Page 59 (1/2)

“What have you done to yourself, Thea? What are you now?”

She ser More powerful than you can possibly iine”

“This isn’t power, Thea It’s madness The Eldest arp you the way they warp all of their servants”

She laughed even louder, raising her talons to stroke at her cheek, as if both appraising and displaying her beauty “I a perfected”

“No You’re just insane”

“Insane? What is insane, Dustin, is forfeiting a portion of your freedo that is dead” Her eye fell upon ained with a de back this weathered relic? How sentimental of you”

“You’re one to talk You’re still on your ridiculous crusade to bring back your children”

I thought I caught the flash of anger in Thea’s face, but when she spoke again, her voice was even thicker with mockery

“That seeive to bring your loved ones back? Your family?”

My blood ran cold as her lips curved into a smile

“What wouldn’t you give to bring back your

mother?”

The battle whirled around us We were the eye of the cyclone, but every passing second, every word Thea spoke only stirred the storainst its door One thought, and I could kill her

“She always did have a fascination for occult novelties, for strange antiques, your mother All I did was sell her a box of trinkets It was a simple matter of experimentation With so much star-metal near her, I wondered, would the corruption take? Would her ies of the Eldest?”

“You poisoned her No huht it was cancer You killedwith tears, ripped Vanitas’s hilt harder and harder “Is that why you sacrificed er in ht subject for your insane plan?”