Their power.
I felt it.
God, I needed it.
It would stop everything, wouldn’t it?
It would stop it all.
Every burning fever of lust.
I would be numb to it all.
I opened my mouth and inhaled.
“Alex, NO!” Cassius shouted.
But his voice fell on deaf ears. My ears. Yes, they were my friends, but they were weak, they had always been weak.
Bannik stared at me in horror, a part of me, maybe the part that still cared, wondered, if a being that evil was afraid of me, what exactly had I become?
But I wanted.
I clenched my fists as I kept inhaling the emotions of the brothers, devouring their power — licking my lips in ecstasy.
And then, a small hand touched me.
I looked down mid-inhale.
“You were not created for this,” the small boy said. “Sirens do not need air.”
I shook my fuzzy head, and stopped the process turning to the boy and mindlessly gaping at his bravery, it was the one from my dreams, the one who had taken Hope all those years ago. “A riddle?”
“The truth.” He grinned. “Sirens inhale for pleasure. They take, but the real gift…” He shrugged. “Is never in receiving, but giving.” He nodded to the rest of the immortals now frozen as if time had stopped. “You have the power to transform matter, you have the ability to take power, but my friend, you have the supreme power to give to those who have not.”
“I don’t understand.” My rigid body remained paralyzed in place.
“You can empathize, when someone has no one, you can love those who are not loveable. You are able to give rest to those who are weary, strength and humor to those who have only tears to offer. You have the ability to change the world — or to destroy it with your selfishness, and because you have always been loved… you have the ability to choose.”
“Only Hope…” My voice shook. “…has loved me.”
“Your friends, what about them?” He pointed at their terror filled expressions, still frozen on their faces. “And what of Sariel? Did he not love you enough to save you from your parents?”
The memory slammed into me.
“He saved me because I was powerful.” I scowled as the sting of rejection washed over me.
“No.” He shook his head. “Sariel saved you because you were weak.”
“But—”
“You came into your powers slowly, don’t you remember? Yes, you had a magnetism, but only today have you reached your full potential. He saved you because he saw potential because he loved you for who you were and what he believed you’d become.”
“This?” I spread my arms wide. “He wanted a monster?”
The boy’s smile was genuine. “No. I think, at the time, he merely wanted a friend.”
Archangels didn’t have friends. I knew that more than a