Well, it won't be there for fucking long, I thought resolutely. I didn't say anything, but then, I didn't need to.
"If you remove it," the Raziq said, voice still amazingly calm considering I'd just killed one of them. But he was Aedh—practical, unemotional, cold. As long as their objective had been achieved, I doubted they'd care how many of their number I killed. "You will die."
Fear crawled inside me. "Why?"
"Because it cannot be removed. It will cease functioning if you die, but I suspect you would not wish that."
He suspected right. But that didn't actually mean I had to believe him. Aedh might be cold and unemotional, but I had no doubt they weren't above lying if it suited their needs.
"Indeed," the voice agreed. "But in this case, there is no need. The device was interwoven into the fabric of your heart when we re-formed you. To take it out, you must take out your heart."
Oh, fuck. Two words that really didn't seem adequate enough for the shit I was now in.
"Why would you do something like that?"
"You would not aid us. This way, we know your location at any moment, and we will know when your father nears you."
Meaning they'd have me and my father. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Then his words hit me. I might have fallen deeper into the shithole, but it might just have one silver lining…
"Does this mean you won't be sending Ania and other assorted demons against me and my friends?"
"We will know where you are at any given moment. There is no need for us to do anything else."
Which at least meant I could sleep in my own bed again. The relief that surged at that thought said a lot about the sorry state of my life at the moment.
The dark energy rose again and I cringed, hating the cowardice even as I did it. But it wasn't his energy—it was Ania. They spun around me, blanketing me with their ethereal forms, whisking me into that place of black nothingness and uneasy movement.