Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

you mean, ‘and then what’?” he asked in an almost-laugh that became a snort.

Milo skewered Roland’s eyes with his own.

“Say your plan works. I take control of the Resonator, and we kill Zlydzen,” Milo rattled off, his voice beginning to buzz with growing anger. “What happens next, Roland? We make the big score, and then what?”

Roland took a step back, neck arching and face twisting as though he’d been slapped.

“Whatever the hell we want!” he snapped, baring his teeth in a savage mockery of a grin. “We’ll have an army and means to conquer all of Europe, perhaps without firing a shot, if we can figure it out before Zlydzen’s campaign starts. Think of it, Milo! We could not only end the war, but we could bring about a new order.”

The fire raging in Roland’s eyes withered Milo’s heart in his chest. He wished it didn’t hurt as much as it did, but by God, he’d hoped he was wrong.

“What if I wanted to destroy the Resonator?” Milo asked wearily. “If I refused to use the power we’d stolen from Zlydzen?”

Roland’s burning stare searched Milo’s face.

“Why would you do anything so stupid?”

Milo shook his head. Could he even explain the horror of what that techno-magical construct was? Would it even matter?

“It is evil, Roland,” he said, every word heavy. “It doesn’t just make them do what you want, it hollows them out. You didn’t just trick or bully those people in Gzhatsk; you scraped their souls out!”

Somewhere in the darkness rubble shifted, sending bricks slithering down over each other. Roland’s eyes darted through the darkness as he motioned some of his soldiers over to the side of the street where the disturbance had come from.

Milo held his breath as four men trudged over, rifles on their shoulders, but they picked among the ruined buildings without incident. They emerged after a minute and settled in as sentries along the street half a dozen strides from Roland and Milo.

“Souls and evil?” Roland snorted after another minute of listening to nothing but wind and combustion engines. “Did you become religious or something in the last few years?”

Milo opened his mouth to retort, but his tongue didn’t cooperate as a rush of tangled thoughts bounced around his mind. What was he talking about? By what right did he talk about souls and evil? He could have talked about stripping one’s will, but he knew with a deep certainty it was more than that.

“I’m not religious,” he murmured. “But seeing these things, doing these things, performing magic? It’s opened my mind to a world that isn’t only what I can see or touch. There are realities besides the physical; I know that now, and knowing means I can see there is such a thing as evil.”

Roland’s fingers raked through his hair with such ferocity and frequency, Milo expected blood to start trickling from his hairline.

“You aren’t making sense!” Roland snarled. “You’ll throw away a chance to end the war and right every wrong we’ve suffered because it’s evil? You, De Zauber-Schwartz, don’t have the stomach for it after everything you’ve done?”

Milo felt pressure building in the back of his mind; the familiarity of the situation was not lost on him. He’d held a bag containing the bones of an infant in his hand.

“We’ve all got to draw the line somewhere, Roland,” Milo said, meeting the accusing glare with a sad smile. “I’ll help you destroy Zlydzen, but I won’t stop until all his works burn with him.”

Roland nodded slowly, then looked up from under his brows with a fell light that made Milo’s stomach twist.

With a bestial howl, Roland sprang at Milo, his hands curled into claws that gripped the marten fur in two great clumps. With a hard yank, he drew Milo to him so they were nose to nose.

“No! You don’t get to do that, not after everything!” Roland snarled as he ground his forehead against Milo’s. “I gave you everything I had in a world that gave me nothing! You won’t take away my chance to balance the scales! You can’t do that to me!”

Milo felt Roland’s fists pressing into his throat.

“I can,” Milo gulped, his fingers digging for purchase on the silky furs. “I can, and I will.”

A roar tore from Roland’s throat, and he threw Milo down to the ground. The magus managed to keep his head from bouncing off the broken cobbles, but his elbow struck the ground hard enough to rob him of all feeling from the joint down. That happened to be on the side his ash-filled pocket was on.

Roland loomed over him, the four soldiers now flanking him with their guns leveled at Milo.

“You are so selfish!” Roland spat, a pistol appearing in his hand, not yet aimed at Milo but hanging at his side. “Everything you have is because of me! Every breath you took from that night I saved you on was only because I was there, and you have the arrogance to defy me?”

As he lay looking up at Roland and four sets of cold eyes above rifle barrels, Milo slid his nerveless fingers into his pocket. Roland glared down at him, his eyes bulging with rage as the hand holding the pistol quivered and began to rise toward him, then stopped. Milo met his furious gaze, tears rising in his eyes as he did, though that was as much from his teeth crunching through the inside of his lip as from the emotion of the moment. Milo began drawing his hand out of his pocket as slowly as possible, hoping there was enough ash between his tingling fingers.

The pistol nearly leveled with Milo, then Roland sobbed and let his arm hang at his side, the pistol loose in his fingers.

“Don’t make me do this,” he pleaded, fingers dragging across his scalp and stopping to grip a hand full of hair. “Please, for the love of everything we once had, don’t make me kill you.”

Blood had begun to stream from Milo’s mouth so