"Now what?"
"Now we return you and wait for your father to contact you."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Have no doubt that he will. Hieu wants those keys as much as we do."
"Only he doesn't want to basically destroy humanity by permanently shutting the gates."
"No," she agreed. "What Hieu wants would be far worse."
Trepidation crawled through me. Her words all but echoed my earlier fears. "And what are his motives?"
"Dictatorship over all realms."
"As in heaven, hell, and earth?"
"Yes."
Fuck. Which didn't really seem an adequate response to that bit of news.
Of course, given who was relating it, maybe I should be taking it with a grain of salt. They wanted my help to capture him, after all, and maybe imparting this bit of mind-blowing news was little more than an extension of their revised plans.
"Believe what you want," Malin said. "It is not important to us."
And with that, the dark energy swept around me again, shifting me from flesh to Aedh in the blink of an eye. It didn't re-form me in Stane's bed, but somewhere dark, cold, and wet.
It was rain, I realized, after staring at it running down my arms. I was kneeling in the rain. Why the hell did they dump me in the middle of a storm? Because they didn't want to risk a clash with Azriel, even with greater numbers on their side.