"I see. I never thought you'd say that, but I'm willing to hear you out. However, I'm not in the mood to make this more official, take it to a meeting room... or interrogation."

He said it so casually that it took Desmond several seconds to realize what he had said. And of the implications of the phrase.

"So this will be it. Do you mind?"

"No. It won't make any difference."

"We agree on that." Jacob looked over Desmond's shoulder and added, as if he had just noticed the two of them. "And what will you do?"

"We're a team. We stick together," Amy said as if trying to convince herself.

Not that it was the right thing to do, but that it would happen.

"Good answer. Well, okay."

Christina closed the door. In the darkness of the room, Jacob didn't look like a powerful man.

He looked like a walking shadow.

No, there was no need to try to prettify it.

He looked more like an emaciated corpse. His throat closed up from the disgust that rose from the pit of his stomach.

Desmond made a move to flip the light switch.

Amy, however, beat him to it.

"Desmond, are you sure you want to do this?" Christina asked.

Crap.

Just in case, she should have kept quiet. Then she could have pretended she hadn't known anything about what he would tell Jacob now.

But of course, she was aware of that.

If he could see it, then she'd seen it long before.

She just didn't care. Not enough.

Perhaps she was relying on her family's renown and her own, for possessing shadow magic, to avoid the worst of the consequences that could befall her.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

... Or maybe she hadn't thought about any of that.

Perhaps she had spoken before thinking, desperate to change his mind. Maybe this was his fault, too.

It...

It didn't matter anymore.

Desmond grabbed a chair, dragged it to the side of the bed, and sat on it.

""I feel weird having two teenage girls in my room, on top of it at this time of night," Jacob said. "Even though I don't even..."

He cut himself off.

Not even what? What had he been about to say?

Well. It didn't really matter.

Jacob held up his hands, rubbed his eyes.

"I shouldn't have said that. Desmond. Speak.

"Ten years ago, the place where I lived was razed to the ground," he said. It was as good a place to start as any. "My family was crushed to death by the rubble of our house. I got out of there. Someone pulled me out... But not intact. A beam had pierced me. I clearly remember the pain... and the heat... and my guts, barely still inside my body. But in spite of everything I woke up well. And for years I believed that the woman who pulled me out of there had an affinity for healing, but she didn't. She was.... She was... She gave me this."

Every word was difficult.

Not because of Jacob. Not because he was afraid of how he might react, but the consequences.

What made it difficult for him to speak was, mostly (or so he thought) the presence of Christina and Amy. He had already told them large parts of his past. But, still...

It was still hard to go into so much detail. He had never talked about it in this way.

He didn't like that they were listening and he didn't like how this was making him feel.

Naturally, there was something else.

That with every word that came out of his mouth, he was moving a little further away from them.

The pain of the inevitable consequences of his decision.

That, naturally, also made it difficult for him to speak.

"This?" Jacob asked.

Even though he should know what he meant. That there was no shadow of a doubt about it.

"It wasn't Christina who rescued me from death "and only then did he realize that, no matter what he had said, now that he had decided this Christina couldn't escape the consequences because she had been lying for him from the beginning. "I was myself. Since then, I've died several times. Last night, too. Alone. With no help but... that thing that happened to me."

"There are affinities that allow you to pass powers to other people. Still, something like that..."

"It's not an affinity," Desmond said. "It's something... more. Much more."

Desmond. You still have time to turn back, Abigail said.

She was wrong.

He swallowed hard. This was the only way he could help her. If he couldn't do it alone, then he had to borrow the strength of his kingdom. It was the only thing he could do and shit the consequences.

Desmond could think about that later.

"I have limits. I haven't discovered them yet... evidently, but it's not like I can't die. Nor is it like I can only die of old age. But that woman is truly immortal."