Bereft: Demise

68 | Of Our Final Sins

Darius's horror was eclipsed by Amoroth's.

"No!" she screamed, struggling with considerable strength against Pride's grip on her elbow. He kept dragging her and his shadeborn away from the ward. Sara moved, but with hesitant, dumbfounded steps. He hadn't heard her breathe yet.

Balthazar was laughing again. The peals of his rejoicing frolicked among the blackened graves and took flight throughout the marshland. Though he remained partially veiled by the fog, the gore dripping from his upheld hand was clear. Cuxiel lay unmoving in the shadow of the tomb and its guardian angel.

"Who's next?" Envy called as he wiped Sloth blood upon the front of his ruined suit. He vanished into the Realm and reappeared at the ward's extremity. He swept his fingers upon his wounded shoulder and extended them toward the barrier.

Darius's heart was racing with sorrow and rage. He could feel its rampant beat echoed with Sara and in Amoroth, both women terrified and confused and so full of ire it poured from their eyes in veritable rivers.

Pride took Lust's hand and placed it upon Sara's wrist.

Her lavender eyes, narrowed in agitation, rose to meet his impassive gaze.

"Take her and go," he said in a voice lacking all inflection. "Do as I say, Kyra."

Amoroth wanted to deny him. He knew that. They'd always argued and fought and had never gotten along. But, this once, she didn't disagree with him. She looked at Darius with hate written upon her face, then looked away as her hand tightened upon his shadeborn. "Dammit!"

"No—Darius!"

Sara's thin, fragile fingers hooked themselves in the hem of Pride's shirt and pulled it taut. Darius freed them, one by one, and allowed his hand to linger upon hers before Amoroth jerked his shadeborn farther away.

Wordless, he met her furious, demanding gaze as Sara fought Amoroth's retreat.

He didn't want to see her die. King above, how he envied and cherished that inferno waging war inside her heart. That rage, that pride, that arrogance—her. It had always been her. He'd been a bleak, aimless monster until he felt her fire beckoning from that dark warehouse in Verweald.

Finding that raven-haired woman dying on the floor, he'd seen the mirror of his own defiance and vengeful thirst in her vivid cyan eyes.

Outside Verweald General, she'd stopped walking. She'd directed that blazing look of hers upon him, and had said, "Just do it. It's fine."

But it hadn't been fine, because the Sin of Pride had known then that he didn't want to be the one to douse her fire. He would have done anything to see it burn for just one more day.

So he promised her vengeance. A vengeance he knew, in his heart, he couldn't attain.

He didn't want to be a creature who sacrificed his purpose to escape his demise. He'd rather die knowing where he belonged.

"You know," came Balthier's jaunty call. He'd torn a passage through his ward and, together with Danyel, was walking through it. Darius detected a faint limp in Envy's left leg, and the barest trace of fatigue in his darkened eyes. "You could kill her, Amoroth!"

The Sin of Lust paused and tilted her ear toward Envy.

"She is my host, of course," Balthier explained as he came to a halt a few yards from Darius. He was having more difficulty breathing than he let on. "After she and Pride picked off the rest of the cult present for my contract's formation, my bond fell to her. Go on, Amoroth. Kill her. Flee. You may have enough time to get away before I'm returned to the Pit."