Creije was more than halfway to falling and the Kingpin wasted no time in taking the people from the streets and trains and homes and shadows that gave them temporary refuge. He plucked them one by one, like ripe fruit, and lined them in pretty little rows, ready to devour them whole.

And he made Wesley watch.

Everything Wesley had built was crumbling. Those miraculous novelties that he’d weaved into the city, the parts of himself—blood and soul—that had gone into making it great, were like smoke in the air.

Little by little.

Step by step.

One by one.

Wesley could smell the Loj elixir in the wind.

He could see it drip down the sides of people’s faces, as those already enthralled held the new victims to the ground and force-fed it to them. He could hear it gargle in their throats as they tried desperately to keep from swallowing the magic. And Wesley could feel the moment the air turned and their hearts gave way to the Kingpin’s power. Their eyes as black as the endless night that had stained his, their resolve withering like dying flowers.

One by one.

Wesley looked at Zekia with every harsh angle he had left. Staying here was getting to be too much and Wesley wasn’t sure how much longer he could do nothing while his world burned.

“Why don’t you just shove your little mind control elixir down my throat?” he asked. “Then I wouldn’t care about any of this.”

Zekia’s eyes glistened with an odd kind of sadness. Wesley couldn’t believe the girl he had once cared for had been the cause of this pain. He couldn’t believe the person in front of him was the same child who wanted so desperately to prove there was good inside of him.

He couldn’t believe that he had turned her into this.

“It never works on you,” she said. “I’d do it if I could, but we’ve tried too many times and it only makes you angrier.”

Wesley leaned back against the brick wall and slumped slowly to the floor. He tried to shut out the screaming of his people outside, but it was sharper than any knife he had used to cut through his enemies.

Zekia was right. She had tried to give Wesley the elixir before, but it had barely made him blink. Wesley wasn’t sure whether it was because his magic had finally found its way back home inside his heart, taking root so deep that it couldn’t bear to be lost again to numbness, or if he really was just a stubborn bastard. Perhaps his mind refused to be conquered so easily.