Chapter 19 | You Would Not Turn Dark

Belial reached him first.

She dropped to her knees, caught his raised hand, and looked over his face.

"Master!"

"Still here."

His voice sounded thin.

Astreal knelt on his other side.

"Where are you hurt?"

"Shoulder. The ceiling caught it."

Her hand moved carefully over his coat.

"And the rest?"

He looked at the cracked wall across the garden.

"I'm not sure yet."

Belial's fingers tightened around his.

He turned back to her.

Golden hair. Emerald eyes. Dust on her cheek and a worried crease between her brows.

He kept looking.

"Master?"

"Just stay there a moment."

Her expression softened.

"I'm here."

Aki and Yuki had gone to Sylvia and her men.

Matthias watched Aki crouch beside the nearest body, then move to the next.

"Alive," Aki called. "Unconscious. All seven."

Matthias let out a breath.

Until then, he hadn't realized he was holding it.

Joseph took the talisman from his jacket and handed it to Aki.

"Before she wakes."

Aki bound Sylvia's wrists and pressed the old disc against the back of her hands.

White light spread along her arms.

For a moment, darkness gathered beneath it. Then the light passed through, and the darkness dispersed.

Sylvia didn't move.

"Done," Aki said.

Joseph raised his radio and called for the Romanian unit and medical support.

Beside Matthias, Astreal eased her hand away from his shoulder.

"Bruised. You'll be able to move it. Carefully."

"That's reassuring."

"Can you stand?"

He considered his legs.

"With help."

"Then use us," Belial said.

They rose with him between them.

His knees nearly folded once, but Astreal held him steady. Belial slipped an arm around his back.

He was upright.

More importantly, both of them were close enough to touch.

"What happened?" Yuki asked when she came back.

She looked from him to the wall.

"We felt something go off. Then we got here, and you were sitting down, and they were over there."

"Accurate summary."

The joke cost him less effort than explaining.

He tried anyway.

"Sylvia had a doppelganger."

Belial went still beside him.

"Of whom?"

He looked at her.

Her arm tightened around his back before he answered.

"You. Hanging from that tree."

He couldn't make himself point.

Everyone looked toward it anyway.

"She waited until I came close enough to see. Then she..."

The false face rose in his memory.

He stopped.

Belial took his hand again.

"I understand."

He shook his head once.

"I thought I'd watched you die."

Nobody spoke.

The distant gunfire seemed very loud.

"There was power coming up through the ground," he continued. "I couldn't stop taking it in. Sylvia was laughing. Telling me to let it happen."

Joseph listened without interrupting.

Matthias drew the pendant out from beneath his collar.

"Then I saw this. Both stones were still lit."

Astreal looked down at them.

He turned toward her.

"You said I wouldn't have to guess."

Her lips parted slightly.

Then she nodded.

"Yes."

"Thank you."

She closed her hand around his for a moment, the stones warm between them.

"Knowing it wasn't her didn't make the power go away," Matthias said. "I had to get it out."

He glanced at the wall again.

"That was the result."

Joseph followed his gaze.

"You stopped drawing from the ground first?"

"I found my own reserve. Tried to keep hold of that instead."

"And the rest?"

"Let it go. All at once."

He didn't want to make it sound more controlled than it had been.

"I wasn't aiming carefully."

Joseph nodded slowly.

"We'll talk about that. For now, you stopped."

Matthias looked at Belial.

She had been watching him throughout the explanation. Now her free hand rose to her mouth.

There was color in her cheeks.

"You thought you'd lost me," she said quietly.

"Yes."

"And it hurt you that much."

He didn't know what to do with the expression on her face. Relief was there, and sorrow for what he'd seen, but beneath both was a warmth that made him look away.

"Belial."

"I know. It was terrible. I don't mean that I'm glad it happened."

She glanced down, her blush deepening.

"Only that I matter to you that much."

Matthias put his arm around her.

She came close at once.

For a moment, he rested his face against her hair and said nothing.

Her injured wrist rested carefully against his coat. He noticed it, then the cut at her ankle.

"You were hurt."

"A little."

"That doesn't look like nothing."

"Neither does your shoulder. We can compare complaints later."

He almost laughed.

Almost was an improvement.

Astreal remained at his other side.

He looked at her and caught the small downturn at the corner of her mouth.

"What?"

"You favor her."

Her voice was level. The faint pout wasn't.

Matthias stared for a moment.

Then he recognized the offered escape from everything he'd just described.

"Sylvia chose the impersonation. I wasn't consulted."

"Regardless."

Belial made a small, amused sound against his shoulder.

He reached for Astreal.

She let him draw her closer, though he was careful of the torn sleeve and the blood dried beneath it.

"If it had been you," he said, "I would have felt exactly the same."

Her ruby eyes held his.

"You don't have to say that for my benefit."

"I'm saying it because it's true."

The pout disappeared.

She placed a hand against his back.

Matthias looked down at the two stones between them.

He was keeping the pendant.

Astreal would probably tell him that had been the intention.

"Why Belial?" Aki asked.

He had returned from the prisoners and was looking toward the empty tree.

Yuki folded her arms.

"Maybe Sylvia has something against her. Or she thought he'd believe it faster."

Belial glanced over.

"Why would he?"

"You look kind. Astreal looks like she'd charge someone for damaging the rope they tried to tie her with."

Astreal's eyes narrowed.

"If it were my rope."

Aki looked away.

Yuki pressed her lips together, then grew serious again.

"I'm talking about what Sylvia might think. She doesn't know either of you the way we do."

Matthias shook his head.

"I wasn't comparing how likely it was. I saw her and thought she needed me."

"That's what she wanted," Joseph said.

His gaze moved from the tree to the place where Matthias had been standing.

"What interests me is how she knew what to do next."

"Make him angry?" Yuki asked.

"Use grief to open him to the current beneath this place. The old accounts describe it, but those records aren't widely available."

He paused.

"Sylvia could have found them. But this required more than knowing that dark lords sometimes arose after a loss. She chose the site, prepared the deception, and waited for a particular response."

"Someone could have told her," Matthias said.

"Someone could have."

Joseph looked toward Sylvia.

He didn't add a name.

"The authorities will have questions for her. I'll make sure that one is included."

Matthias nodded.

He didn't have room for another unseen enemy just yet. He was glad Joseph could hold on to the question for him.

The Romanian unit entered through the far gate.

Soldiers secured Sylvia and her men while medics examined them. The field commander stopped beside Joseph, listened to his account, and checked the prisoners himself.

"Most of the compound is contained," he said when he returned. "Teams are following the ones who fled. The roads are covered."

"And the civilians?" Joseph asked.

"The evacuation held."

Joseph nodded.

The commander looked at the cracked wall and flattened ground. Then his attention moved to Matthias, standing between the twins.

"You need medical attention?"

"His shoulder," Astreal said before Matthias could answer.

"And their arms," Matthias added.

Belial sighed softly.

"Fair."

A medic checked them while the prisoners were prepared for transport.

Matthias watched Sylvia being lifted onto a stretcher.

Without the portals and the dark power, she looked very small beneath the restraints.

He waited for anger to rise again.

It was there, but it no longer filled everything.

She was alive. She had been stopped. Someone else could take responsibility for keeping her that way.

He wanted to leave the garden.

By the time the prisoners had been taken out and their wounds dressed, the sky above the walls had darkened.

The fighting had dwindled to occasional distant shots. Joseph arranged their extraction, then put away his radio.

Matthias was still standing between Belial and Astreal.

He could have managed without their help now.

He didn't move.

"You said we'd talk," he told Joseph.

Joseph looked at him.

"About what happened to me."

"Yes."

Matthias touched the pendant.

"If I hadn't seen this, would I have become what she wanted?"

The twins grew still.

Joseph took a moment before answering.

"No. You would not have turned dark."

Matthias stared at him.

"You're sure?"

"Of that, yes. Of everything the transformation might have done, no."

He came closer.

"The historical cases had something in common beyond grief. A dark affinity was already present. The loss allowed it to take over."

"And mine?"

"Your former life gave you power. It didn't determine the nature of the person holding it now."

Joseph nodded toward Matthias's empty hand.

"The Sun Blade has been telling us that since it first answered you. Today gave me another part of the answer."

Matthias looked at his palm.

"That energy didn't feel holy."

"It wasn't. You drew it from the ground. But drawing on something isn't the same as becoming it."

"It felt as though I was losing myself."

"You were overwhelmed. You believed someone you loved had been murdered in front of you."

Joseph's voice softened slightly.

"Being furious about that doesn't make your nature dark."

Matthias glanced at the place Sylvia had struck the wall.

"It could still have gone badly."

"Very badly. I'm not telling you the pendant was unnecessary. It brought you back before that power could carry you further."

"Further into what?"

Joseph folded his arms.

"From what I've seen, something closer to an extremely angry god."

Nobody spoke.

Then Aki looked at him.

"That's your reassuring explanation?"

"It's the accurate one."

Matthias let his hand fall.

"An extremely angry god."

"Directed at Sylvia and the people responsible," Joseph said. "Not a dark lord compelled to destroy everything around him. Once the cause of that rage was dealt with, I would expect you to return."

"You would expect."

"We've never recorded a case quite like you. I'm not going to pretend otherwise."

Matthias appreciated that more than another absolute promise.

Joseph held his gaze.

"But you aren't an evil person waiting for one terrible day to reveal it. That is what I want you to understand."

Matthias stood quietly.

He had asked that question in other ways since the night Belial found him.

What if he remembered? What if the sword stopped answering? What if the people who feared him knew something his friends had missed?

He still didn't like how much damage he'd done without meaning to measure it.

That was something he would have to learn to control.

It didn't have to be proof that another person was waiting inside him.

Belial leaned against his arm.

"We told you we knew who you were."

"Joseph used more alarming words."

"He does that."

Joseph accepted this without protest.

Astreal looked at him.

"The possibility of returning afterward does not make losing either of us acceptable."

"That wasn't what I meant," Joseph said.

"I know. I am making it clear."

Matthias turned toward her.

She met his eyes.

"We have lived for more than three thousand years."

"And we don't intend to die anytime soon," Belial added.

His throat tightened.

He looked down at their hands against his arms.

"Good."

It was all he trusted himself to say.

Yuki let out a breath.

"You really are a weird dark lord."

Aki rubbed his forehead.

"We had nearly finished without that."

"I had to say it."

She looked at Matthias, some of her usual brightness returning.

"So, does the angry-god version have room for a mistress, or—"

"No," the twins said together.

Matthias laughed.

It caught in his chest at first, then came more easily.

Yuki looked pleased with herself.

"There we go. Missed that."

He shook his head.

"I'd still rather be an office worker."

"Bit late for that being the whole description," Aki said.

"I'm willing to ignore the rest."

Matthias looked toward the castle.

"I don't want a throne. Or a title. Or some enormous castle full of people waiting for me to give a speech."

"You'd be terrible at the speech," Aki agreed.

"Thank you."

"Too many qualifications. Everyone would sit down halfway through."

Yuki gestured toward Belial and Astreal.

"You did manage the two beautiful immortal wives, though. That's pretty impressive for a normal office worker."

"I didn't arrange that. They found me."

"And bought you a house."

He glanced at the twins.

"I just came home."

Belial drew a small breath.

Astreal's hand tightened at his elbow.

He hadn't planned the words. Looking at their faces, he was glad he hadn't tried to improve them before saying them.

The helicopter arrived after the soldiers had cleared a landing space at the far end of the garden.

Its lights swept across the dead trees. Rotor wash lifted dust from the paths, and Matthias turned his face away until the crew signaled them forward.

Joseph went first, followed by Aki and Yuki.

Matthias walked between the twins.

At the cabin, he stopped to let them climb in before him.

Astreal gave him a look.

"Your shoulder."

"Your arm."

Belial put a hand against his back.

"We can discuss this inside."

He climbed in.

They settled on either side of him, secured their belts, and checked his before he could object.

Apparently, they had reached a decision without him.

The helicopter lifted.

Through the window, the garden shrank to a dark square behind the castle. He could still pick out the tree.

Then the aircraft turned, and it disappeared from view.

Matthias leaned back.

Belial rested her head against his uninjured shoulder. Astreal sat upright on his other side, watching the lights below.

After a moment, she moved closer.

He let his hand rest over hers.

There would be a debrief. More questions. Wounds to check, arrangements to make, and eventually a flight home.

After that, work.

He was looking forward to it.

Belial shifted beside him, warm and alive, and he finally closed his eyes.