Chapter 60—Earth

I expect surprise. I expect Devlin to freak out and start screaming, or yelling, or ranting. I do not expect the fear that floods his eyes to the brim. I don't expect terror to cause his hands to shake, or his breathing to become shallow and rapid.

“What have you done?” He backs away from me, as if I could infect him with a deadly virus. “He’s dead.”

I shrug. “You killed him here. He was dying there too, until I brought him over. Now he’s fine. The fever's gone.”

He stumbles backward, toward the entryway. “You've shattered the walls. You'll kill us all. Isis was right.”

“You're one to talk,” I say. “You've been killing people right and left.”

“I didn't want to kill Jesse,” Devlin says. “I tried everything I could think of before it came to that. We knew the Warden would be the hardest person on Earth to Wake. The prophecy says so. It's close to impossible to bring out power that strong. In fact, if you didn't have a brother you loved dearly, if you didn't have someone you loved without question, if I hadn't done all the other awful things to you, leaving you only one person in the world to care for, I probably couldn't have Woken you at all. Jesse was a necessary sacrifice.”

I step toward him, still gripped by an all-consuming rage. “You obviously don't understand the word ‘sacrifice.’ It means to surrender something that matters to you, or to offer something of yourself, something that's yours to give. What you did wasn't a sacrifice. It was theft! You stole my brother from me, and wrenched his life away from him. You gave up nothing.”

“I'm sorry about that.” He pleads with me then, his hands out in front of him, clasped together in supplication. “I'll apologize every single day, and I'll sacrifice something myself, anything you want, but you must listen to me now. You don't understand what you've done. By removing an inmate, by bringing Jesse here to Earth, you cracked the prison walls wide open. If you don't converge our worlds soon, everyone there, every single person on Terra will die. It'll make your massacre tonight look like a water gun attack compared to. . .a tsunami!”

I shake my head. He can't be right. When I left, everything looked fine. “Why should I believe a single thing you say?”

“I don't lie,” he says.

“Oh don't you, Declan Rosenbaum?”

The whites of his eyes flash at me, and I revel in his horror. “I’m not lying now. Everything I've done has been because I've had no other choice.”

“Is that why you killed Mom?” John asks. “You had no choice? You couldn't have rescued her?”

Devlin turns to his son, his face stricken, his hands at his side. “I didn't kill your mother. Why would you even think that? I did every single thing I could to help her.”

“You helped her right into suicide, after ignoring her when she begged for help.”

“She didn't commit suicide.” Devlin's voice drops to a whisper. “You've always blamed me for her death, but it's time you learned the truth. Amun required that I Wake you as a test of loyalty before I could defect from Isis. They wanted me to prove that I truly believed as they did. I tried several things to accomplish it, but they didn't work. Your mother grew increasingly upset about my attempts, so I sent her to stay with her sister.”

John shakes his head. “No, you checked her into an institution. I saw the stationery on the letters she wrote. It was a place in Arizona called the Citadel. I looked it up. They specialize in the treatment of mentally unstable patients. It's an inpatient psychiatric hospital.”

“No, son. I don't know whether there's a psych hospital by that name, but Aunt Gertrude was older. She lived in an Assisted Living center known as the Citadel.”

John shakes his head. “She sent that note, saying she couldn't take any more. She said she'd end it if you didn't.”

“I didn't want to lose your mother. I called her and promised I'd pack our things and head back by the end of the week. If Amun wouldn't take me, I'd return to Isis and redouble my efforts to alter their path.”

“Mom died,” John says flatly, but his voice isn’t as firm, isn’t as sure. The rage is leeching away. “She committed suicide.”

“She died, yes,” Devlin says gently. “She Wasted on Erra, and then had a heart attack here. She didn't take her own life. I told you she had a heart attack, remember?”

John shakes his head, and so do I.

“No,” John says. “It was your fault.”

“His story makes no sense,” I say. “People die here and then Waste on Terra. Not the other way around.”

“You know so little—it’s like you’re peering through a peephole without having ever seen the actual room. We don’t have time to argue this right now,” Devlin says. “But I can show you later, any time or by any method you want, that I didn’t institutionalize her. I tried to help her.”

“I don’t believe you,” John says.

I look him in the eye and make a decision. “Neither do I.”

I Lift Devlin, and walk down the hall, shoving him into the recliner. I Bind his arms and legs, and when I'm convinced he can't move, I sit down on the sofa. John perches on the ottoman.

“Is this really necessary?” Devlin asks. “Have I threatened you in any way?”

“You must be asking whether you’ve threatened me today, because I think telling your henchman to rape me was threatening. And I definitely consider shooting my brother in the foot—” I choke. I inhale a new breath. “—and then killing him to be threatening!”

John's hands tighten into fists, and I realize he didn't know any details about his dad's methods that night. Poor John. This must be awful for him. I step between John and Devlin. “Stop defending yourself, and tell me what I need to know.”

“You're the Warden and you've accelerated things, but it's not your fault the prison is coming down. You've just sped up the process. The Followers of Isis didn't understand that, because they hadn't studied the proper translation of the original prophecy.” I release the Bindings on his hand and Lift a pen and paper from the kitchen.

“Write down the original prophecy, then.”

“That's not the whole story,” he says. “It's not everything you need to know.”

“It's a good start,” I say. “You can fill me in on the rest after I've seen it. I'm sure you know the original prophecy by heart.”

He starts writing. I wait until he's done before I try to read it. He slides the paper over to me and I Bind his hand again before picking it up.

With the women it began, with the birth of the Warden it will end. She who can bridge the divide will rend the prison walls, rescuing the wartorn. They will fall, one after another, each in turn. The Telekinetics, the Elementals, the Renders and Reapers, and the Assimilators. In time, the prison walls will disintegrate until the world becomes whole again. The Earth will come unbound, and if the Warden fails, will be ripped apart. The storm will rage against her, but with a great sacrifice, and with the strength of her balance, all will fall and be remade. None can stand against her wrath, and none can endure without her compassion. Salvation comes from her hand, but at the end of all things, the world will only be healed when she is reunited with the Oath Maker and the mistake is undone, the crime forgiven.

Only she can choose. Only she can restore. Only she can forgive. But she can’t do it alone.

Once I've finished reading, I hand it to John. “You were pretty close. Nice work.”

“I missed a few key details,” John says.

“What's your plan?” Devlin asks.

“I've already enacted my plan. Except for one small thing.”

“What?” he asks.

I Lift a kitchen knife from a block in John's kitchen and float it over to press against Devlin's throat. “Killing you. See, there's this thing they call a sacrifice. You thought you'd made one. It's time for you to actually do it.”

I feel him push back against me, but it's the pitiful pressure of a single wave against the incoming tide.

“Wait,” he cries. “You still don't understand. You can't bring your brother here and then do nothing more.”

“I think you’re done telling me what I can and can’t do.” I Lift every single thing in the room, the light from my eyes flooding the room with light. “You have no power over me, Devlin Rochester. None!”

His eyes are so wide the whites are showing, but he doesn’t give up. “The prison walls are coming down with or without you. Your job isn't to dismantle Terra or to abandon it either. It began unraveling the second you were born. It's why people, like John's mother, have Wasted on Erra even when they were fine on Earth. Terra's falling apart in all its iterations, and the people caught onboard are dying like rats on a sinking ship. Your choice isn't to dismantle the prison or to walk away. It's whether to save them, or leave them all there to die.” His eyes are desperate.

Devlin lies so often that I can't believe a word he says. I press the knife harder.

“Wait,” John says.

I do feel for John. I know better than anyone that there’s light entwined in the darkness of Devlin’s soul. If he were my dad, I'd hesitate, too.

But he isn't my dad.

“I warned you.” My hands tremble. “I was upfront about what I planned to do from the first moment.”

He bites his lip and waves his phone at me. “Alora, I looked it up. There's a Citadel that's an assisted living, just like he said. If he really didn't kill my mom. . .maybe I was wrong.” John looks at me with tortured eyes, and I soften.

I release everything I’ve Lifted, rearranging the room carefully, and walk toward him. “He may be telling the truth,” I say, “but we have no way to know that.”

“My dad's complicated, but he has never lied to me outright. What if what he says is true?”

“What if it is?” I ask. “We can deal with that without him.”

He puts his hand on mine. “We can deal with him after we figure out what's happening on Terra. He knows more than anyone. He's dedicated his life to researching this. Don’t kill him while we might yet need him.”

I wrench my hand away, and it takes every bit of my self-control not to slap John with it. “He killed my parents, he ruined my life. He forced me into a group home where things. . .bad things happened to me. And all of that, I might forgive. But John,” my voice breaks. “In case you've forgotten, he killed Jesse in front of me.”

“He did those things because he thought he had to Wake you. I don't know whether he's right, but he thought he was. That matters, doesn't it? His intent?”

“Once the bowl is shattered, it doesn't really matter why you broke it.”

“You're the Warden, Alora, and what he did was awful, but your brother's right back there.” John gestures to his bedroom.

“We don't know if he's the same. We don't know if he’ll survive the transition. And even if he does, he won’t remember me here or anything from Earth.” A tear streaks down my face and rage makes me tremble. “Devlin doesn’t get a pass because I ran across broken glass to try and clean up the mess he made. He must pay.”

“If you kill him, aren't you as bad as he is?” His words are a slap in the face.

I collapse onto the sofa, but I think about it, and honestly. . .

I don't know.

In the end, I realize that I don't care. Even if I become like Devlin, dark and light twisted together, it doesn’t matter, because I can't forgive or forget what he did. I can't allow his actions, his ruthlessness, and his careless disregard for shredding the lives of people around him to continue.