CoS08

## Chapter 8

**Chapter 8** of **City of Spells** follows **Wesley**.

## **Full Version**

CREIJE WAS TURNING TO ASH.

The tall rainbow-stretched buildings still stood, the streets still gleamed in a glorious sun-flooded maze, and the sky remained bright and endless in the day, while shadowed in misdeed whenever the moon hit the air.

It looked very much the same, but so much that the once-great capital had stood for was disappearing. All that it was and hoped to be, every dream the tourists brought to the city or from it, seemed to be chipping away.

In this district, the fourth they had taken, the floating railways that once coiled through the cobblestone were now desolate and empty, the thrum of jugglers and street performers giving way to a silence that made Wesley’s toes curl. The city was dying in every way that counted.

Only three more districts stood.

Creije was more than halfway to falling and the Kingpin wasted no time in taking the people from the streets and trains and homes and shadows that gave them temporary refuge. He plucked them one by one, like ripe fruit, and lined them in pretty little rows, ready to devour them whole.

And he made Wesley watch.

Everything Wesley had built was crumbling. Those miraculous novelties that he’d weaved into the city, the parts of himself—blood and soul—that had gone into making it great, were like smoke in the air.

Little by little.

Step by step.

One by one.

Wesley could smell the Loj elixir in the wind.

He could see it drip down the sides of people’s faces, as those already enthralled held the new victims to the ground and force-fed it to them. He could hear it gargle in their throats as they tried desperately to keep from swallowing the magic. And Wesley could feel the moment the air turned and their hearts gave way to the Kingpin’s power. Their eyes as black as the endless night that had stained his, their resolve withering like dying flowers.

One by one.

Wesley looked at Zekia with every harsh angle he had left. Staying here was getting to be too much and Wesley wasn’t sure how much longer he could do nothing while his world burned.

“Why don’t you just shove your little mind control elixir down my throat?” he asked. “Then I wouldn’t care about any of this.”

Zekia’s eyes glistened with an odd kind of sadness. Wesley couldn’t believe the girl he had once cared for had been the cause of this pain. He couldn’t believe the person in front of him was the same child who wanted so desperately to prove there was good inside of him.

He couldn’t believe that he had turned her into this.

“It never works on you,” she said. “I’d do it if I could, but we’ve tried too many times and it only makes you angrier.”

Wesley leaned back against the brick wall and slumped slowly to the floor. He tried to shut out the screaming of his people outside, but it was sharper than any knife he had used to cut through his enemies.

Zekia was right. She had tried to give Wesley the elixir before, but it had barely made him blink. Wesley wasn’t sure whether it was because his magic had finally found its way back home inside his heart, taking root so deep that it couldn’t bear to be lost again to numbness, or if he really was just a stubborn bastard. Perhaps his mind refused to be conquered so easily.

“We’ll find another way to bring you to our side,” Zekia said. “And you won’t have to listen to these people anymore. We’re moving to another city soon and there will be wind and water and you’ll get some fresh air.”

She tugged on the thin thread wrapped around Wesley’s hands like a leash. The magical string glowed bright silver under the moon, like a row of stars tethering him to his captor. Wesley missed the handcuffs, but he’d slipped them enough times that now the thread of magic was the only thing they trusted to secure him.

Not that it would stop him. Not that anything could.

“After that you’ll come to us the old-fashioned way,” Zekia said. “I’ll make sure of it. *Pure grit*, like you always told me.”

“And if that doesn’t work, then we will carve him up piece by piece until the only parts left are the loyal ones.”

Wesley jerked his eyes up as Dante Ashwood approached. The shadow man who had made him into one of the most powerful people in the realms. Wesley should have been used to being Ashwood’s slave, since an underboss was basically a glorified skivvy, but he hated the fact that he was on the ground while the Kingpin towered over him, as though he may as well have been on his knees.

*Part of the ruse*, Wesley thought. *Let him think I’m breaking.*

“Just make sure you don’t touch my smile,” Wesley said. “It’s far too charming to be cut to pieces.”

Ashwood made a sound that was almost a laugh, but also very nearly a scream.

“Do you know what makes you different from the rest of the people in this forsaken city?” he asked.

Wesley rested his chin on his knees. “My sunny disposition?”

“Your loyalty,” Ashwood said, unaffected by his wry tone. “These people can be bought and bargained for. They can be swayed and subdued. They can be changed by magic and madness. Soldiers are easy to come by, my boy, but family must be earned.”

Wesley’s gut twisted at the mention of *family*. Right now, the only family he wanted was far across the realm, a lifetime away.

“I will earn your loyalty once more, Wesley. Just like I earned your sister’s.”

Wesley spat out a laugh. “We’re not a family,” he said. “And if we were, then it would make me proud to be an orphan.”

Ashwood’s shadows did not flinch around his hidden face.

He took a step closer to Wesley, until his magic felt like oil in the air. “I chose you,” he said. “When you were young and unaware of your power. I nurtured all of the sparks inside of you and soon you’ll repay me for that. Soon you’ll see that I’m the only family you’ve ever had. I’m the only one who understands the things inside your heart.”

Wesley’s jaw clenched, teeth grinding together with such force that he felt like his bones were shaking. The fact that a man like Ashwood saw kinship in Wesley made him want to be sick, and the worst part was Wesley had nobody to blame but himself, because he had fed into that, carefully nurturing his reputation as an evil bastard and doing whatever it took to rise to the top and stay in the Kingpin’s good graces.

Including sacrificing Zekia.

But that was then and this was now.

Now, despite what the Kingpin wanted, Wesley wasn’t scared that one day his promises would sound too pretty to ignore and all the horrors that had happened would start to look like a means to an end. That without Tavia, or even the likes of Saxony and Karam, to balance Wesley out, the worst parts of him would rise to the surface.

Maybe once, it would have been possible.

Maybe in another lifetime, or if everything Wesley loved wasn’t hanging in the balance. But now, here, in this place, Wesley could never side with someone like Dante Ashwood. Not when he could see the city he loved withering in the cold dead of night.

Wesley had only stuck around this long to see if he could pull Zekia from the old man’s clutches, but he knew now that it was too late. Too much had happened, and Wesley being here only made her want to stay more.

It was time to go and if Zekia wouldn’t come, then he’d do what he had done all those years ago.

Wesley would leave her behind to rot.