Trust on the Edge

Trust on the Edge
  Vorare was a sorcerer prodigy who dabbled with death when the old sorcery was still pure. He apparently tried to grow stronger than Gaia herself, so he found ways to bind himself to the line between life and what comes after.
  At least, that was the summary Becca spat out hours ago. She’d said it all so carelessly, too. Apparently, Vorare wasn’t some mindless entity but an embodiment of hunger wrapped in a dead man’s ambition.
  Becca herself had no intention to summon him because she wasn't powerful enough to attempt control. She was merely channeling him to use dark sorcery, and Higan, unaware of the threat went on to summon him.
  Why? That was the missing piece of information left. According to Becca, the scroll made it clear what Vorare really was. There were warnings inked on the parchment, yet he went ahead to do it anyway.
  I couldn't help but doubt that Higan wasn't being entirely senseless about it. In fact, I didn’t buy that he’d done it blindly. Higan Sinclair never did anything that didn’t serve him somehow.
  The last time I saw the boy, he stood behind the others with flat eyes and stiff shoulders set like concrete. He was too quiet.
  I rubbed my thumbs together, peeling away the frost that settled on my skin. Ethan was gone with Khalid and Tyler to search for Abigail. The Moonstones and the twins stayed back with me after we'd moved locations.
  The initial plan was to talk the Melbringers into a truce, but I couldn't go with them. They thought my presence might prove too tempting for the Melbringers to take their offer. We would face them after this newfound threat was neutralized.
  To burn time, I kept thinking about everything so far, searching for things that I might have missed. Occasionally, my attention would move to Lorcan shifting his weight near the entrance of the ruined municipal office we’d tucked ourselves into.
  It used to be a records room, and you could tell by the metal shelves still buckled under stacks of damp files. I was too anxious to sit, so I paced.
  I could feel eyes on me through the half-cracked door Lorcan guarded. It was undoubtedly Higan's. He hadn’t said a word since we’d dragged Becca back into a makeshift holding corner and silenced her again with Lorcan’s Ivory knife.
  As expected, his voice rasped out of the dark hallway behind Lorcan. “Harlyn,” he called out.
  I didn’t bother halting my pacing yet. I just pressed my fingertips together to hold myself back. “Go back to your corner, Higan.”
  Lorcan’s boot scraped to turn. I could almost feel the warning glare he shot him, but Higan ignored it.
  “I need to speak to you,” he coughed out wrongly, but a little softer this time. It almost made my brain itch.
  “I don't have anything to say to you,” I pushed out with grit. Surely he wasn't thinking the chaos was enough to try to patch things with me. I would much rather feed myself to Vorare.
  I watched Lorcan’s silhouette shift, half-blocking Higan’s approach like a polite boulder.
  A quiet minute passed where I waited for the arrogant Higan to snarl or sulk. But instead, his voice changed into a brittle tone pulled at the edges. “I can unsummon him.”
  Lorcan flicked his gaze back at me in the same minute my brows pinched together. Tilting my head, I faced Higan fully. “You’re out of time to start making promises.”
  He stepped close enough. I could see the hollow drag under his eyes and the twitch at the corner of his mouth like he was chewing his own tongue. I tried not to think too much about how it felt performative still.
  Was it my bias, or was there more? 
  “I can,” he insisted while darting his gaze to Lorcan first before looking back at me. “I can seal Vorare again, but I can’t do it alone.”
  I openly scrutinized him. He looked wrong standing there with a torn shirt and smudged dirt down the side of his jaw. A lot of him was still Higan, but the cracks showed, and it set me off that he wasn't hiding them.
  “You think i’ll take your words for it?” The words rolled off my tongue slowly. “After everything?“
  His jaw worked tightly. A muscle jumped under his cheekbone. “I didn’t—”
  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped briskly with a mocking chuckle. It was ridiculous to think he can, and that I would willingly believe him.
  Even Lorcan seemed amused with his folded arms and tensed demeanor.
  Higan’s shoulders sagged low as his already grim expression drooped. He looked like the boy he might’ve been if he hadn’t carved himself into an Alpha-shaped blade. “I really didn't think it would be this bad.”
  “Well, forgive me, Alpha,” I interjected. “Thinking hasn't really been your best trait. You simply want and discard what you don't.”
  Like me.
  He didn’t deny it as he seemingly understood the words I refused to say out loud. He just held my eyes like it hurt him to do it. Maybe in some way, it did, but I couldn't help but doubt it.
  I let the silence lengthen until my wolf twitched under my skin, sick of his scent clinging so close. It wasn't Ethan's, so he smelled wrong.
  But I still wanted something out of him, Answers. “First,” I hummed out loud, “Tell me. Why summon him at all?”
  His lips parted. Closed. Then parted again. This time, he sat in the silence longer than I wanted. I was starting to think that was really all we could ever offer each other.
  “I thought it would free me,” he confessed at last, but it sounded more roughly forced than the gentleness that came with vulnerability.
  I tried not to process his words as a threat despite him saying it as such.
  “I thought,” he gritted out, looking down at his feet. “If I could cast him out over Springville and drive away Ethan, no one would be left to cling to you.“ He swallowed audibly, “I'd be the one to save everybody, and you. And I'd be Alpha again.”