Page 61 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
“Always,” he confirmed.
“Do you…want to talk about it? About what happened earlier?”
A small sliver of light kissed the San Juan Islands, visible from their northern vantage and they both watched it, side by side.
“I’m eternally lonely,” he confessed. “My immortal existence seems without any other reason but to suffer, to inflict suffering upon others.
Can you imagine what that is like?”
She tried. She really did, and realized that her mortal brain, while it could sympathize, could not truly conjure the scope of reality to which he was referring. “No.”
“I do not enjoy my existence. Killing for me is no conquest. No war. No chance at revelation or rebirth. Until you, I’ve gone longer than tenthousandyears without touching another body and watching them putrefy and expire.”
“I’m…sorry.”
“Are you?” He turned to her then, pain lashing at her from his large frame. Making her want to curl inside of herself, to run and hide from it. What was he doing here? What was he trying to tell her?
“Of course I am, Julian.” When others would have retreated from him, Aerin stepped forward, reaching out to take his face in her hands.
His bones felt raw and heavy against her delicate fingers. “What if your existence could be something else? What if all of this didn’t have to be a battle between the eight of us? We could parlay, maybe. Your brothers. My sisters. We could forge an alliance, discuss our options, maybe even join forces. I mean, I know that there is conflict between the four of you. That Conquest and War might just be down for an Apocalypse, and that Death is against, for now. And, like you said, you’ve never really landed on one side or the other. So… let’s hash it out. Make some fucking pro/con lists, an action plan, at the very least a peace treaty.”
“Like an international summit? Or a board meeting?” His affectionate smile melted her, and his eyes were infinitely tender, and a bit too moist as he tucked a tendril of her hair that had escaped her bun behind her ear.
“Exactly.” She smiled back at him, showing her pleasure.
“Are you saying, Aerin, that you areforopening the seals and ending the world, or against it? That you’re not committed to fighting this?” He enunciated his words, his gaze boring into hers with an intensity she couldn’t understand. He wanted something from her. He wanted the truth.
“I’m saying… we could discuss our options. That there’s a chance my sisters and I are destined to bring out the Apocalypse for a reason… Maybe… maybe it’s time.” Aerin gripped her broom tighter as his hand dropped away from her, and all the emotion in his eyes flickered and died out, leaving them pale and cold.
“I know what you’re thinking, Julian,” Aerin forged on. “But if I’ve learned anything from life it’s that things aren’t black or white. There are no true heroes, there are no pure villains. Just people with agendas. What defines you is what you’re willing to do to reach your ends.”
“You think that because you have not lived long enough to learn that you are wrong.” He retreated from her, physically and emotionally, taking several steps backward toward the tree line. “I have landed, Aerin.
I have chosen a side.”
She blinked. “What?”
“There is still too much left to be done. Potential unrealized. There is still hope for them, Aerin. And we can’t take it from them. It’s too dangerous, now isn’t the time.”
“Do you get to choose? Do you have the final say?” Aerin advanced on him. “All I’m suggesting is that we explore what might happen, whatishappening. Five out of seven seals are open already and maybe—.”
More shadows lurked in the trees. Big ones. Three of them. Each with a different emotional signature.
“Julian?” Aerin’s eyes widened, unable to believe what was happening. “What is this?”
His hands shook though his eyes were like ice, and he curled his bare fingers into fists, blasting her with pain and fear and piling mountains of his regret on her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Aerin,” he whispered, as the three other Horsemen melted from the mists, dismounting their steeds and slowly making their way toward her in an arc. Trapping her against the harrowing drop. They looked like the warriors of yore, larger than life and handsome as sin. Like knights from a fairytale… or a horror movie.
“You disingenuousmotherfucker,” she spat, her heart shriveling with pain that was all her own. “You’re here to kill me.”
Julian closed his eyes and shook his head. “I could never.”
“But I could.” Nicholas Kingswood put a hand on Julian’s brawny shoulder in a show of brotherly affection before advancing past him toward Aerin. “We all decided it had to beyou.”
“You’re the darkest of the four, Aerin,” Julian explained as his brothers closed in. “The one who could tip the scales inherfavor… I can’t allow that to happen. If she prevails, she might gain your soul along with your sisters’. Along witheverything and everyoneelse. All hope would be lost, don’t you see? I have to give humanity a chance. I’ve suffered this long forthem, resisted her for this many millennia. That can’t all be for naught.”
“Shewho?” Aerin cried, backing away from the advancing Horsemen as they crushed the grasses and rushes beneath their heavy feet. Conquest with his light hair shining like sand slicked with blood in the pre-dawn light. The midnight tresses of War and Death. Wide shoulders, swarthy features, and lethal intent in their eyes. “Who are you talking about?” She cried out as a bit of the cliff fell away beneath her feet, and a buffet of wind seemed to press her forward, away from a deadly fall, but toward the men who would do her in. Rocks and four hard places…
