“You guys are really fucking batshit crazy, aren’t you?” Gavin asks his brother. “Him? He’s going to kill me now, and there’s nothing you can do but watch.”
Gavin laughs humorlessly, his head falling back as he shakes it.
“I want every name who preceded Hannah’s,” I tell him.
“The ring runners?” Gavin asks on a snort. “Sure. Why the hell not. They’re all dead anyway.”
My jaw grinds. I already knew as much, but hearing it aloud makes it more real. Steals more of my revenge from me.
“I’ll settle for proprietors. The ones who helped fund it. The ones who contributed. The families of transporters and informants… Surely they’re all not dead,” I bite out.
“I have hundreds of files I planned to use as blackmail so that I could get Morgana far away from here when I got her back. But hell, fucking take it. At least if they’re dead I don’t have to worry about them coming after us. Only one bus station in town, and I have locker four thirty-nine. Everything’s in there.”
“Don’t make this too easy, Gavin. I have things I want to do to make you talk.”
“You can’t touch him,” Gage growls. “Trust me, it doesn’t work, and it’ll give him a chance to escape.”
Gavin just continues to laugh, almost hysterically. “He doesn’t care, Gage!” he shouts. “Let him. Go ahead. If this is my only chance of saving Morgana—his fucking help—then it was a pipe dream from the fucking beginning.”
“I said I’d try to save her, and I will.”
“You’ll vaporize her body to eject Hannah,” he growls. “Her soul will be cast out—”
“If I could kill Hannah inside Morgana’s body, I would, but I don’t have enough power to do that. However, Morgana’s memories—everything about her and you and everything you’ve ever meant to her will be gone. Not her body. Her mind will be sound, and healthy, unlike what will be left of it if it’s intact. But resetting her mind will eject Hannah, because for just a split second, the body will be momentarily dead. And Hannah needs her alive.”
He sits up a little, eyes watering. What is with all the fucking watery-eyed males lately?
“She won’t remember me?”
“No, but she also won’t remember spending all this time trapped inside her own body, likely rocking in the corner of her mind somewhere, while Hannah controlled her. It’s the reset that ejects Hannah, but it’s one shot. I have to hit her at the exact right spot with all the power I plan to siphon, and when Hannah is ejected, I channel the rest into her spirit. Killing Morgana’s body and soul does nothing to kill Hannah. She’d simply escape and immediately possess someone else until she found a new body. This is our chance.”
“Why not just tell us that to begin with?” Gage asks from beside me. “We could have delivered all the information.”
My lips tug in a smirk. “Because I couldn’t have done this.”
I’m across the cell so fast neither of them see it coming, and my hand grabs Gavin’s head. He roars in pain as centuries of tortured and abused memories flood through his mind, all of them toppling over each other, letting him see all that was done to me. All he helped them do, no matter the price.
I show him what I plan to do, letting him see what happens next as I know it. I let him feel the pain I’m feeling now. I show him the monster he’s helped to create.
He thrashes under me, and I fling out a hand to st
op Gage from doing something stupid. The dark user crashes into the bars, and I hold him there, using my power like a blockade, while channeling the rest of the memories at Gavin.
As soon as the last one finishes, the one of Ella so lost and alone in the woods, I pull my hand back, and he pants as he jerks back away from me.
His heavy breathing is the only sound in the room, and I release Gage, since he’s not fighting, letting him stare at his brother in confusion.
“You cost me mine so you could have yours. Morgana’s body will be intact, but she’ll be terrified of you without her memories. She’ll eventually learn all you did, but she won’t know you enough to forgive you. That’s the price, and you’ll pay it.”
“How?” he asks, laughing bitterly as he spits out a little blood. “You’ll be dead.”
“Trust me, I’ve been plotting everyone’s torture, adjusting where necessary. This will be yours. Seems fitting, considering what you helped cost me.”
He struggles against the chains, dead eyes condemning me to hell the way mine once did his when he watched them torture me through the bars and took notes for Hannah. Or when he tortured me himself with the werewolf-claw glove Hannah designed specifically for me and Alton.
I failed to kill him more than once.
Before I start to walk out, Gavin starts laughing bitterly, and I turn to look at him.