Page 184 of The King's Man

I wept as I flew her over the empty city, swallowing the last of my tears when I landed on the balcony of my former apartment and drew her inside where she let go of her power because there were no longer eyes to hide from.

I put her down on her feet and buried my face in my hands, horrified by what I’d witnessed and unable to even speak it.

“Melek?” Yilan breathed. Her fingers gripped mine and pulled my hands from my face. “That’s not him,” she whispered.

“Yes, it is. I saw him… at the beginning. Jann said he can recount our travels in the Shadows of Shade, and when we left him. He tells stories of himselfbeforeand laughs. I doubted it, but I saw him behind those eyes.”

“It can’t be. Gall would never—”

“Gall would never, but Lucifer would. Yilan, he’s been turned. He’s given over—”

“No,” Yilan said emphatically. “No, Gall wouldn’t—Istral wouldn’t let him—”

“We just watched him kill a man without touching him!” I snarled.

“We just watchedsomeone—”

“Yilan…” I swallowed hard and took her face in my hands. She’d been struggling with this since the first moment they disappeared, refusing to believe that her precious sister and sweet Gall had been taken. But there were no more questions left. “There is no other answer. That power wasn’t physical. Gall has been turned by the Fallen. He isn’t Gall anymore, he’s a mouthpiece of Lucifer.”

“No, Melek,please,”she was staring to cry and it broke my heart.So many tears these past months.

“I hate it. I hate it, but I cannot deny it—”

“Istral would never follow that. She’s afraid of darkness—”

“Istral is probably the reason he did it!”

“Gall wouldn’t—”

“Not even for his mate?” I said, then grimaced and cursed when Yilan flinched.

It felt like pelting my mate with stones to throw these words at her, but we had to face the reality of what we’d seen. “I don’t want this to be true anymore than you do,” I muttered. “I vowed to him, Yilan. I told him I would never hurt him. Swore I’d never lay a hand on him, and I haven’t. But this…? Yilan, if he’s been turned—”

“He wouldn’t!”

“He may not have thought he had a choice!” I whisper-shouted.

We stared at each other, both of us miserable and afraid and… determined.

Yilan sighed and buried her face in my chest and I pulled her to me, holding her.

“I amso sick of this,”she whimpered. “So sick of always being on the edge of death. I won’t let them hurt Istral, Melek! And if they already have… I will avenge her.”

I stroked her hair and shushed her, but deep inside I was saturated in dread.

“We know our purpose,” I whispered. “We’ll remove the taint from my people. Wewillmake peace on the continent. Or we’ll die trying.”

She nodded against my chest.

I cleared my throat. “But, Yilan… Vengeance… vengeance requires death. I vowed to my son that I would never hurt him. Unless I can find a way to persuade Gall to deny Lucifer, the only option is to defeat Lucifer to remove that link, but… how do you evade a creature that is not bound by distance, or walls? Yilan… how do we kill an immortal?”

“We can’t,” she replied without hesitation, then lifted her head to meet my eyes. “You told me that. You said it, Melek and you were right: We can only resist… There’s an entire army behind you that were convinced and now they follow you instead of that Fallen fuck. So… that’s all we can do. We have to resist… and pray we can somehow convince Gall to do the same.”

“And if we can’t?”

Yilan’s eyes turned flinty-hard. “I’m not leaving my sister in the hands of Lucifer—no matter what body he’s using.”

THE END—but not for long!