He spread his hands to accentuate his promise, as if his desires were so obvious that I should have guessed it myself. On the outside, he looked so innocent behind his request, like I’d be a fool to turn down such an easy offer.
Yet I still had the upper hand. He might not have showed it, but all of us knew that if he shot me right then and there, he wouldn’t get what he wanted. The Blade would still be locked away and I’d just come back in another form. Eventually, in time—even if it took millennia of reincarnations—I’d find some way to get it back and end them.
The screens came on one by one. They caught my attention as the static faded and was replaced by a row of faces. Four men in a row, and the fifth a woman I’d already seen: the Guardian named Morgan, now without her young son. The first four all had different faces, but as I looked, those faces changed. Just like what had happened with Anon, all of the men were wearing the identity-concealing devices, so that even in the space it took Wyck to turn to me again, they’d all changed twice each.
But their eyes, those stayed the same. In their eyes, even without needing a Glimpse, I knew who these people were, why they were all gathered to watch from safe places far away. Power. Authority. Anticipation. Guardians.
It was impossible to identify any of them in that state, besides Wyck’s mother Morgan. She seemed unconcerned for her identity, relaxed into her high-backed chair and blinking at us.
So there are five of them: five Guardians. Did each of them have two Chosens? That meant at most, there were fifteen in total. That seemed like such a tiny number when placed against how vast the world was, how much of a reach they’d need in order to control so many things at once. It was startling, but also encouraging. I only had fifteen to take down.
Fifteen minus one, I corrected myself. Mr. Sharpe was already gone. I wondered whose Chosen he had been. I scanned their eyes, wondering if I would see any of them with extra hate to identify Mr. Sharpe’s Guardian by, but they only stared through the screens at me unfeelingly.
“As you can see,” Wyck said to the screens, angling himself toward Morgan, “I have brought Mr. Asher in as promised, and he will give us the Blade.”
“What is that over there on the side?” Morgan said, ignoring Wyck. She leaned over in an attempt to see something that the camera did not reveal entirely. Wyck, blinking, looked to his side, then pulled the edge of Thad’s bed toward him.
“This is Mr. Asher’s Chosen,” he said to her, now looking a little flustered.
“Why isn’t he dead yet?” she asked. “Haven’t we made this little mistake before, Wyck?”
Before my eyes, I watched the unshakable man crumble. The absolute assurance that Wyck had displayed so far was betrayed by a single, thin line of sweat that ran down the back of his neck, so insignificant that I almost didn’t notice it.
I sat up straight. Something was going on between Wyck and his mother. It looked like she’d struck him through the screen.
Wyck coughed, ignoring me. “The dilemma with killing Mr. Asher’s Chosen is that… Mr. Asher will not be as inclined to open the box if—”
“Can we just carry on with Mr. Asher?” one of the men said, the second screen from the left. He had just changed from a middle-aged, bearded gentleman into a sallow-faced elderly woman with discolored wrinkles across her skin.
“Hush, Arthur,” Morgan commanded with an impatient wave of her hand. “Just kill the Chosen and take the ring and be done with it.”
Wyck, seeming incited by her sharp words, turned to the guard next to him and seized the gun from his hands. In a flash, he cocked it and–
“Wait!” I burst in a scream, standing up with the chair dropping behind me. It fell with a crash that brought Wyck’s head around.
“I’ll open the box!” I shouted at him and the screens. “I’ll open it now. But if you shoot him I swear I won’t.”
I shook with intent, trying not to show my fear but unable to mask it from my widened eyes. The gun hovered over Thad’s chest, his eyes rolling away from where they’d locked on the barrel. Now he looked at me.
“If he dies, I’ll scrape my own eyes out,” I hissed through my heavy breathing. “Then you can torture me all you want, it won’t get the box open.”
The gun didn’t move. Morgan looked upset.
“Well?” she said, leaning back and drumming her fingers on the chair’s arm. “One or the other. Let’s hurry.”
Seeing my hesitation, Wyck lifted the gun to his shoulder again. So I threw my hands out, seizing the box and spinning it around to face me. I leaned over the table so that my eyes were aligned with those in the box, looking up to make sure that the others saw me.
Thad’s bed had begun to shake, such tiny movements that they’d have been imperceptible if not for the way the wheels creaked on the floor. Tears ran down his face, eyes his only way of speaking. They begged me to stop, to run, to leave the Blade, to do anything but allow it to fall into their hands and forfeit everything that we’d already done, everything that we’d already given up.
I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t see his tortured face and push myself to continue. So I swallowed hard, turning away from Thad, and looked down to the box.
Its designs appeared all the more intricate in the glow from the skylights, as if every detail was heightened and I could pick out even the tiniest, most miniscule stroke from the expert’s knife. I hadn’t been able to see it in the dark of the crypt, but now I could tell just how different this was from previous case. It was longer and the designs were darker with more points. Its eyes were dilated: waiting for me, calling for me to read them.
So with the seconds passing, with me wondering if I was making the worst mistake of my thrice-lived life, and the stillness of anticipation enveloping the room…
I looked.
A simple, fixed stare was all it took, locking my eyes with the pair below mine. I waited for the eyes to change, for the lock to shift, for a gear to spin, for the box to open so that finally, all of this would be over.
The eyes in the stalks rolled forward to meet mine. In a flash, they narrowed into black slits.
The box gave an immediate shift. The lid beneath my thumbs moved a millimeter upward, releasing itself from the rest of the box. I heard a sharp intake of breath from across the table, Wyck lowering his gun, as if even he hadn’t believed that I would do it.
And that was all I needed.
The moment that the box was open and the lid had brushed the ends of my waiting fingers, something inside of me came back to life. Maybe it was because the lingering pain in my head had finally faded. Maybe it was because the guards’ fingers on my arms had loosed slightly at the box’s sound. But more likely, it was because when the box opened, somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, I remembered the last time that I’d heard that sound: two lives before, when I’d locked it away.
Like an explosion going off with me at its center, suddenly things went flying.
A backwards swing of my scaled fists sent both guards through the air. I seized the cover so quickly that my now-extended claws threw sparks against its surface, the lid torn from the case. I grabbed the handle of the Blade and pulled it from the sheath before I even had a chance to look at it.
I darted in front of Thad like a shield, shadowing him as Wyck’s gun went off. Instincts now out of my control, my left hand moved on its own in a blur of motion. I felt something strike the outside of my hand but the impact was as gentle as a pebble, and it wasn’t until I heard something clatter across the room that I realized I’d blocked Wyck’s bullet.