Page 93 of Heir of Broken Souls

I shake my head in bewilderment. “S-she’s an earth Fae. She doesn’t possess the amount of water power needed?—”

“She’s transitioning. That child is becoming as corrupt as the one you call Peter. She’s beginning to possess an ungodly amount of power.”

“No, no.” A million thoughts whirl behind Knox’s eyes. “She can’t possessbothpowers, and she’s already committed to the dark magic.”

Naia’s eyes grow cold, making my heart turn to stone. “The tyrant, it seems, used his time well with the creatures he captured. Hazel is just one of many Fae he has been enacting experiments on.”

This changeseverything.

We won’t just be fighting dark power. We’ll be going against our own. I blanch, bile rising in my throat. “The only way she can have both powers is?—”

“If she takes the life of a Fae.”

Spinning, I find Axel standing in the doorway, his neck flush and seething at the truth that was just dropped at our feet.

Any creature who possesses pure magic can be turned to the dark side by performing dark magic rituals and curses. However, to truly transition, to become something you are not, to be fueled by dark power entirely, you must take a life. And every life you take thereafter will strengthen the dark magic as the once pure creature feeds off the life force they stole.

“She’s killed more innocents,” Axel spits.

Not a question, but Naia answers it all the same.

“Yes, it appears so.” Naia cocks her head. “We still can’t see past his barriers but her, on the other hand… Let’s just say that what happened in the library did not sway her.”

For some ungodly reason that I don’t want to look closer at, I feel betrayed.

My heart feels like it’s breaking all over again. Despite me knowing all this time what she’s capable of—for gods’ sake she’s the reason Ace is dead—I didn’t realize I was holding onto a flicker of hope.

A small thread.

A small chance that it wasn’t Hazel’s choice, that she was perhaps being manipulated. But it’s ripped from my grasp, yanked away as quickly as Ace’s life was.

It was always her own doing. I’m just the idiot who hoped beyond reason that everything was warped in some way.

“We’re all fools.”

I don’t realize I spat the words out loud until Knox gently turns to me. “Delilah?”

“We are fools!” I shout as I angrily swipe away a traitorous tear. She doesn’t deserve them. “We have all been cowards. Walking around day after day ignoring the betrayal we should have been avenging. We have done nothing but sit and stew on our grief and look where it has gotten us!”

I couldn’t stop the words if I wanted to. They pour from me without abandon. The floodgates open once again, but this time releasing guilt instead of grief.

“We allowed our grief to swallow us blindly in its folds. We have been walking around like sleepwalkers. The moment Ace died we should have gone after her, to make her pay for what she did?—”

“I had people searching,” Knox tries to reason. “Axel was driving himself insane?—”

“Hey!” Axel protests.

“We tried, Angel,” Knox says softly.

“Not hard enough,” I say through gritted teeth. “Now she’s coming after us again.”

Naia doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. “She’s certainly trying to. The storm she’s sending our way is incomprehensible.”

Axel vibrates with rage. “After all she’s taken, she thinks she can get away with taking more?”

As if it’s wafting off him in waves, I feel his hatred slam into me over and over until my own spark begins to burn. Except this is no flicker or small flame.

It’s an inferno.