He sobbed harder, body shaking with the force of it, when Sasha just gave him a gentle smile before his eyes lost the last of their brilliant, golden glow. David screamed, held him tighter, and begged for gods he barely knew of to do something—anything.
But Sasha remained slack in his arms and the only immortal who responded to his screams was Killian, who drew closer, standing so that he loomed over David and Sasha. David looked up at him, shivering, because Killian still looked like the boy he had always known and yet so much like a stranger. "Why, Killian?"
Killian dropped Sasha's sword carelessly to the floor, the sound of metal against stone echoing, scraping against David's ears and making him flinch. "I think, sweet David, that you know very well that's not my name. The boy Killian died long ago; I merely took his body."
"Teufel," David whispered, shuddering again, unable to bear looking into those dark, hate-filled violet eyes. "Why?" he asked, staring at Sasha's still, pale face.
"Why? You'll have to be more specific,
sweet
. Let me have that." Before David could protest, or even register what was happening, Teufel had taken Sasha's body away from him and moved further into sanctuary.
David stared, numb for a moment, then surged to his feet. He swayed slightly, feeling dizzy, but managed to regain his balance. He caught up to Teufel and grabbed his arm, forcing him to a halt. "No! Give him back. Isn't it enough you've killed him? Why can't you leave his body in peace? Leave him—" He stumbled back with a cry, holding a hand to his throbbing cheek, licking blood from his lip. "Please," he begged. "Leave Sasha alone. He's dead. Leave his body alone."
Teufel laughed. "Dead? He's not dead …"
"What—"
"Yet," Teufel finished, and David wanted to cry all over again. "I cannot have his soul turning back into pure chaos; I need it for something else. It really was quite kind of them to give him to me." He turned away from David and continued on, moving carefully around poor Drache, whom Killian had turned to stone—
But David did not dare think about Fritz and Drache right then. He could not save them, not unless he somehow saved Sasha. Who wasn't dead yet. David barely dared to believe, certain Killian—Teufel—was just being cruel.
He followed Teufel around Drache and up several steps to a high dais where a white marble altar table rested in the very middle. Along the back of the dais were nine tall windows, each portraying what he assumed were the other gods, given what Sasha had told him about them. Ignoring the windows, David watched as Teufel laid Sasha down upon it and stroked his hair from his face with a gesture that should have looked gentle, even loving, but only made David want to throw up.
There was so much blood and only as he went to wipe away the tears in his eyes did David realize that he was covered in it. His skin pulled where it was already turning sticky on his hands. But Sasha wasn't dead, and David had to cling to that or else he feared he would lose his mind once and for all.
Approaching the altar, he looked down at Sasha's slack face. Dead, or near enough, without ever being given a chance to fight after trying so hard and losing his memories and managing to do what no one in Schatten had been able to for nine hundred years. It wasn't
fair.
"You do have good taste, David, I will concede that," Teufel said, tracing the lines of Sasha's face. "The poor Tsar is a beauty. It's a pity his brains do not equal his features."
"He's not a—whatever you're calling him. He's Sasha."
Teufel chuckled and gave David a pitying look. "He's the Tsar. Put in terms you understand, he is the Chief of an entire country—Pozhar, to be precise. He surrendered that role to come here, but I would not doubt that it is waiting for his return. There are people waiting for him, people who want—need—him to return. The gods made him undertake this quest; he is, after all, the oh so special child of chaos. But he has a country to run—or did, anyway. Now, I am afraid he has left two countries in ruin. Not a very good Tsar in the end, hmm?"
David just stared. "I don't understand."
"No, I guess you wouldn't," Teufel said. "But it does not matter, sweet David, because the Tsar is no longer your problem. They should not have trusted that a single man could defeat me because all they have done is given me exactly what I need to get exactly what I want."
Swallowing against the lump in his throat, David just kept staring, trying to comprehend what Teufel was telling him. Chief of Pozhar? What was Teufel going to do to Sasha? And what was that about Sasha's having to go back?
It didn't matter—nothing mattered except stopping Teufel, but David had no idea how to do that. He didn't even understand why he was still alive when he was easily the most useless person present. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to put chaos away again," Teufel said, stroking a hand along Sasha's body, then back up to his face, giving his cheek a sharp slap before finally stepping away. "The problem with chaos is that it needs a sheath. The Eye of the Storm does a good job of stabilizing chaos, but the Eye is also bound to the dragons and so is biased. Chaos is a blade of sharp edges that does not care what it cuts and should be used carefully. Order is the sheath, but here come the gods trying to destroy that sheath once and for all. Fools them for not trying hard enough, because I can now use the pretty Tsar to my own ends."
David felt more helpless than ever, listening to everything Teufel said and not really understanding any of it—only that they had lost, and that Teufel was going to use Sasha to do something terrible.
Teufel laughed, cold and mocking, as he regarded David. "The raw power of our dear Tsar and his ring is all the power I need to take back control of the threads of the world. I can set all to rights again, undo the work the gods have done so far."
"The threads …" David trailed off as Teufel stepped around the altar table and approached him. He jerked when Teufel twined arms around his neck. "Why do you look like Killian?" David whispered, because the contrast was hard to endure, was breaking his heart. Killian, whatever their disagreements, had been his friend.
But apparently he'd never been Killian at all.
Teufel laughed again, and his breath smelled like rotted meat. "Why, to get close to you, sweet David. To befriend you, enthrall you, and save you."
"Save me?" David asked, wishing Teufel would stop calling him 'sweet'. "Save me from what?" He wanted desperately to pull away, but he was more afraid of what would happen if he did.
"From yourself," Teufel replied, rubbing against his cheek like a cat. "Come with me." He walked to one side of the altar and pushed at a panel that proved to be a hidden door.
David obeyed, not certain what else he should—could—do. He hoped, however futilely, that he would be able to discover the way to stop Teufel and save everyone. Bitter self-loathing washed over him in the next breath, however.
Him, save everybody? What could he possibly do when Fritz and Sasha had fallen in mere moments? He was a village boy who had still been running the local goods shop and occasionally assisted the village healer. He wasn't meant to be anything except that. To think he could save the day when the High Seer and Sasha had failed … it wasn't just laughable, it was pathetic.
"There, there," Teufel said soothingly, voice almost sounding kind. If not for his foul breath and the clammy feel of his skin, David might have been lulled into thinking he really was Killian and still cared. Teufel waited for David to reach him, then slid an arm around his waist as they continued walking together down a dark hallway.
Eventually they stepped into a room of black marble threaded with veins of gold and silver. Tapestries decorated the walls, but the room was so dark David could not really see what they depicted. In the middle of the room was a large pool filled with shimmering … David wasn't sure
what
it was, actually. Like watery milk with a rainbow sheen to it.
"Essence of Moon," Teufel purred. "It is always used by the Seers when they tell the fates of the penitents. Amusingly, if you were to ask them why they needed it, they would not really be able to say. 'Necessary to See,' and 'It's how it's always been done,' or 'it adds clarity,' perhaps, but that's all they could offer."
"Why, then?" David dutifully asked.
"It keeps them from aging," Teufel said, leaving David to move around to the other side of the pool, staring down at the Essence that gleamed and shimmered in the dark room. He stripped off most of his clothes as if suddenly unable to bear them. "Seers in the earliest days were honored because they took up a hard burden—the price of Seeing into the future is time. Seers aged faster than most because they sacrificed minutes, hours, and days that eventually piled up into months and years for their power. Licht eased that as best he could, but he did not believe in interfering too much. All things have a price, and his priests knew it when they accepted their positions.
"Then I came along and created this," Teufel said and knelt before the pool. He dipped his hand into it all the way up to his elbow, swirling it around. "Essence of Moon is … distilled divinity, in a sense. Poured into a vision bowl, it bears the cost of life for the Seer. The only one who never really needed it, who had so much power and life he was able to bear the cost without even really noticing, was my Priest of Night and Day. Because of power I woke in him, gave to him; power he tried to use against me in the end."
David wondered if Teufel knew how bitter he sounded, how hurt. He fought a sudden, stupid impulse to say he was sorry. He
wasn't
sorry. Teufel had more or less killed Sasha, he'd hurt Fritz and Drache. He'd probably killed Killian, too. He'd kept his people isolated and afraid, and then set the Sentinels loose upon them. He did not deserve anything except the death Sasha had planned for him.
But David still felt a tug of …
something
… when he looked at Teufel's angry face with its shadow of sorrow. "Why?" he asked again. "Why are you telling me all of this? Why pretend to be Killian?"
Why did David matter?
Teufel did not reply, simply stood up. His bare arm was covered with the Essence, which clung like thick, shiny oil to his skin, dripping slowly to the black marble as he walked toward David.
It took whatever strength David had remaining not to recoil, not to turn and run. But he couldn't repress a shudder when Teufel caressed his cheek with an oily hand in an imitation of every precious touch Sasha had ever given him. David started crying again. "Why?" he repeated yet again, desperate for an answer. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because Licht left me," Teufel snarled and abruptly grabbed David's hair, yanking his head down and to the side, forcing David to a painful angle. "Because he wanted to remake the world so badly he was determined to kill
everyone
. No exceptions. Nothing—" his voice faltered the barest bit. "Nothing was good enough. So he set about destroying the world, and in the end, all he destroyed was himself. But it was me and Schatten who suffered the most for it. The only things he once claimed to love, he was willing to risk to obtain his goal. He left
me
to deal with the fallout of
his
mad hate. So I did—I sealed his country away and gave his people the absolute fate he desired."
David shook his head. "But the Sentinels … the isolation …"
"For the good of all," Teufel replied. "Licht wanted order at any price, and so I instilled order. But without him, I'm nothing. The body he gave me slowly died with him. So I move from body to body, keeping each alive as long as possible with the Essence of Moon. But those bodies were weak, insufficient. I need a body, a vessel, that is better suited to me. I have waited a long time for you to be born, sweet David …"
"Me?"
Teufel kissed him, whisper soft, and let him go. "Even I can only manipulate the threads of fate so far. I could not prevent the birth of the child of chaos, though I tried. Neither could I speed your arrival, though again, I tried."
David tried to ask what he meant, but fear closed his throat. He shivered as Teufel released him and undid the laces of his shirt, then drew it off and tossed it aside. Teufel ran his hands along David's bare chest, one hand cool and dry, the other warm and slick, leaving behind trails of Essence of Moon. "So much dormant power in you, exactly as was in me so many centuries ago. You are
exactly
like I was back in the days when I was mortal: a quiet, harmless village boy, alone in the world, despised and envied by those around him … born on a night when there was no moon in the sky."
The words made David choke. "The dark of a moonless night … Anything can happen—"
"Where nothing can be seen," Teufel finished. He twined his arms around David, nuzzled against him. "It could have been easy for you."
"E-easy?"
Teufel laughed, rotted breath wafting across David's skin. "Your parents left you, the village thought you an ill-omen and simply waited for an excuse to toss you out. A life of too much work and too little pleasure. Beaten half to death for a triviality. The only man you had to call family tragically killed before his time. Only faithful Killian to love you, to stand by you when the village cast you out."
"They didn't cast me—"
Teufel dug his nails into David's back, drawing blood, making David whimper. "Do you want to know your fate? The fate woven for you if I had not changed it? Child of fate, child of the moonless night—abandoned by your parents, abandoned by your caretaker, abandoned by the village that saw you as a blight. They would have thrown you out, beaten and bloody, left you to die in the snow. But they would have feared being found out and dragged you back to burn you." His lips brushed against David's ear. "Do you know why?"
David shook his head, unable to speak, fear locking his voice and blurring his eyes with tears.
"Because you are the dark of a moonless night, where they live in oblivion, content that there is nothing they can do about it. They must wait for someone else to appear with a light, take their hand, and guide them. They need someone else to endure the light and tell them where to go, what to do, free them of that burden of choice. Sweet David, they fear you, fear me, because we embody the darkness they most want and do not want to admit to wanting. Licht knew that, understood that what people most wanted was darkness, but that they would not know it or admit it because chaos, in all its sharp brilliance, is bewitching."