Lyse wanted him to shut up, but he just kept talking.
"When she's dead, my father-and your grandfather-will be broken. He's old and sick, and her death will push him over the edge," he continued, "and then I can step into his place. I can be the one to lead The Flood to its zenith. My name will be the one the world remembers."
"You're crazy," Lyse murmured-she knew anyone associated with The Flood was insane.
"No, I'm smart," he said. This was followed by a guttural growl, low in his throat. "You really don't know anything about me, do you?"
It was true. She knew zero about her uncle, her dead mother's twin. Hell, she didn't know much about her own mother and father, either-other than the tangle of childhood memories she'd shoved into the recesses of her mind because thinking about them was just too painful.
"You were my mother's twin," Lyse said. "You grew in the same womb. How could you do all of these horrible things to me?"
He laughed again, and Lyse wanted to cover her ears-because something inside her sensed he only laughed when he was about to do something terrible. Something inhumane.
"She was nothing to me," he said, grinning. "And she was less than nothing to me when I killed her and your father."
"No," she said, raising her hands to cover her ears. She did not want to hear this.
"So easy to run them off the road. My only mistake was that you should've died with them."
She took a step toward him, all the fear and insecurity and guilt and anger filling her like a balloon until she was ready to pop. She felt disconnected from her body but still in control of it-and so, fully conscious of what she was about to do, she took another step and then another . . . reaching out with her hands, the power inside her rising to a fever pitch. How dare he try to push the blame for Eleanora's death onto her shoulders? How dare he call her a failure as a human being and as a blood sister . . . and as a friend? How dare he murder her parents in cold blood and let her live with their absence for the rest of her life?
"This ends now," she said, when she was close enough to touch the man she hated so much.
She grabbed his wrists in her hands and held tight. Her magic called up a neon-blue orb that coalesced around them, growing larger until they were both consumed by it.
"What are you doing?" he cried, fighting to pull out of her grip, but she would not let go.
"I want to go somewhere dark and hidden," she screamed into the ether as the orb swirled around her, the hiss of air and energy so loud it pummeled her eardrums. "I want to throw this man away-hurl him into an abyss from which he can never return!"
She saw uncertainty dawn in his eyes. Felt his body stiffen as he started to understand that this was real magic-her magic-and that he'd pushed her past the fail-safe point. There was no coming back from the fervor of rage in her eyes. She was powerful and strong . . . and she would show him exactly where he belonged. In fact, she would leave him there to think long and hard, possibly for an eternity, about what kind of a human being he was.
He fought her in earnest now, struggling to escape the pull of her magic. He squirmed under her touch, writhing and yanking, working desperately to unbind himself from her.
But it was too late.
They were already gone.
Only this time the orb did not pop. It stayed intact and went with them on their journey.
• • •
It took Lyse a moment to understand where the orb had brought them, but once she did, the perfection of it made her smile.
"Where are we?!" her uncle screamed, fear ratcheting up his voice an octave. He was the one clutching at her now, his fingers pressing into her skin as he fought to keep his balance. The orb hadn't liked the taste of her uncle David, and so it had expelled him. Now his hands-the one place where his flesh touched her own-were the only part of him still inside the orb.
"You're where you belong!" Lyse screamed back at him.
Had she been asked to describe the singularity that would be her uncle's eternal punishment and final resting place, Lyse would've said it was visually unimpressive. No more than a small black dot.
She knew her brain couldn't understand what it was experiencing. That this small black dot she saw wasn't really the singularity's true shape, just a construct for her simple human mind to hold on to. But the power it exerted over everything around it was very real. It made her want to throw herself at the singularity and become one with it forever.
Luckily, she was fully inside the orb's swirling magic and was only psychologically affected by the pull of the celestial body. Unlike her uncle, who was no longer protected by magic.
"Help me!" David screamed, and Lyse knew it would be only a matter of seconds before he succumbed to the singularity's pull.