Az stills, the smile still lingering on his mouth, but it’s clear he’s forcing it.

“If they sent you to kill me, they’re idiots. Asha will never forgive them.”

“I know. That is a problem, isn’t it?” I say, shrugging.

“Depends on who you’re asking.”

“Not my problem, at least.”

“You’re really going to betray her. Again?”

“I’m considering it.”

“She’ll never forgive you, you know,” he says, and, to his credit, stands his ground, though his gaze darts to the cell door behind me.

Like he thinks he has a shot of outrunning me.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

“I’m pretty sure that I’ve sufficiently burned any bridge of friendship Asha and I might have had. I’m less looking to rebuild than I am making sure public relations are cordial. Honestly, I don’t know that I could make it any worse.”

“They’ll never accept you, you know,” says Az. “They might claim they forgive you, but they’ll never trust you after what you did.”

“You mean after what you manipulated me into doing?”

Az’s sage-green eyes narrow into slits. “Children don’t like to take responsibility for their own actions.”

“Oh, I take full responsibility. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re the one who pressured me into making those decisions.”

“I didn’t make you do anything.”

“No. No, you didn’t,” I say, pressing the metal key to my lips. “But you know what you did do? You saw a girl, broken and abused and drowning in shame, and you did what every other predator like yourself does. You latched on. You planted doubts into my head. You made yourself into my only source of salvation, and then you turned me against them. Cut me off from the people who cared about me. And, yes, I’ll admit it, I let you. You never took my choices away from me. So there. Are you happy, Az?”

“Happy with what?” he asks.

“That when I drain your body of blood and deny you the numbing venom—I can do that now, did you know?—I will be taking full responsibility for my actions?”

Az sprints for the cell door.

I sidestep into his way, shaking my head with a tsk. Then I tap the metal key on his forehead playfully.

Nox told me before I came that I likely shouldn’t play with my food.

I imagine he won’t be too bothered to hear I didn’t listen.

Az swallows. “I can help you.”

I screw up my forehead. “You know, why do I feel like I’ve heard you say that before?”

“Your child,” he says, clearly grasping for anything. “Your child didn’t die. I know where your baby is.”

I still for a moment, watching the man before me, my chest cracking a bit. It’s the kind of bait I would have taken months ago, the kind that would have had me eating out of Az’s hand.

I’m done eating out of other people’s hands.

“No,” I say. “No, you don’t.”

Az straightens. “If you kill me, you’ll always wonder if I was telling the truth.”

This time, it’s me who smiles. “Well, then. You shouldn’t have lied so much, should you? Seems like there should be a parable about that. Something about how, when you finally do tell the truth, no one will believe you.”

Az pales, and he makes a break for it again.

This time, I let him get as far as grazing his fingers against the cell door.

When I break his leg, I make sure to cover his mouth first, muffling his scream as I clutch him from behind.

He’s shaking from the pain now, and I let him wrestle his mouth free of my grip.

“If you think this will somehow free you of your shadows, the darkness swarming within you, you’re wrong,” hisses Az through his teeth.

My, his pulse is racing.

I’m going to miss that sound.

“That’s the thing, Az. The crucial part of all this you seem to have missed.”

“Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

“I’m not doing this for me.”

When I’m done with Azrael, he’s nothing but a heap of soon-to-be-rotting carcass resting upon the floor.

I tried to keep it clean, for Asha’s sake. There’s no evidence left of how much pain I ensured he suffered. In fact, he looks rather peaceful, which he doesn’t deserve and leaves me feeling a bit hollow, but it is what it is.

I didn’t do this to fill a void in my chest. This wasn’t about revenge.

I’m about to turn to leave, when I hear a faint shuffle in the corner. I turn to find none other than Kiran stepping out of the shadows on the other side of the cell.

I wipe the blood staining my lips onto my sleeve.

“One of the guards tell you I wasn’t Lydia?”

Kiran nods absentmindedly. He doesn’t look at me. He just stares at the body crumpled on the floor. The carcass of the male who’s caused him so much grief.

“Why?” he asks.

“Why what?”