“I do… but I know something it doesn’t know.”
“What’s that?”
“I wish I could tell you, but if I speak of it, I am worried it will know and try to find a way around my safeguard.”
I rested my head on his abdomen and listened to the sound of his breathing. “Kaimos, I… can’t allow you to just give up like this. Not for me. Not when so many people are counting on you to beat this thing.”
He rested a hand on my head and gently stroked my hair. “None of that matters. Without you, I have nothing left to fight for.”
My heart skipped a beat. I turned my head up to look at him. “What?”
“Was I unclear?”
“No, I just guess I didn’t expect to hear that. Why did you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” He shrugged. “Maybe because we’re in here and I’m not constantly being harassed by the monster that lives inside of me, I’m thinking more clearly, or feeling more fully. But I mean it. My life was dark before you arrived. For a while, I felt like I was in control of my own destiny. But then the monster reared its head, and I realized I was a slave to it—I saw the extent of the curse I had placed upon myself.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be. I have worked in this prison, I have been the Horseman, for so long, I felt like I was losing myself; the man I was. The man I was before the day I split my soul in half again isn’t like the man I am now. You have helped me rediscover myself in a way I thought would be forever impossible.”
“I had no idea you felt like that.”
“Yet another thing I kept from you, from the world. From myself.”
I licked my lips as I stared at him, then I swallowed hard. “I have something to tell you, now.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know if you’re going to like it, but since we’re being totally honest and—” I paused and glanced at the door, then looked back at him. “I have been on this planet for almost a decade. I have been incarcerated, imprisoned, enslaved, all before I came here. But in the time between my first arrival here, and now… I became an agent in an Outsider faction.”
Kaimos cocked an eyebrow. “An agent?”
“A scout, a spy, sometimes a warrior… and for a time, I thought, an assassin.”
“Assassin…”
“Kaimos, I was… sent here to kill you. Wait, don’t say anything. Just listen. When I got here, to the prison, my mind was blank. I couldn’t remember anything. It wasn’t until after I’d been processed that someone unlocked my memories and revealed to me who I was, and why I was here. His name was Calder, he was a… my case worker in the prison, I guess, but also my handler. He’d suppressed my memories with magic before I arrived, and then unlocked them once I was here, the goal being… killing you.”
“I see.” He paused, grinned, then his eyes rolled over my naked back. “You aren’t a very good assassin.”
“You can wipe that smug grin off your face.”
“Continue, please.”
I sighed. “Calder told me a whole bunch of stuff about you. He said you were a ruthless murderer and that you’d wantonly killed hundreds of my people, just because of who we were, but not only had I never heard that story; I didn’t see that in you, and nobody could confirm what Calder had told me, the fake memories he had implanted in my mind.”
“He left fake memories in your mind?”
“He had to make it believable, I guess. Anyway, I was for a while trying to complete my mission, even if I had my doubts about it, and then Calder went missing, and weeks later I find out my people thought I was dead—that I’d been gone for months without a word or a trace.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I have to, Kaimos. Because I’m going to go through that door, but I can’t do it before I get the chance to tell you that I couldn’t kill you because… I started falling for you. I was falling for you before I found out my reason for being here was all a lie, and that’s not an insignificant thing because I never, after everything I’d been through, thought I would find someone who would bring that side of me out into the light again.”
“Six…”
“No, Kai—don’t try to convince me to stay, okay?”
Kaimos took my hand and held it. “You can’t go,” he said.
“I have to. I’ve faced my own mortality enough times that death doesn’t scare me, but you… you have to find a way to stop your Guardian from going on a rampage. You don’t have another choice.”
He drew in another deep breath. “I don’t want to accept this. I don’t want you to leave.”
I crawled up to him and reached for his face. “I don’t want to go either, but we both need to do what we know is right. If I stay, and you lose yourself to this beast, we’ll never forgive each other. We’ll hate each other, in the end, and I would rather die loving…” I choked.
“Loving you,” he finished the sentence.
I stroked his cheek, catching a single tear as it began to fall from the corner of his eye. “Loving you,” I echoed. “You’re a good man, Kaimos. I’m glad I got to see it.”
“Six, please…”
I slid off the bed, holding his hand for as long as I could. My heart was pounding so hard it made my head spin. I’d talked a big talk, but the prospect of going through that door terrified me because now, as I looked at the man on the bed, I knew… now I had something to lose.
“Fight for me, okay?” I said, letting go of his hand. “For both of us.”
He went to stand, but I wouldn’t let him convince me to stay any longer. Not because it was wasted breath, wasted time, but because eventually, I had a feeling he would succeed.
Without hesitating, I tore open the door, and stepped through into the cold oblivion beyond.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Seline
Something was different. Something had changed. I could feel it, like a sudden quieting that made my heart clench as if someone had reached into my chest and squeezed it. I had to stop running and rest a hand on a wall to ground myself and stop from toppling over. Izzy and Sanchez stopped running, too, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
It was like shellshock. My ears were ringing, my head was spinning, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Was this the prison? Was Harrowgate doing something to me that the mages in my company were immune to? Izzy was calling to me, but it wasn’t until the third time she said my name that I finally recovered my senses.
“Seline!” Izzy yelled.
I gaped at her, scanning her like I’d just woken up from a deep sleep. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah… no, I don’t know. Something’s wrong.”
“Something where?”
“I can’t say…” I paused. “How long to the cellblock?”
“It’s around the corner,” Sanchez said. “C’mon.”