Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page A

underestimated him. Maybe Mittron’s willingness had hidden his intention to rid himself of a potential problem once and for all. Maybe—
    A new agony sliced through him, white-hot, swelling to fill his entire being, deftly excising bits of consciousness, threatening sanity itself. Seth struggled against it, fighting to hold the memory of Alex, to retain his vanishing sense of self. Deep in his mind, fear sparked. Something was seriously wrong. What if this wasn’t Mittron’s doing? What if the One had discovered her son’s betrayal? What if she intervened?
    Before Seth could register the consequences inherent in the possibility, agony exploded through his every atom, erasing lucidity in a brutal decimation of all that he was. His life code, his soul, his consciousness, all disappeared into a vortex that swallowed him, rearranged him to fit its immensity, made him one with it…
    And then spat him out into nothingness.
    T HE ONE FELT the shock of her son’s absence like a sudden, vast emptiness. One second he was there, in her consciousness where he had been from the moment of his conception,and then, simply, he was not. She drew a breath, startled at the change in the state of her own being. The unexpected shift.
    Then she shook her head at her own naïveté. After all these millennia, after all that had passed, the most surprising thing about this entire mess was that she could still be surprised.
    Setting down the pot of soil, she went to wash her hands. So. Seth was gone, dead at the hands of an angel she had known would kill him. An angel she had
allowed
to kill him. She found little comfort in the fact she hadn’t actually condoned Mittron’s actions, had only permitted the unfolding of the free will he had never given up. Because however she looked at it, she’d known, and the decision to end Seth’s life belonged to no one but her.
    A tiny whisper of doubt threaded through her. She closed her eyes, gripping the edge of the sink.
    What if I was wrong?
    When she had looked into Seth’s soul and seen the potential for betrayal written there, the weakness, what if she had overreacted? Perhaps she had been too quick to judge what she considered a fatal flaw, an unacceptable threat to her agreement with Lucifer. And even if she had been right, even if she had prevented outright annihilation of the human race, this—what she had triggered in its place—would be nearly as bad.
    War between Heaven and Hell. Between her beloved angels and their fallen kin. War that Lucifer would ensure was fought on mortal soil, taking out as much of humanity as he could in the process. Her fingers curled over the cool porcelain.
So many lives…so much grief…and all because I couldn’t trust my own son.
    Flicking water from her hands, the One reached for a towel hanging by the sink. Her lips drew as tight as the band around her heart. She had either set the universe on the only possible path to be taken, or she had just made another in a line of monumental errors. Either way, it was too late now to change her mind.
    Either way, she would still mourn the first life to be lost in this new conflict—that of her own child.
    M ITTRON STARED AT the space Seth had occupied, and then at his hands. Hands that should have held the pulsing, living energy of the Appointed’s immortal power but were instead empty—stunningly, impossibly empty. He’d expected it to be difficult, but he’d been confident he could do as Seth asked. Certain. What in Heaven’s name had gone wrong?
    He raised his gaze to the Dominion who stood in the doorway. Met the betrayal in her pale blue eyes. The horror.
    “What have you done?”
    He flinched from Verchiel’s whisper, a sound more harsh than any shout could have been, and returned his gaze to his hands. They trembled now, and a sickness had begun to wind through his chest. Mittron swayed. He needed to sit down before he fell down. But he didn’t have time. All of Heaven would have felt