Page 11 of Dark Night of the Soul

Was I that transparent?

Apparently.

I watched her hands work and wondered what it was like for her to go through that horrible ordeal with the Knights. Some days, her memories were crystal clear. She knew she was forged as a weapon for them. She knew they released her into the world to do their bidding without question. But she didn’t remember how she ended up in their hands or the alteration of her mind.

A small blessing. Or perhaps forgetting was mercy.

“Do you remember what they did to you?” I asked after a moment.

We’d never talked about it, but I needed to.

Her hands didn’t stop moving. Soil slid between her fingers, dark and rich.

“I remember enough,” she said.

“Does it still feel… off?”

She paused then for a breath. Looked at her hands like they belonged to someone else once.

“It feels different,” she said. “Not broken.”

Her gaze flickered up, meeting mine.

“They can change how your mind works,” she said gently, “but they can’t decide what you do with it. That part is always yours.”

I didn’t know yet how much I would need to believe that.

Chapter 5 | Kincade

I stayed when she left. The echo of her in the parlor. The faint scent of her lingering where she’d stood. Her defiance. Her stubbornness. The sharp edge of her will.

She’d faced down Lucifer, sure.

She’d even fought Sebastian in hand-to-hand combat when she’d come looking for me in Turkey.

I didn’t doubt her determination or her resolve. I doubted we could stop what was coming.

Things were different now, with Sebastian in charge.

Sebastian Crane.

I tasted the name like blood at the back of my throat.

He wouldn’t send soldiers. He wouldn’t threaten the manor outright. He would be patient. Surgical. He would find the precise pressure point and apply it without mercy.

The thought tightened something ugly in my chest.

I left the room and went up the stairs to the library. The manor breathed differently in here—slower, steadier. As if the walls themselves remembered gentler days.

There, I poured myself a drink I didn’t intend to finish. The glass stayed untouched in my hand as I peered out the window at the morning, eyes fixed on nothing. The Brotherhood believed time was on their side. That inevitability would do the work for them.

They were wrong.

I had bent the knee to darker powers than Sebastian Crane. I had stood before Lucifer himself and refused to break.

But this was different.

This wasn’t about my obedience.