The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,376

he loved would be better off if he were dead.

Let this be the end.

He braced the hilt of the gun-sword on the ground and set the point of the cruel sword between his fifth and sixth rib. Then he shifted his weight, adjusting to get it right.

Of all the things not to fuck up, falling on your sword had to rate pretty high.

“Dazen!” Sevastian said. “Elrahee. Elishama. Eliada. Eliphalet. He sees. He hears. He cares. He saves.”

Gavin snorted. “And yet here I am, on His front porch. Knocked on the door. Hell, I even punched a hole in it! He isn’t here, brother. Never was. This tower’s a monument to nothing. And you’re nothing but my madness.”

“Dazen, if Orholam came to speak to you in the flesh, you still wouldn’t listen. Didn’t, for your whole climb and for your whole life. But you listened to me. So who’s the right messenger to send to you?”

“You’re not a messenger. You’re a hallucination.” But tears were flowing. He was so ashamed and he could hide none of it now.

“A hallucination who tells you things you don’t know and kicks your ass?”

“Hey, you didn’t kick my ass!”

“You just don’t want to admit you lost a fight to an eight-year-old boy.”

From its brief levity, Gavin’s heart dropped again.

“It was supposed to be you, wasn’t it?” Gavin said. “You were the best of us. You were supposed to be the Lightbringer.”

Sevastian took a deep breath and pursed his lips.

“So we’re lost. Father killed the Lightbringer.”

“Sometimes the wicked win a battle. Sometimes those who hear the call say no to it. Men have power. Our actions matter, even unto eternity. But the ultimate victory is still assured.”

“We killed the fucking Lightbringer, Sevastian.”

“A Lightbringer,” Sevastian said. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I, too, would have been turned aside, corrupted, or killed. Who’s to say? What I know is this. If God needed perfect mirrors to bring His light to the world, it would be a world forever dark. Imperfect mirrors also—”

Gavin scoffed, pointing at himself. “Imperfect?! What, you see this as mildly flawed? Look at me! You know what I was! What I am.”

“I see. I see and I’m not turning away.”

“How can you not?”

Sevastian pierced him with a gaze that combined the best of Felia and Andross Guile and yet was somehow fully his own. “Because I love you, brother. I see the you that’s you, under all this. Yes, it’s ugly, it’s disgusting, but you can be more. I know what you can become, even still. There’s still work for you to do.”

Gavin sneered. “Not for me. I’m finished. It’s sunset. I’ve failed my mission. Karris is dead by now. I’ve betrayed half the people in my life, and failed all the rest. My time’s up.”

He remembered then his dream. In the dream, his hand had looked like this—this thorny, skeletal abomination. He’d been on a tower like this, and a giant had come striding up to smash him in judgment. Orholam Himself. And Gavin had known he deserved his fate, but still begged for more time.

It had been more than a dream. It had been prophecy.

And had done him just as much good as prophecy usually does.

He braced the hilt of the sword on the stones once more. The blood would make it slick.

He was so very tired of his lies, and his false bravery, and his false fronts, and his falsity on every human axis of virtue. His lies had gutted every word of praise uttered for him, denuded every moment of triumph, hamstrung every victory. Now it was time to let every lie die, no matter how precious.

“You know, for all the awful shit you did,” Sevastian said, “you had some good things about you. Even as Gavin, you were amazingly brave. You would risk your life to do amazing things at the drop of a hat. Not sure why you’d give that up, right at the end, when you could do the most amazing thing of all. If you had the guts, that is.”

“What?”

“If you’re gonna kill yourself, why don’t you go out like a man?”

“Huh?”

“Like you said, the front door’s right there.” He motioned to the Great Mirror, still streaming blood. “The Mirror of Waking is open. Why don’t you go inside?”

“It’s a trap,” Gavin said.

“So what do you care if it is? You climbed all this way to confront God Himself, and at His doorstep you’re just going to kill yourself? Really? You’re just going to lie down in the bog