I hadn't meant to repeat the last words of my sane brother to the witch and huntress, but once they left my mouth, I couldn't help but remember Sethan, that flat outside Ingolstadt, and our parting argument. The parallels between my current departure and my brother's exit from that summer-clad patio were not lost on me. 

The Sin of Wrath vanished that night, and I spent the ensuing sixty years dogging Balthazar's every step, killing his hosts by any means necessary, determined to rip him limb from limb to rescue my brother—but I'd failed. For six decades, I'd played a dangerous game and Balthazar laughed all the while, bidding his time, and when I was at my weakest, he'd struck, and so escalated my life's downward spiral.

Unlike Sethan, I had always been alone.

I walked along the open-air platform of the empty train station, bag in hand and my gaze fixed on the boarding schedule. The arriving and departing trains were lit up in red and ever rotating, but I couldn't figure out which would lead me to Itheria. I'd been on trains before—most recently in England, fleeing cross-country with Sara to Crow's End, but for whatever reason these schedules eluded my understanding.

I must be tired, I told myself as I sank onto one of the sagging benches and brushed loam off the seat. To be thinking of my brother and to be so confused, there is no other excuse.

Rubbing at my eyes, I tried to imagine what Sethan would have done in my situation. If he'd been told by our dark father to stop the mages and our estranged Absolian brother, would he have been able to decipher a solution? Would he have been able to bring back Sara without the aid of a black mage?

Perhaps, but above all else, Sethan had been a bull-headed coward. My brother had had specific ideas and conceptions of this world, never listening to reason when it challenged his beliefs. For much of his life as a Sin, I'd acted as his conscience—as laughable as the concept was—and I'd guided him through his mistakes, his trials, his horrid decisions. The moment I forced him to abide by his choice without me as a safety net, he'd gone ahead with his foolhardy experiment and had gotten himself captured. 

My guilt would be eternal, but it was his fault. His fault! 

I dropped my hands as I leaned against the pylon at my back, eyes lifting to the caged lights set in the overhang's termite-ridden rafters. I felt like one of those dim-witted and guileless moths flinging themselves into the hot bulbs over and over again, chasing an elusive goal they'd never reach. Their wings were singed and burnt, but they never stopped trying, and they were all the more stupid for it. 

Was I stupid? Was I an expendable insect chasing an impossible light, hope forever sequestered behind a wall of glass I kept slamming my head against? Was I burning my wings in my pursuit?

"You lost your wings a long time ago, Darius," I whispered with a pained chuckle, drawing my feet onto the bench so I could perch on its lip. A lone train pulled by the station, its horn letting out a single echoing cry as it hesitated, then moved on. I stared at its wide windows and saw nothing but rows and rows of empty seats.

In the private sanctum of my exhausted mind, I asked what I should do now, but the words only resounded in long black halls and responded to my call with mimicked questions. There was no answer to be found. 

Light, timid footsteps jerked my head upright.

Saule froze when my gaze connected with hers, clutching her chest as if terrified her heart would leap from its cage and make a run for it. She looked uncertain—but the witch swallowed her fear and continued to approach until she could take a seat on the bench at my side.

I allowed her to do so without complaint. If the witch ever managed to master her nerves, she'd realize she had nothing to fear from a lowly being like myself. I'd seen her melt a vampire like cheap candle wax: there was little I could do to stop the witch from doing whatever she pleased.

"Um," Saule stammered, wiping her sweaty palms on her thighs. "So I, uh, know you're not going to the mage city for the Mistresses. I mean, I have my moments but I'm not that thick. Why do you want to go to Itheria?"

I sniffed. "Does it matter?" 

"I don't know. Does it?" 

Bracing my arms atop my folded knees, I stared out at the dark, unlit fields and the bulbous trees rising toward the blurry stars. The world was in chaos out there, vampires driven mad, mages on the hunt, witches fighting for their freedom—and yet it was deceptively peaceful.

"A black mage."

She flinched. "A what?"

"A black mage," I reiterated with a bored eye roll. "That is what is in Itheria."

Saule scratched her head. "Well, I mean, of course. I bet there's a ton of them there."

"The specific mage I speak of was captured by the Blue Fire Syndicate and imprisoned within the Facility." I paused to see the shock rise in the witch's wide eyes. I toyed with the idea of telling her why I wanted to reach Cage so desperately, and decided why not? What did I stand to lose that I hadn't already lost? "He promised to resurrect Sara for me."

The witch sputtered. "That's—that's impossible."

"Is it?" I said, brow raised. "Is it impossible because you say it is? Because you don't know if it is possible?"

Her lips puckered into a displeased grimace.

I flipped my hand, gesturing at everything and nothing. "And I've been tasked with settling this revolt before the King Below decides to intervene. An equally impossible and unlikely task. I am only human. How has this ordeal fallen to me when I am the least able to fulfill it? All I wished to do with my limited years was to bring back Sara. I had no greater aspirations, and so how have I become this realm's intended savior?" 

Pale, Saule opened her mouth to respond but didn't have anything to say, not that I thought she would. The question was rhetorical. 

"Isn't that...selfish?"

I snorted, dropping my feet to the dirty floor. "And?"

"And isn't that your mantra? All the stories always make you out to be a self-centered egotist out on his own agenda."

"If your intention was to insult me, you are succeeding."

The witch grumbled as she crossed her arms. "That's not what I mean. You're griping about being human—but everything you're saying is exactly like all the stories I heard as a kid. Even if you are not, you know, a Sin anymore, aren't you the same?" 

I tilted my head, eyes narrowed. 

"Aren't you Pride?"

It was such a simple, uncreative question, one I should've brushed off with a stiff grunt or sneer—but I recalled Cage's words from only a few days before, spoken to me from across a greasy diner table.

"Aren't you the same, Darius? Aren't you the same man you once were?"

I stared at my hands, at the thin, smooth calluses worked into the palms and fingertips. Losing my power and my indomitability had altered my perception of this world—but had it truly altered me? Loathe though I was to recognize the horrid deeds of Pride, were they not the actions committed by these hands? Were not Pride and Darius the same person?

Was I defined by my absent power or by decisions of my own design?

Had I been a Sin, I wouldn't have hesitated to say I could stop the mage uprising, throw my brother out of Terrestria, and return Sara to the living—and none of those goals would have been more plausible if I'd been able to hit harder or survive more damage or taste essence. My mission was just as impossible for a Sin as it was for a mortal.

I'd swore nothing would stop me, no obstacle was too tall to overcome—and yet the words I can't came spilling off my tongue more often than not, my excuse always the limitations of my mortal body. That wasn't an excuse. It was cowardice.

My hands curled into fists. I wasn't a coward.

Pride could save this realm and his shadeborn. I could do it, because broken I may be but defeated I was not. I wasn't as strong, wasn't as durable, and yet I was the same selfish and surly, laconic creature who'd plucked Sara Gaspard from the warehouse floor and had found devotion in her infuriating presence.

The witch stuck her hand out before me and I blinked, startled, before realizing she wished to shake hands with me. Her arm was trembling and the look in her gaze was unsure, but she stayed where she was and didn't move.

"We'll get to Itheria," she said as she squared her diminutive shoulders. "I'm not as strong as you nor as clever, but I'm going to save the Mistresses and you're going to bust your black mage out of the Facility and get Sara back! We'll do it!"

She was breathless when she finished speaking. I curled my fingers around her warm hand and squeezed with enough force to earn a slight wince from the woman.

"Thank you, Saule," I told her, my statement sincere. Before her posture could relax, I added, "You and your kind are beneath my notice, but you are not worthy of my contempt."

I released her and wiped my hand on my shirt.

"I-is that a compliment?"

"Take it as one." I stood and lifted my bag from the bench's side. "I assume the huntress is waiting in the parking lot?"

Saule popped to her feet, hurriedly knocking the grit and loam from her backside. "She should be. If she's not, she's stolen my dog."

We headed toward the empty lot. As we walked and I again heard the distant wail of a train's horn, I thought of a different time in a different place, in a world of black rock and spun shadows where the King Below reigned supreme, where I'd first learned who I was.

I'd woken in the listless, pitted plain of perpetual night with naught but the light of a hundred thousand broken souls giving the world illumination. My eyes had opened for the first time to the sight of the Baal's bitter glare and savaged, bleeding wings, and I'd stretched for him, my arm unsteady and frail.

I'd tried to remember, to recall what had occurred—but my mind had remained blank, empty, as spotless as a mountainside after a hundred-year storm.

I'd looked at the King Below and had demanded, "Who am I?!"

He'd answered, "You are Darius," as he took hold of my wrist and raised me from the grounds of the Pit. "You are Pride."