Page 113 of Noctis

“You heard me. Kill him.” My voice cracked, but there was no mistaking the words. “He killed my mother. He dumped her in the river and let me spend months wondering what had happened to her. Kill him.”

When I’d imagined the person responsible being caught. I’d pictured police officers, courtrooms, and a sentence that could never be long enough. Now, all of that seemed intolerably slow. Tyler hung suspended in front of me, and Caligo could end his life with a single movement.

I wanted to see it happen.

I wanted the last thing Tyler ever saw to be my face.

Caligo stared at me for a long moment. Then he said, “No.”

The word struck harder than Tyler’s shove. “What?”

Caligo opened his hand. Tyler dropped to the floor in a heap, coughing and clutching at his throat.

“I said, kill him.”

“I heard you.”

“Then do it. You wanted to kill him before. You offered. Repeatedly. And I stopped you. Well, I’m not stopping you now.”

“That is why I won’t.”

I stared at him, unable to comprehend what I was hearing. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You told me you never wanted him dead.” Caligo’s voice softened, although the surrounding shadows continued to writhe. “You showed me that killing someone is an irreversible act. This is your grief speaking, and I won’t let him take another part of you by making you responsible for his death.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I’m not obeying you in this.” His eyes dimmed from an inferno to a smoldering red. “I’m protecting you.”

A rasping laugh came from the floor. Tyler pushed himself onto one elbow, his face red and his eyes damp from coughing. “That’s priceless.”

We both looked at him.

He laughed again, despite the pain it clearly caused him. “You’ve got your own pet monster, and even he won’t do what you tell him. That must sting.”

Caligo’s head turned slowly toward him.

Tyler’s amusement rapidly disappeared.

“I am not his pet,” Caligo said. “And Rowan does not command me. I protect him, including from decisions he would have to live with long after you were dead.”

A shadow shot across the kitchen and wrapped around Tyler’s chest, slamming him back against the cabinets. Another snaked across the counter, curled around my phone, and deposited it in Caligo’s outstretched hand.

Then he came toward me.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going home.”

“No.” I backed away, clutching my mother’s ring. “He admitted it. You heard him.” I tried to move around him, but his tail curled around my waist and pulled me back.

“Let go of me,” I demanded.

“No.”

“Caligo, he let my mother die. He threw her into the river like she was rubbish and then watched me fall apart. He deserves to die.”

“He does.”