Harley Merlin 12 Bella Forrest (100 best novels of all time txt) 📖

my unhinged moments, but that was pure madness. And these ingrates needed to hear that.

“You have been out here too long. It has addled your pathetic minds. What you have is a façade of autonomy, when you should accept the nature of our being,” I hissed at the crowd, smug in Raffe’s silence. I’d buried that chicken deep. A door worked both ways. He wanted to lock me out of a corner of his mind? Fine. He could stay there and think about what he’d done.

“We belong to our king, our leader, our creator. Do you know what gods do when their subjects rebel? They spit in their faces and destroy them for lack of gratitude. If you think Erebus will be any different… let’s just say if you go to him and demand this, then you deserve to have your brains crushed against these walls.”

“Erebus is no god,” Safiya replied coolly.

Silly cow, thinking she owned the place because she’d lived the longest. So what? To me, it just meant she hadn’t had the courage to die. We didn’t need a matriarch. The djinn had a leader. We were built to follow Erebus, not this dissident.

My eyes burned into her. “What is a god but a creator with exceptional power? Erebus is our creator. Therefore, he is our god. Defy him at your peril, but know this: you’ll be to blame for what comes after. If he obliterates us, that’s on your shoulders.”

A rumble of apprehension circled the crowd of djinn. Despite Safiya’s protestations that the Salameh djinn didn’t care for our king, it seemed she’d overshot her estimations. Not surprising, considering her arrogance. Haughty old crone. To even suggest mutiny against Erebus spelled conceit.

“Would we survive in our weakened state?” one djinn shouted. A big, bulky Marid, towering over everyone. “We have all made enemies.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” another cried, bearing the same red flesh as me. “What if he cuts us off completely, and we die anyway?”

A third pushed to the front, all pomp and circumstance. Ifrits always had a sense of perceived superiority, and it showed. All djinn had innate knowledge of the diverse race they came from, separate from the network, so I didn’t need to be connected to the hivemind to know the traits each type was known for. “You told us to wait. Maybe that’s the safest path—to trust Erebus and pray he is restored to his former glory soon.”

“And be under his thumb for the rest of our days?” a Si’lat agitator retorted, their body a mass of seething black smoke with only a hint of red. “When will we ever have another opportunity like this? This would mean true liberation.”

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be stuck in a cycle of waiting to be called, never allowed to exist as I wish.” Another rebel stepped in. Another Marid, throwing their weight around. “Why should he subjugate us, just because he created us? That was his choice, not ours. It shouldn’t give him the right to retain control.”

My eyes flitted from speaker to speaker. They seemed split on the issue. Ironic, considering I wanted to split the agitators in two, starting with Safiya. Cut the head off the snake, and the rest might have the decency to die. Who did she think she was? Even if she were thousands of years old, Erebus had millennia on her. If this was a contest of who’d lived longest, Erebus would wipe the floor with her.

“But we’re all used to drawing power from Erebus,” another chimed in. “What if we can’t function properly when it’s gone?”

“What if we all die anyway, because Erebus never returns to his full power? Wouldn’t you rather have a fighting chance, decided by us?” A rebel glowered at the objector, so I glowered at him to even things out. I let my smoke billow in dense waves.

“Our best chance is not betraying our creator. I’m not going to die a traitor, and I won’t be bundled into a rebellion I want no part of.” I glared around the crowd of djinn, challenging them all with my eyes.

“The way I see it, we have a choice,” Safiya cut in. “We can stay as we are, bound to Erebus with the prospect of having our full strength returned to us, or we can be free with lesser strength. The latter means we also rid ourselves of this pain and insomnia.”

“But this pain and insomnia are short-lived. If we tough it out, Erebus will return to his Child form and restore us,” I barked back.

Santana scoffed. “When did you get so gung-ho about this, Kadar? Let’s not forget that you tried to throw yourself—and Raffe—off a building a few days ago. You tried to end your lives because you couldn’t hack it anymore. That doesn’t sound like ‘toughing it out’ to me.”

“I would have tried harder, had I known you and Raffe would land me in a mutiny,” I snarled. “I told you before. The only way to end this affliction is through death or Erebus. I attempted death, but you were too stubborn to let me succeed. Which means I now choose Erebus. I choose to wait on him and have faith.”

Safiya gave me a pitying look that made me want to drown her in one of those glowing pools. “It is as I feared. The longer Erebus holds us apart, the greater the pressure upon his creations. If he is seeking Atlantis, it will take much too long to return to his true form. Already, some djinn have begun to lose their minds. I see that you are no exception, Kadar.”

“I survived!” I snapped.

“Only thanks to Finch.” Santana turned to me, her face hard with wrath.

“Nevertheless, I lived, and I’m glad I did, so I can talk some sense into all of you before Erebus rips the sense, and everything else, out of your carcasses.” I glared back. “I will not choose to be feeble. I choose