“You are… different than expected,” Ben Errol says, his voice low and scratchy but conspiratorial. His two guards flank him, each watching me with something akin to reverential fear. As if I were a deadly snake they’d found in their bed and couldn’t kill.

“Not the child-eating monster you’ve been told of?” I ask, trying to smile.

“No. No, you aren't. Yet, it makes me wonder what else you hide.”

I look out at the clearing where the dead are being lit, the stench of burning flesh filling my nostrils. But it's something I am relieved to smell, for it means the battle is done. The death has ended for now. I hope I don’t see such a field of such overwhelming death for a very long time.

“I have done my share of evil. I have done my share of good. But while I am neither hero nor villain, I hope to make this world a better place when I breathe my last.”

“Spoken like a hero.” He walks to the parapet where I stood and watched the beginning of the battle unfold yesterday. His back is turned to me and his two bodyguards watching me with hawk-like intensity. “You promised to take me to my brother's Remembrance.”

I hesitate. “It’s hidden and you and whoever wishes to go with you will need to be blindfolded. It is the only way to ensure the safety of my people.”

He turns, his hard eyes locking onto mine as he leans against the wall that still stands, despite the black streaks where flames had tried to take it. “And who are your people?”

A small, genuine smile turns my lips despite trying to keep a straight face. “Shifter, Were, Human, Mage, Dragon, Wyvern, Leonovais. My people are of Avidon, not of race nor creed.” My father taught me this. Is this man anything like his brother?

His eyes remain flinty. “I don’t trust you, kursk. But I feel you will not harm me. Take me to my brother tomorrow.”

He gives me one last, lingering stare, then turns to go. But he pauses before the ladder. “Why did you let the Were and humans treat you with such disrespect?”

“When?” I ask.

“The black-haired cat they call Flash and the two humans.”

I can’t help my grin, thinking back to a few hours ago. “They are my friends. But don’t worry. Retribution isn’t far.”

One of the guards gulps and the other flinches. The man before me pales.

He takes his leave of the tower and I hope I didn’t just make him think I was going to kill Flash or anything. No, this retribution is going to be much worse.

----------------------------------------

“Finally come to see me, brother?” Yellow says, laying naked on a pallet, his arms and legs chained in silver just as I asked. Were it me, he wouldn’t even have that pallet, but I suppose a little comfort is not amiss.

I cross my arms and lean against the wall outside the bars of his ten by ten cell. But the cell is much better than we grew up in. It is honestly quite roomy and there are lanterns at many intervals, meaning it’s not pitch black. And despite it being a chilly evening, down here is decently warm, especially for a Shifter.

Yellow rolls his head to look at me, the blacks dilated with the wolfsbane in his system.

I crouch down, searching his eyes. An ache begins deep in my soul as the wolfsbane begins to lay bare the man before me and I see him for the first time without the walls he put up. He is terrified. He is weak. He is broken.

Anger and pain stop the empathy before it begins. “The Shifter King lives?” I ask softly.

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“That’s the first thing you say? Not how happy you are to see me? No greeting?”

“You killed my father. What do you expect?” Despite how hard I try to remain aloof, a bit of a growl leaks into my voice.

“Ahh, but I didn’t kill him, did I?”

I resist the urge to reach through the bars and throttle him. I need answers before I kill him. “The Shifter King lives?” I repeat.

He snorts, looking away, but not before I see something I didn’t expect flash in his eyes. Sadness, and almost something like… grief. “Faked his death. Like son, like father, I suppose. It seemed disappearing was right up his alley.”

It’s strange… but I feel nothing at the revelation. A little surprise, sure. A tiny bit of sadness, yes. But otherwise… that Shifter is not my father. He was merely a blood donor. He was not the one who taught me how to be a man. The biggest impact he’s going to have on my life now is if he gets in my way.

“Why all this to bring me back?”

“You’re the prized one. The only one who escaped. The only one who holds more than one color. Should you return, you could become the next Black.”

I recoil from the bars as if struck.

Yellow watches me, laying on his side with his head resting on the pallet, nothing but weariness in his eyes now, as if the whole of the world is on his shoulders and he’s just… done. “But you never wanted that. You wanted the light. Always the one who fought back. Once, I wanted to be you. But now… at times, I wish I could kill you just to be done with this.”

“But your Command differs.”

He nods against the ground.

“There has to be another reason they want me.”

He bursts into laughter, something maniacal and broken. He stops suddenly, his eyes piercing mine yet looking almost… hazy. “Don’t you see yet? You’re his favorite. His obsession. The only one who could fight his compulsions. The only one he feared and yet, somehow, that is how you gained his love. I tried. I did everything he wanted of me, and yet still I am compared to his favorite. The one who always fought him, and yet was so perfect. He cannot see what you really are.”

Did Morgana sneak him tea?

“You are the end of the Masters. Should you return, your altruistic views will break the world’s mechanisms and cause a broken system to become the death of what we know.”

“And what we know is so good?”

His laugh is a short, sarcastic bark. “No. It’s broken. Always has been. But without the assassins? Without the Masters to create fear in even the Emperor and the Mage Royales? What of the Elves, huddled in their little bubbles and not razing the humans to the ground because they fear the Masters? Without us, this world’s powers will fear nothing, and they will not stay their hand. There will be no checks and balances. There will be only war, sorrow, and pain. The Guild is the balance to the power of the worlds echelons.”

I sit back, blowing out a breath. Purple wants Yellow dead, saying Yellow is playing with things he doesn’t understand. Purple is a traitor, far as I can tell.

I sit my head in my hands. “Who are you?” I ask, looking up and hoping against hope I am wrong.

His smile is hard… but also wan. “What, have you never recognized me, big brother? You know who I am, always have, I suspect, but you turned your back on me, just like everyone and everything else.”

A tear trails my cheek.

“Oh, ho. Now you feel. It is too late for us. But it is not too late for the Guild. Let me return empty-handed. Let me go.”

“You’re a sociopath.”

“And you aren’t? We were grown, created, and molded. But this world needs monsters to protect against the things that are worse than monsters, that the people don’t even know words to describe.”

“Why did you kill my father?” I watch his eyes.

He blows out a breath, looking away. “You know I didn’t mean for him to die. There was no way you could escape that trap. He would’ve lived, had you only surrendered.”

I let down my guard. I allow him to see me. I stop with the games and allow my shoulders to slump. “But then thousands more would have died.”

“That is the way of the worlds, big bro. You know this as well as I, although you like to play the naïve victim. You’ve seen the wars I have. You’ve seen the death, the undersides of the most depraved individuals. You’ve taken justice into your own hands, just as I did.”

“Doesn’t make it right.”

He closes his eyes. “No. It doesn’t.”

I shake my head, feeling as weary as he looks. “You aim to overthrow Black?”

He huffs out a laugh, this one more real than the previous. “No, of course not. The Black is not the real power. The real power is those you never see, the one who cuts out your heart before you even realize a knife is in their hand.”

“Purple.”

“You were his favorite, too, you know. He even let loose some of the little wolves just like you asked, damning your sentiment but liking your fire.”

“Is this jealousy I see?”

He rolls his head back around, looking at me with disappointment plain in his red-rimmed eyes. “You know better.”

Yes. Yes, I do.

I stand, walking away.

I need time to think. Time to pray. Time to grieve what I lost when I allowed anger and numbness to swallow me all those years ago.

There was a time I would have killed Yellow without second thought. But now? Either my compassion will save the Guild or damn Avidon to a greater war than she's ever seen.