of a past or a childhood, but whether that’s a memory or a wish, none of us can be quite sure. We serve masters who never show their faces. We’re all being punished for crimes long forgotten. After tens of thousands of years, we know nothing more than whom we are, and what we’re fated to do. We are cursed. Cursed to end the world we call home at the whims of four elemental witches.”
“That’s…” Aerin groped for a word that could properly convey her sympathy and came up painfully short. “Shitty.”
Amusement flared in his eyes, then died like a defective match.
“You don’t understand what you will force me to do should the Seals be broken. Unlike Nicholas, who conquers the strongest, or Drustan, who devastates soldiers, but brings their families heroes and glory, I will walk as a scourge through the streets of this town and all cities like it. I will visit the hospital and the orphanage. The weak and the helpless will be the first to die. Then the compassionate, the caretakers, the mothers and the elderly. I will starve the hungry and bring suffering to the vulnerable.”
Aerin studied the way the moonlight slashed across his face with all the forgiveness of a silver blade. To say he was bleak would be like saying the sea was deep, or the sun was hot. True, and yet inadequate. Though he reclined, his profile remained powerful. He gave off the impression of a great jungle cat at rest, secure in his badassery enough to truly relax. He looked like someone you’d see stamped on an ancient coin. Hard and imperial.
His eyes met hers again, burning with torment. “That is my curse. That is my power. I may not be death, but I bring death. Not with a sword, not with a conquest, but with inescapable suffering and madness.” Each word emerged as though he had to pull it out of him with herculean effort. “You cannot defeat a virus with diplomacy. You cannot reason with famine. Or beg a drought for mercy.”
“Um, what about Penicillin?” Aerin countered.
His eyes softened on her, and Aerin was more than a little confused by the way he seemed to find every one of her arguments endearing, or at the very least, amusing. Who did that? Men hated to be contradicted by a woman. If she’d learned anything in this life, it was that fact. So, what the hell was the matter with him?
“Mortals have been very industrious in learning to combat illness. It’s a sort of biological warfare. Survival, adaptation, rinse, repeat. However, I know it will all end. There is no cure for the devastation I will bring. It will be swift, and it will be thorough. No antibiotic will touch it. No vaccination will prevent it. What is left of humanity after Conquest and War are done with it will be nothing but starvation and rot. They will suffer unimaginably at my hand. And then Bane will deliver the final blow.”
“Bane?” Aerin echoed. “Who is that?”
Tugging at an orange wildflower, Julian held it up in his large palm and they both watched it slowly shrivel as he explained. “You are the fourth de Moray to have arrived here in Port Townsend and are, indeed, very formidable.”
“Um, thanks.” The unmitigated tender way he delivered each word to her was starting to get under her skin—maybe deeper than that—to the part inside that she’d forgotten she had. Her heart. Her conscience. Whatever section of her gut manufactured pathos and caring. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“Our Fourth,” Julian continued. “Killian, is not merely formidable. He’s finality personified.”
“Death,” Aerin offered, a chill snaking through her as she watched the powdered remains of what had been a living plant only moments ago slip through his elegant fingers.
“To die is an action, one that the three of us facilitate in our own ways. He is everything that happens after. The entire awe-inspiring, terrifying, exquisite experience of what is beyond mortality. They say that you should be afraid to meet your maker. What they mean, is that you should be afraid to meet Killian Bane. The Fourth Horseman. The Final Seal. The line of demarcation for the eight of us. Once his Seal is broken, there is no going back. You are committed to the Apocalypse.”
“Yeah well, I have commitment issues,” Aerin mumbled. “And I don’t buy this destiny bullshit. I believe we make our own way in this world, and we are the masters of