The Binding

Chapter Thirty-Two

The knife sunk into his side up to the hilt. Petro convulsed once, his back arched, and then there was nothing but pain. Ezra had disappeared. Petro had disappeared. Nothing existed. The universe was trying to rip my cells apart. I can't say if there was no sound, a kind of vacuum, or the air around me roared so loud I couldn't comprehend it. It was both. So much pain is impossible to explain— as impossible as trying to describe the explosive pleasure of sugar to someone who has never tried it. It was more than pain. It was the beginning and end of everything.

I don't know if I was conscious when I collapsed onto Petro's body.

The first thing I remember seeing was Petro's mouth. I tried to sit up. His body felt warm and flaccid under me.

I think I heard a voice screaming for Leif. Was it Sria? Someone lifted me up.

"We have to get her out of here. If she stays, she'll take all the energy he has left."

Walls moved past me in a blur.

"You will never do that to me again!" Sria said, seething into my ear. I glanced up at her. Blood had smeared over half her face from the gash I gave her.

Near the main stairwell, I saw Yisu propped up against the railing breathing heavily. She raised a drooping eyelid up at us as we approached. Tem was pinned to the wall next to her. A long thin blade was thrust through his shoulder, and the other dug deep into his hip. He wasn't fighting. He was aloof and stoic. He just watched us cross the room and then closed his eyes quietly. I saw bodies, probably guards, sprawled on the ground. I didn't care enough to look closely at them or count. They never stood a chance. I closed my eyes, wishing for darkness.

Sria was driving. I was curled up in the back seat, drifting in and out of consciousness. We hadn't spoken, exchanging only a few words when needed. I struggled to reconcile myself with the reality of what I did.

When rage, violence, and murder rip away our security, we clutch onto motives. We grasp for them desperately. Motivation gives us a sense of control, the means to drag our souls back to the rational world, to normalcy. Without motivation, without answers to that inevitable question of why, we are helpless and vulnerable. So we can not, will not allow the world to exist without it.

Petro chewed up people without thought or malice. He sent those mortals after us in Kaş for the same reason Ezra murdered thousands. Because he could. Ezra told me that. I just refused to believe it.

I had a motive. I knew why I killed. Does that make me better? Does that make a difference in the end?

Sria was lost in her own thoughts while Yisu stared out the window in the seat next to her.

"Were you trying to stop me?" I finally said, breaking the silence. For a long time, Sria didn't move. She stared intently at the road.

"I had to keep you from getting involved."

"Which one were you trying to protect?"

She sighed. "I'm not sure."

"You knew him." It wasn't exactly a question, but I was still waiting for confirmation.

"I knew him very well," she finally answered.

"You were lovers?"

She nodded slowly, "For generations," she said barely above a whisper. She breathed a deep, slow sobering breath. "His original name was Poas. He was born on the northern coast of the Black Sea, somewhere near the Crimean Peninsula."

"You loved him?"

She nodded once.

"He was an evil megalomaniac murderer," I said slowly to myself. It helped to say it, to remind myself.