Aedan let the tears flow as he flew toward Duluth, Minnesota, and every salty drop reinforced his purpose.
After spending thirteen hours along the western shores of Lake Superior, he found out Agro had gone to Maine, so he headed east.
Two weeks and seven states—a few of them twice—and not once did he waver from his quest. He’d land, eat, sleep then search for the Unforgivables, trying to tap into Medea’s mind. He didn’t know if it would work since his powers had dwindled, but he kept trying. The attempt, whether successful or not, wouldn’t go unnoticed. If he got near her, she would know he was coming. He wanted her to know.
The midnight sky twinkled as he flew over Colorado Springs, scanning the lands moistened by passing storms. When the city lights faded, he finally got a fuzzy read on Medea. He knew it was a trap. The Unforgivables were reeling him in. He readily took the bait.
He couldn’t read Medea’s thoughts or see what sights her eyes beheld, but he sensed her presence. He was close.
Several large, sandstone formations appeared in the distance, like arthritic fingers reaching for the starry sky. Aedan knew the area, having hiked its trails when he was fifteen. How fitting it would be to meet his end in the Garden of the Gods.
He landed and looked around, finding Pikes Peak looming on the horizon, and the large and prominent North Gateway Rock dominating the forefront.
Breathing slow and steady, he stripped down to his pants, twitching from head to toe as the brisk breeze contrasted with his boiling blood. Rhosewen’s and Layla’s faces flashed through his mind. Then he locked the gorgeous images away, determined to guard them from outside intrusion.
He made his way to the renowned Balanced Rock—a huge chunk of sandstone precariously poised on its smaller end—and scanned its earthen platform. At first it appeared deserted, but he soon found what didn’t belong. Medea was crouching in the rock’s shadow.
Temptation twitched Aedan’s fingers. One spell would bring the boulder crashing down. But Medea’s ruin wasn’t a priority. Besides, Aedan had no desire to destroy something so beautiful—not the witch, but the natural phenomenon she lurked beneath.
Aedan couldn’t see the other Unforgivables, but sensed them there. He wasn’t afraid. After all the heartbreak he’d suffered, death would be sweet release. He filled his lungs with crisp oxygen, determined to stay levelheaded and strong for his two beautiful girls, but no amount of meditation would extinguish the fire in his veins.
“Medea,” he simmered. “Why don’t you stand and let me get a better look at you?”
She hesitated then straightened, revealing her aura as she slinked to the edge of the grainy platform.
Aedan observed every move, pleased to see she looked like hell. Apparently life under Agro’s careful watch didn’t agree with her. Grotesquely hollow, her pallid face had a skeletal appearance, and her hooded, yellow eyes were bloodshot and lusterless. Haunted by a melancholy mixture of maroon, blue and gray, her stagnant aura revealed a lost soul, an expired spirit begging for release.
“You look like shit,” he noted, and her top lip curled with a hiss.
“You don’t look so hot yourself.”
True, but Aedan didn’t care. “I can thank you for that.”
A wicked grin stretched across Medea’s gaunt face. Then she feigned a sympathetic pout. “Ahh . . . Did something happen to your precious Rose?” The lovely name slithered through her teeth, desecrated by her disdain, sullied by her sickening spite.
Aedan’s muscles rolled. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to wrap his hands around her scrawny throat and watch every ounce of life drain from her revolting body. Hate dislocated another piece of his shattered heart, but he wouldn’t mourn that piece. If ever there was righteous hatred, he held it.
“She’s dead,” he confirmed, “but you already knew that.”
“I figured,” Medea confessed, tapping her scarred cheek with a jagged fingernail. “That is why you’re here after all. Vengeance? Well you’re on a death mission. Did you really think you’d be able to kill me and live to see another day?”
She looked around, and Aedan followed her gaze, finding thirty-eight crimson cloaks encircling him.
“No,” he answered, unperturbed by their sudden appearance.
“You don’t wish to kill me?” Medea scoffed.
“Oh, I’d enjoy watching you die,” Aedan corrected, “and I’d love to do it myself, but I don’t expect to live.”
Medea’s eyes narrowed, and Aedan focused on filtering his aura and blocking his mind.
“In fact,” he went on, “you’ve ensured I have nothing to live for.”
Terror twisted Medea’s ugly features as she opened her mouth to speak, but she screamed instead, falling to her knees and curling into a ball.
Aedan knew the kind of torture she was experiencing, because he knew that agonizing expression well. Rhosewen wore it often throughout the last four months of her life, but she’d worn it with beauty and grace. Medea just looked wretched and strung out. Aedan intently watched, waiting for the pain to hit him as well, but it didn’t come.
One of the Unforgivables lowered their hood and walked forward, and Aedan glanced over, unsurprised to find Agro’s orange eyes.
“Aedan,” he greeted, waving a hand toward Medea, who went limp, her screams fading into sobs. “It’s a pity we always meet on such unfriendly terms.”
“Are there any other kind with you?” Aedan countered.
“Some would say no,” Agro confessed.
“I’d agree with them,” Aedan scorned.
Agro’s eyes flashed red, but his posture remained casual. “As I said, pity.” He looked at Medea then back. “Your wife is dead?”
“Yes,” Aedan answered, jaw set.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I bet you are.”
Agro scanned every inch of Aedan and the air around him, trying to find a hole in his persona. “Perhaps you think it was I who cursed your mate, but I assure you, I had no part in that one. I would have preferred to handle the situation myself, but that was Medea’s handiwork. I was led to believe she would merely make your mate’s hair fall out, or stain her teeth green, something inconvenient yet insignificant. I had no idea she’d come up with something so . . . creative. I’ve already disposed of the disloyal magicians who helped her work out the details.”
Agro’s lack of involvement surprised Aedan, but he made a point not to show it. It was his word against Medea’s, and he had to play his part convincingly. Everything he had left on earth depended on it.
He looked at Medea, genuine hate and anger burning his body and aura. “You.”
She met his stare, head bobbing as tears streaked down her withered cheeks.
“You once claimed to care about me,” Aedan seethed, “yet you destroyed my life. You deserve a punishment far worse than death, because what I’ve lost was more precious than air, and it was you and you alone who stole it from me. Your soul is wretched, Medea. Your life means nothing. You’re merely a shit stain on an otherwise beautiful foundation.”
Agro stepped closer. “Where’s your child, Aedan?”
“What child?”
“No!” Medea screeched. “He lies! I swear I did it right . . .” A bloodcurdling scream ripped from her throat as she once again curled into a ball.
“Are you saying Rhosewen didn’t conceive?” Agro pressed.
“My love was pregnant,” Aedan confirmed, “but breath was stolen from her before her third trimester, taking my baby’s beating heart with it.”
“No,” Medea sobbed. “He’s lying . . . He has to be lying.”
“Silence!” Agro barked, raising a hand, and Medea’s mouth slammed shut.
Agro’s palm turned toward Aedan, who was ready for the icy feeling that gripped his bones. He’d endured so much pain in the past four months, his body merely jolted.
Agro frowned. Then the ice gripped tighter, threatening to grind Aedan’s bones into frozen dust. He fell to his knees as a groan gurgled in his throat, but his body stayed upright and his eyes stayed open.
Agro curiously tilted his head, raising an appreciative eyebrow. “Your endurance for pain is amazing.”
Aedan couldn’t reply. If he opened his mouth, he would scream.
“Now,” Agro whispered, stepping closer, “I’m going to ask you again. Did Rhosewen give birth?”
The cold barely eased, and Aedan roughly filled his lungs. “No, she was only five months pregnant . . .”
The pain spiked, more than before, and Aedan fell forward, his palms slapping red earth as a tormented roar vibrated his clenched teeth, swirling sand into his nostrils.
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Agro asked.
When the agonizing force ebbed, Aedan breathed deep, laboriously pushing himself up to meet Agro’s stare. “Do you think I’d be here, facing my doom, if my baby lived? If I still had a precious petal from my Rose?” He sucked in another ragged breath. “I’m not strong enough . . . to leave what I want most in the world in order to procure justice, impossible justice. No, I’m desperate . . . lost without my love and broken without the child I couldn’t save. I came here to meet my end, so I can join my family in the afterlife. Just let me take the witch down with me.” He breathed through his nose, trying to ignore the pain so he could focus on hiding the truth.
Agro considered him for several tortuous seconds before lowering his palm, and Aedan slumped to the ground, gasping as icy cold gave way to raging heat.
“Well, well, Medea,” Agro bristled.
Aedan quickly composed himself, bringing his torso erect so he could see Medea’s pleading eyes. He didn’t want to miss this—the last guilty pleasure he’d fulfill on earth.
“It seems you’ve made a mistake,” Agro fumed, ruthlessly staring at the witch. “Perhaps Rhosewen loved her baby more than you expected her to.”
Medea’s lips were magically sealed, but a muffled noise grated her throat as she tried to plead her case, begging with bloodshot eyes.
Agro wasn’t interested in judging the accused. He was the executioner. “You understand how angry that makes me,” he rumbled, voice and temper rising. “You’ve robbed me of the most powerful bonded child to ever be conceived.”
Aedan flexed, truly sorry it wasn’t in his power to destroy Agro before making his exit. But an attempt could compromise the lock on his thoughts, and many of the surrounding vultures were waiting for him to lose focus so they could crack him open. He wouldn’t give them the chance.
“This is unacceptable!” Agro boomed. Then he spoke much quieter, deadlier. “You must pay the consequences.” His right hand swept into the air then came down in a nonchalant gesture of farewell.
Medea’s yellow eyes widened as four hooded figures stepped from the surrounding circle. Then four different spells hit her at once. Fire, water, earth and air combined in a burst of chaos and color that lifted her from the rock, contorting and twisting her like putty.
Wind-whipped sand and humid heat spattered Aedan’s face as he watched Medea’s last haunted dance—a macabre and sickening scene, but undeniably satisfying.
By the time the evil storm lifted, Medea was a smoldering pile of twisted limbs. The four casters made the motion of dusting off their hands, and the mutilated corpse turned to ash, drifting into the Garden of the Gods.
Agro turned toward Aedan, clearly disappointed, yet greedily intrigued. “I’m sorry for your loss, Aedan.”
“You lie,” Aedan spurned, shaking his head. “You’re sorry for your loss. You can’t see past your wicked agenda enough to realize my wife’s and baby’s deaths are a loss for the masses, not the few.”
“Medea was out of line,” Agro conceded.
“You brought her there that night,” Aedan countered, “and even if she hadn’t cursed my wife, you would have hatched your own evil plot to tear my family apart.”
“You speak sharp words for a man with few options, Aedan. I’m offering you a deal. You won’t be leaving by yourself, but you’d make a fine asset to the Dark Elite.”
“Go to hell,” Aedan refused.
“You answer without even considering,” Agro rebuked.
“I disagree with your ethics,” Aedan explained, breathing in the cold, night air, appreciating everything about it.
He was ready. He’d succeeded, and his baby—his perfect Layla Love—was safe. Just one more loose end to tie up before leaving this life in search of another. He laid his right hand over his heart, making sure the band of Rhosewen’s wedding ring touched thumping skin.
“You might as well get it over with,” he whispered. “If you don’t kill me, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to kill you.”
“I’d rather use you than kill you,” Agro reproached. “I wish you’d reconsider.”
“Not a chance,” Aedan sighed, a serene smile curving his lips.
He was going to see his Rose, his beautiful, golden Rose. He could already feel the grief lifting. Soon he’d feel light as air.
Agro curiously watched him for a full minute then took three steps back, raising his right hand.
Aedan’s eyes drifted shut as he performed one last bit of magic, and the happiest and saddest moments of his life filled his heart before finding their way to Rhosewen’s ring. Goodbye, Layla Love, my sweet angel. I’ll miss you . . .
Unbelievable pain. Then darkness. Then . . . nothing.
Aedan had joined his love in the afterlife.