On the first night, the thirty-one exiles had been too worried about another sneak assault from Providence to talk or grab much sleep. The next morning, they marched north on Nimue’s insistence that an ark she’d scouted, Prosperity, was the humans’ best hope for safe haven.

And the Darisami’s.

On the second night, their number had reduced to twenty-nine, but not because of anything the three Darisami had done. Fear of never reaching Prosperity or of not being allowed entrance, terror at dying of thirst or starvation on the journey, an agoraphobic response to all that desolate space—or a combination of all three—stopped two exiles from leaving Providence’s shadow. They said they’d beg to be permitted back in.

Maybe there was some comfort in starving to death outside the gates of the ark they knew instead of one they didn’t.

By the third night, the humans were somber, thinking about the many miles yet to cross while their feet screamed from walking farther than they’d ever walked after lives spent underground.

Exhaustion attacked them from without while fear assaulted them from within.

The Darisami focused on the humans’ wellbeing and did what they could to keep them alive. They dug for water. They foraged for anything remotely edible to supplement their meagre supplies. They scouted for ruins in which to sleep. It kept them occupied.

But on the fourth night, once all the surviving was done and the humans were settled as well as they could be, Galen came in the dead of night. Emrys had been expecting it with a dread that could not be ignored no matter how busy he kept himself.

Galen had been disciplined to wait this long to demand answers.

“Tell me what you did to Ash,” Galen said.

Ash…

Nimue swore that Ash lived a good life in Prosperity; not hiding, not trying to pass for human, but out and open as a Darisami whom the Prosperous loved and welcomed. The loving part wasn’t hard to imagine; everyone adored Ash. But to be loved as a Darisami…

It shouldn’t have been possible, but Nimue knew Ash by sight, and she’d read his name in the soul of a human she’d harvested while scouting Prosperity.

Ash…

His heart braced for impact, sending a shockwave vibrating through his arteries and veins. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. If we’re going to have any hope convincing Prosperity to give us a home, I need to be prepared.”

Those two sentences were more than Galen had said to him since they’d left Providence. He’d asked for space while he processed what Emrys had done in saving his life and condemning him to a Darisami’s existence.

Then there were the humans to fret over. Galen had taken on as much concern for their welfare as Emrys had, conscious of the role he’d played in seeing Emrys elevated to the status of a living god within the underground ark. People had died. He didn’t want to be the cause of more loss.

But Emrys felt the distance keenly. Perhaps if he told Galen the truth, there was a chance it would bring the two of them closer again. Emrys didn’t doubt he’d been justified in what he’d done to Ash one hundred and fifty years ago, but just because he knew he’d done the right thing didn’t mean Ash saw it that way.

Or that Galen would.

Emrys shifted against the hard earth.

“The Darisami who made Ash was a brutal son of a bitch. Magnus considered himself a scientist, and he conducted a lot of experiments, mostly on humans but also on Darisami. A lot of people died, more than was necessary or decent for a Darisami to simply survive. I made it my business to hunt and kill those Darisami who stepped beyond the bounds of what any reasonable person would consider acceptable. Any who—” He swallowed his hypocrisy hard. “Any who flaunted their power to sway humans counter to their own interests. Any who were cruel or wicked or…”

Just pure evil.

“Magnus once made a Darisami only to starve her to death in the name of science.”

Even in the dark, he saw Galen’s gaze drop to the ground.

“Stopping him was the right thing to do. But Magnus was adept at hiding. I had to be patient. That’s when I found Ash. Magnus had made him in the middle of the twentieth century. He’d intended to kill Ash for one of his experiments, but he’d fallen for him instead. Having met Ash back then, I could believe it. Even Satan would have loved Ash.”

“And did you?” Galen shifted in his place in the dirt. “Love him?”

He’d first met Ash in San Francisco two decades later and fallen for him. Hard. But he’d chosen his mission and his morals and forced himself to believe that he was only using Ash to get close to Magnus.

But Galen would see right through him if he lied and so he deflected. All that time negotiating with the Five in Providence had taught him that much.

“I befriended him, told him I was a Darisami and sympathetic to Magnus’s aims. In the end, Ash led me straight to him and his lab of horrors. One night, I shoved my gold knife into Magnus’s eye and deep into his brain. Then, I gave Ash a choice: he could leave, or he could die with Magnus.”

Emrys remembered the tears, remembered the wound. He remembered hoping with everything in him that Ash would walk away.

He’d done more than walk. He’d fled, leaving his curses behind.

And if Ash continued to hold a grudge after all this time, it must have grown into something monstrous. Emrys’s finger itched to trace the infinity symbol.

“Do you regret it?” Galen asked. “Killing Magnus?”

He looked into Galen’s green eyes, relieved that they’d finally lifted from the dirt. “Not for a second. After Magnus disintegrated to join the rest of the dust in his dungeon lab, I found two dozen humans he’d trapped there, barely alive. Then I uncovered hundreds of corpses and skeletons. I know we kill often, but what he did was inhumane. It was evil.”

“And what of Ash? Why let him go?”

Why? Because maybe Ash’s presence had mitigated some of Magnus’s worst predilections? Because he didn’t hate him enough to kill him? “Because I thought that free of Magnus’s influence, Ash might yet become good. I wanted to give him that chance.”

He’d forced himself to believe that.

“And did he?”

“I don’t know. I never heard rumors of him abusing his power.” Or perhaps I refused to listen to any. “I saw him once more after that, briefly and from a distance, but otherwise, not for over a century-and-a-half. I’d thought he might have died before the Fall. Or after it. A lot of us did.”

Now, Ash was a figure of power in the only place they had left to seek shelter.

“How many of us did you kill?”

Emrys rolled his tongue over his bottom lip. He should have no shame over the scores of out-of-control Darisami he’d put down over the past five hundred years. No one could doubt his motives. No one could condemn his actions.

But Galen’s simple questions held the threaten of judgment.

“Forty-nine.”

After that, Galen didn’t say anything further and the night passed in silence. It took two more nights—just as silent, just as excruciating—before he finished processing all those hard truths.

“Tell me about the very first Darisami you killed.”

So Emrys told him about Lysander. Lysander who had made him one dark night in Wales. Lysander who he’d killed so that his daughter might live. Lysander who had died for nothing when villagers had seen Emrys in the moonlight and scorched his world with righteous fire. Sian had died in that fire, and Emrys’s heart had incinerated with her. Galen gently took his hand and rested his head on Emrys’s shoulder as the awful story fell out of him, but that kindness did not last past dawn.

On the sixth night, a fight broke out between Trellain and Owen who had both been high-ranking officers in Providence’s rival cults, the Defenders and the Reformed.

Or, as they were more commonly known, the Golden Goons and the Tornshirts.

Owen blamed Trellain, the Golden Goon, for bringing Emrys into their lives and setting them on a march to death. Trellain answered the Tornshirt with his fists. The Darisami separated them into different camps and watched them like shepherds guarding a flock.

On the seventh, eighth, and ninth nights, Galen grilled him about the other slain Darisami. The more honest Emrys was, the more Galen distanced himself emotionally. He slipped further behind his captain’s mask as if he were listening dispassionately to a renegade soldier’s report. Being unable to reach Galen deep inside sparked a panic in Emrys, and it swirled and churned and grew to a wildfire. He became obsessed with pushing the exiles on towards Prosperity.

If only he could get Ash to admit what an evil bastard Magnus was, Galen would understand.

Galen would forgive him.

Then Galen could love him again.

But his manic obsession pushed yet more of the exiles away. By the tenth night, twenty-nine humans had become twenty-six after three humans set off on their own. The idiots thought they’d have a greater chance of surviving alone than following glowing monsters who had lied to ten thousand people, brought turmoil to Providence, and were no doubt leading them to their extinction.

Emrys let them go.

For a moment, it was tempting to chase after them so that he, Galen, and Nimue could harvest their souls and restart their thirty-day cycle. It seemed lunacy to let three perfectly healthy souls go to waste when there was no certainty that they’d be able to eat when they reached the gates of Prosperity. But Emrys wanted to give the humans a chance. He thought it was the decent thing to do.

And he knew Galen was watching.

On the eleventh night, Owen demanded—loudly and publicly—to be made a Darisami.

“We can’t make you one of us without someone else dying,” Emrys refused calmly. “That’s the way it works.”

Some exiles shivered, glancing between each other, but Owen wasn’t mollified. “As if we can believe anything you say after what you did in Providence. You just want to keep power for yourself. That’s all you’ve ever wanted, from the moment you showed up. We were just too blind to see it.”

Juliet, one of the few human allies Emrys had, didn’t bother lifting her eyes. “Sit down, Owen. You’re not helping.”

“I’m the only one who’s doing anything here to see that we survive.” His voice cracked on his hyperbolic hysteria.

Emrys tried to summon compassion, but the young man had been a thorn for a long time, even before they’d struck out into the wilderness. None of these humans had the slightest idea what it was like to make a Darisami’s choices.

“Who would you sacrifice, Owen? Look around and choose the person that you think should die for you and name them aloud. Because that’s the reality of our existence. We could make half of you like us right now, at the expense of the other half. Is that what you want? Who exactly would you kill so you could live?”

Owen glared at him. “You didn’t have any qualms in Providence, picking who should live and who should die.”

Galen surged to his feet, and his ready defense picked at the scab on Emrys’s heart. “That’s not true, and you know it. No one’s life was taken without good cause.”

“But you still made a decision and made it based on lies about Emrys’s divinity.”

Galen’s confidence faltered. “I didn’t know it was a lie.”

By the twelfth night, Nimue suggested they kill the humans and be done with it. Emrys didn’t take it as a serious threat, more an off-handed venting after enduring their bleating for almost two weeks. But Galen cringed at her callousness.

“No, Nimue,” Emrys said. “These people are my responsibility and I’m going to ensure they get to Prosperity.” He could at least do that for them. Get the humans to safety. Get Galen to safety, maybe even Nimue. As for himself?

Nimue threw up her hands. “Bah! They’re humans. They’re practically cattle.”

It was impossible not to smile. “They deserve a chance at survival as much as we do.”

“And what about when we reach Prosperity, and they tell stories about you and what you did in Providence?”

That was the most salient point in their whole discussion. He couldn’t deny it. But Prosperity came with a far greater threat than the one posed by the people he led. “We’re exiles, just as they are. We’re in this together.”

She scoffed. “If you’d just listen to me—”

“If I listen to you, we’ll be three bloated and blissed-out Darisami arriving at Prosperity’s gates. My way, we are a much smaller threat because what Darisami would travel with a group of humans and leave them unharmed?”

She tsked. “I hope for our sakes you’re right.”

So did he.

On the thirteenth night, Galen came to him alone. “You killed all those Darisami, but you didn’t kill Nimue. Why?”

Something in his chest crumbled and caved. Nimue had been responsible for many atrocities—the latest being the death of thousands of people in Endurance—and yet she lived.

Emrys knew the truth was selfish and probably immoral, but he told it anyway. Galen had asked in good faith.

“Because she reminded me of Sian,” he sighed. Nimue had a child’s body and dark chestnut hair tied back in a ponytail, large moon eyes that could be wielded with devastating effect. She had traveled with Emrys a long time but had been largely indifferent to his slaying of wicked Darisami—except when it suited her plans.

“But she doesn’t care about anyone’s life but her own.”

“That’s not true. She came back to Providence for me. She’s been there for me throughout this life. She is not a monster. She’s…complicated.”

“Admit it. You didn’t kill her because you loved her,” Galen murmured. “I guess I should take some comfort in that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You made an exception for Nimue. You made an exception for Ash. Listening to how easy it’s been for you to kill—humans and Darisami alike—my head knows that you’d make an exception for me, too, but my heart isn’t sure I can trust it. If I can trust you.”

Galen’s words were talons in Emrys’s hollow stomach. Gouging, excruciating, unrelenting stabs. He bore down on it as best he could, but his voice came out ragged. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

The death and the killing had not been easy and none of it had brought pleasure or happiness. Only justice. But what if he’d become as monstrous as those he’d hunted? What if he just couldn’t see it?

“Don’t I?” Galen hissed under his breath. “What’s to stop you from deciding to end my life?”

The answer came out easily and there was a powerful kind of validation in the immediacy. “Because your life is worth more to me than my own.”

The closer they trod to Prosperity, the closer he got to believing that his own death may be the best solution there was. He’d tried to banish the thought, putting it down to the exhaustion or the desolation, but reason had a way of slashing those arguments. If he didn’t go to Prosperity, could he guarantee the humans would have a home?

And if he wasn’t alive, could he guarantee that Nimue would protect Galen the way she’d always protected him?

“I’d like to believe that, Emrys, but all I have is your word.”

“And isn’t that enough?” Emrys opened and closed his hand but had nothing to hold.

“Turns out you’ve been lying to me since the day we met.”

“To survive.”

It sounded pathetic, even to him.

“And I’m trying to do the same, Emrys. I need to stand on my own for a while. I need to come to terms with what I’ve become. What you forced on me. I can’t do that if I have to depend on you for all my choices. I’ve spent most of my life accepting the judgment of others, following them when I should have been following my own path. I believed my betters before I believed myself.”

Anger made him fierce. “I’m not your better.”

“Aren’t you? You spent five hundred years acting from the moral high ground, deciding who lived and who died. Even now, you think you know better than all of us.”

Emrys opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He hadn’t meant for his sordid past to convince Galen of a superiority he didn’t feel or to suggest that it was a mere whim of conscience deciding who lived and who died.

That wasn’t who he was.

Was it?

And if Galen thought so, then what hope did they have of ever being together again?

“Galen, I love you.” It was the last, desperate bit of dry ground in his flood of uncertainty, and he clung to it with bleeding fingers.

“But I don’t know if I love you. How can I?” Galen got up and walked away.

It would have been easier if Galen said he hated him and wanted nothing to do with him ever again. Then, at least, he’d know. But this…this…pause would only drag it out. And when they reached Prosperity, there Ash would be, all primed and ready to fill Galen’s head with poisonous revenge.

The following nine nights passed in a blur of pain, past jagged rocks and ruined cities, slowly changing from a dull ache to an agonizing burn as Galen refused to engage with him any further. He tried to continue their discussion, but Galen would not be drawn from his position.

And so it was on the twenty-third night after exile from Providence, five short days shy of starvation, his soul in the same pained suffering as the bodies of the humans they accompanied, twenty-six humans stumbled out of the moonlit wasteland up to the gates of Prosperity accompanied by three Darisami glowing like warning lights for all of the city—and Ash—to see.

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