Macy gasps, her face going as white as the snow-capped mountains all around us. And a few seconds after that, the entire building starts collapsing in on itself. I watch over Hudson’s shoulder as wood and glass and stone and metal come tumbling down, the arena literally tearing itself apart piece by piece.
“What’s happening?” Macy squeaks out. “Jaxon, what are you doing?”
But Jaxon looks as ashen as she does as he shakes his head. “That’s not me.”
You don’t know what real power is.
Hudson’s words come back to me now, as does that moment when I was returning his powers to him—the moment when I realized just how infinite they really are.
Infinite enough to reduce his father’s bones to dust with the wave of a hand.
Infinite enough to tear down an entire stadium with barely a thought.
Infinite enough to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
And if Jaxon’s gasp is anything to go by, he knows it, too. Which means he also knows that Hudson has been telling me the truth all along. Because if he had been dead set on the murder and mayhem and genocide that Jaxon had believed was his plan two years ago, then it would have already happened. It would have been done with a flick of his fingers—a wave of his hand—and there would have been nothing anyone could have done to stop it. Jaxon would only have found out about it after it was a fait accompli.
Because that’s the kind of power Hudson wields.
And now his brother knows.
People start running out of the arena screaming, and still the structure continues to fall, huge pieces of it exploding into dust before they even hit the ground. Seats from the top of the stadium, chunks of the roof, fragments of stone from the outside wall. All crumbling away. All imploding into the smallest particles of dust, harmlessly floating to the ground.
I know what Hudson is doing. I can feel the fury coming off him in waves. He wants to tear down the arena where people sat back and watched Cole try to kill me. Watched Cyrus actually kill me. And they did nothing. But he’s not hurting them. I don’t even have to look to know he’s not. But he certainly is putting the fear of God into them, and honestly, I wouldn’t be lying if I said they might deserve it just a little.
The amount of power it takes to tear the arena down and hurt no one. The amount of control. I smile. The one thing his father tried to deny him, control of his abilities, he found a way on his own terms. And Cyrus would have seen it, too, if he’d only ever bothered to pay attention to his son. That day in the memory… Hudson destroyed everything in the room except his father.
It makes me wonder what else Hudson can do.
I was dead. Sort of.
Sort of? What does that mean?
It means a lot of what I’ve believed for the last weeks, months, has been a lie.
It means a lot of what I blamed Hudson for wasn’t his fault—or maybe didn’t even happen at all. That he tried to tell me several times only makes me feel worse.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask as he strides away from the arena and back toward the forest we came through less than two hours ago.
And God, it feels surreal to be here. To see how much everything has changed. And also how nothing has. The pain is now so great, it’s reached some level that my body can’t even register anymore. A quiet calm settles over me as the pain recedes in soft waves, and all I see is Hudson. This moment. The last words we’ll ever share. And I want him to know. I want him to know that I see everything now. I see him.
“Tell you what?” he asks. “Not to go anywhere near my father? I’m pretty sure we covered that several times.”
“No,” I respond after swallowing the lump in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me what a good person you are?”
Startled blue eyes find mine and our gazes lock, hold.
For a second, Hudson slows down so much that he nearly trips over his own feet while Macy and Jaxon demand to know what’s going on.
He doesn’t answer them. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all—and neither do I. We just stare at each other as a strange understanding passes between us.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he tells me as he starts walking again.
“There isn’t going to be a later,” I answer quietly, “and you know it.”
He starts to say something, then breaks off. Swallows. Starts to speak again, then breaks off again.
As he struggles, explosions start going off around us. I drag my eyes away from his tortured blue ones in time to see a centuries-old tree turned to sawdust in the blink of an eye.