartache forever.” I paused to let those words sink in. For both of us. “I am sorry,” I said, watching her tears slide down her white cheeks.
Purity growled, her body rigid as she watched my hand tighten around Elanor’s throat. But the hound would not attack. She was mine just like everything else in the Glyn. A fact that Elanor had seemingly forgotten. I wasking.
