Chapter 165: Backstabber!

Sorin POV

In addition to handing my freedom over to him, the Devil makes me tell them myself.

That's to show you how cruel and sick he is and he chooses it on purpose. He could let the word spread on its own, let the rebellion learn through rumor that their leader knelt. Instead he tells me to gather them. All of them. The whole camp that I built out of nothing, that followed me because I stood in front of them once and said they didn't have to belong to him. He wants me to stand in front of them again and unsay it.

They come because I call them, which is the part that guts me. They still trust me enough to come when I call. Kaizen is at the front, Mira and Drez, the scout boy on a crutch, the faces I learned over years, all of them turned up to me waiting to hear what the fight needs from them next.

"There's no more fight," I tell them.

I watch it not land at first. I watch them wait for the rest of it, the strategy, the catch, the part where I explain the plan. There is no plan. I make myself say the words plainly because they deserve the truth.

"I've made a deal with him. It's done. The rebellion ends today. You go home, all of you, back to your sections, back to your lives, and you don't speak my name in the same breath as freedom again, because I've given that up for all of us. It's over."

The silence is the worst sound I've ever stood in.

The scout boy speaks first. He's young so he obviously hasn't learned when to stay quiet. As he limps forward on the crutch I watched Jasmin try to support him while saying, "But we were winning. You said we were winning. You said by spring we'd have the last laugh. You said we would be able to return to our former lives." His voice cracks on it. "You said..."

His words are tearing through my heart because I see the fight in his eyes yet I don't let him continue. "I was wrong to say it."

"You don't lie." He says it like an accusation, because to him it is one. "You're the one who doesn't lie to us. That's why we follow you. So tell me the truth now. Tell me why."

I can't, I can't even look at the boy I sent up a ridge and got half-killed for it, the boy I sat beside in the clinic, and I give him nothing, all because I'm trying to protect her. If they found out, they would think I'm crazy. Maybe I'm.

I watch him wait for something, anything and when it doesn't, I watch that fire, that desire for change go out as he steps back into the crowd.

Mira's next. She doesn't ask why. She's older, she's buried more, so she just looks at me with Drez's hand white-knuckled in hers and says, "We followed you out of his service. You stood there and promised us we'd never kneel again." Her voice is trembling. "I left people behind to follow you. People who're dead now, in his sections, because they wouldn't kneel. What do I tell them, Sorin? When I see them? That you sent us all back to the thing they died refusing?"

"Tell them I'm sorry," my head goes down.

"You're sorry?" Drez says it for her, because she can't. "That's it? After weeks? That's what we get?" he hissed. "I don't believe this. Something's definitely wrong somewhere. This is not the Sorin I know."

"Go home, Drez." I managed to say. "Take her home."

They go but not all at once. Some go in ones, others in twos, some look back, and every look takes something out of me I won't get back.

Others spit at the ground when they pass. Most of them just have this disappointed look on their faces which is worse.

I stand in the middle of the thing I built and let them dismantle their faith in me one backward glance at a time, because letting them hate me is the last protection I can give the reason I'm doing it.

Kaizen is the last.

He stands in front of me for a long moment, and I can see him running through all of it, every version of me he's known, trying to match them with the one standing in front of him sending the rebellion home.

"It's her," he says. "Isn't it?"

I had a feeling he would see right through this.

"You won't even tell them. You'll let that boy think you're a coward. You'll let Mira carry it to her dead. Rather than say the one word that would make them understand." He shakes his head slowly. "I hope she was worth it. I hope, wherever she is, she's worth what you just did to people who'd have died for you."

He doesn't wait for me to reply as he helps the rest of the injured home. Then it's just me and the empty camp.

Before I could take a step in the opposite direction, I hear his voice and he sounds very amused.

"Beautifully done," he says. "I felt that one. Do you know how rare it is, watching a creature dismantle the best thing he ever made with his own hands? I'll remember it."

"It's done," I say between gritted teeth. "It's time for you to fulfil your own end of the deal."

"Mm." he pause and that I should have heard the danger in. "About that."

Cold air goes through me before he says it.

"I've been thinking it over," he says, and I am a hundred percent sure that there's a smile on his face, "and I find I want both. The rebellion was a fine prize, and I thank you for it. But a deal is only as good as the one enforcing it, and there's no one here to enforce this one but me. So I've decided the bloodline still interests me. I'll have her soul, the way I was always owed it. And now I'll have you as well, in no position to stop me."

"You gave your word!"

"I'm the Devil." He says it gently, like I'm a child who's misunderstood something obvious. "What did you imagine my word was worth? You came to me broken and offering everything for free, and I took everything, because that's what I am. You know what I am. You know it better than anyone alive, yet you trusted me anyway, because love makes even the clever ones stupid."

"She's across the worlds," I say, and it comes out like a prayer, which is the most useless thing a demon can do. "Bonded and heavily protected."

"There's always a way," the Devil says, already fading, already turning toward whatever he sets in motion next. "You of all creatures should know that. You found a way to her heart once. I'll find one to her soul."

He has the last of the Ashveil blood in his sights. And he's not letting go.