Chapter 3

‘Sienna,

If you are reading this, then I failed to do the one thing I had convinced myself I would accomplish before death.

I failed to destroy him.

You will want an explanation. You have always demanded explanations when my decisions made no sense to you, usually while standing before my desk with your hands planted upon your hips and that particular crease between your brows. God, how many times did I pretend to be irritated simply because I enjoyed watching you argue with me?

I would give anything to see it once more.

But sentiment is precisely what brought us here, and there is little time left for sentiment.

What waits behind those bars is not a stranger wearing my face.

It is me.

Or, more accurately, it is everything within me that I once believed I could live without.

My obsession began almost thirty years ago, with a question embarrassingly simple for the ruin it eventually caused: if cruelty is part of human nature, can it be removed?

I had studied the mind for years and found our moral contradictions fascinating. A loving father could harbor resentment toward his child. A charitable man might secretly delight in another's humiliation. Good people entertained terrible thoughts and chose not to act upon them.

What, then, separated virtue from wickedness?

Choice? Conscience? Or merely balance?

I became convinced that the impulses we call good and evil were not abstract ideas but measurable aspects of consciousness. If they could be identified, perhaps they could also be divided.

That conviction became the machine you have undoubtedly seen.

My earliest experiments were harmless enough. Electrical currents. Measurements of neural responses. Animals first, though I am ashamed now of what ambition allowed me to justify in the name of knowledge. Eventually, I produced something impossible: two distinct manifestations originating from one consciousness.

One retained attachment, restraint, compassion.

The other retained appetite, anger, envy, pride and every desire the original creature had learned to suppress.

I should have stopped..Instead, success made me arrogant.

I improved the machine. I tested it again. And again.

And then, like every fool who mistakes intelligence for wisdom, I decided that observing others was no longer enough.

I used it upon myself.

The first separation lasted less than four minutes.

I remember opening my eyes and feeling an extraordinary peace. Every ugly thought I had ever carried seemed to have vanished. I felt no jealousy, no resentment, no anger. I looked across the chamber and saw a malformed thing screaming inside the containment field, and I knew immediately what it was.

Mine. My hatred. My selfishness. My hunger. All of it had been given flesh.

I reversed the process.

For weeks afterward, I told myself I had proved my theory and should leave matters there.

I did not.

Perhaps you are wondering why a man who possessed everything continued risking his life over such an experiment.

The answer is not flattering.

I wanted perfection.

And perhaps, Sienna, I wanted to deserve the way you looked at me.

You thought me gentler than I was.

I knew better.

There were moments when I resented Lucien for needing so much of me after his mother died. Moments when I hated my late wife for leaving me alone to raise him, though death had hardly been her choice. There were men whose failures pleased me, women whose admiration fed my vanity, and thoughts about you that were far less noble than the tenderness I allowed you to see.

You called me good.

I became obsessed with making it true.

Eventually, I altered the machine so the divided consciousness could remain separate.

That was my greatest mistake.

The creature survived.

At first it barely resembled me. With every subsequent separation, however, it became stronger, more articulate, more human. I believed I was cleansing myself while, in truth, I was feeding it.

And I kept returning.

My patience increased. My anger disappeared. Charity became effortless. Forgiveness came before offense had even settled.

Everyone thought age had made me kinder.

Only I understood what kindness was costing me.

Because goodness without darkness is not humanity.

Without selfishness, I lost ambition. Without anger, I struggled to defend myself. Without desire, beauty became something I could recognize but scarcely feel.

Worst of all, I began losing you.

I remember one evening when you entered my bedroom wearing the blue nightdress I loved. You climbed beside me, rested your head against my chest and asked why I had stopped reaching for you.

I lied. I said I was tired. The truth was far more terrible.

I loved you, yet the hunger that had once accompanied that love was living downstairs, staring at the ceiling of its cage and dreaming about you.

That was when I understood what I had created.

I attempted to destroy it three times.

Each time, I failed.

Not because the cage was too strong or the machine too complicated.

Because it begged me to live in my own voice.

Because killing it felt strangely like placing a blade against my own throat.

And because it promised something I desperately wanted.

Wholeness.

During my final experiment, I tried to restore what I had removed.

The machine rejected the process.

My body began deteriorating almost immediately. I suspect you noticed before I did. You always noticed everything.

The doctors could never have helped me.

There was nothing medically wrong with my body.

I had simply removed too much of the man inhabiting it.

If I still possess the courage when I finish writing this, I will destroy him.

If I do not, then the burden falls upon you.

Forgive me.

And whatever he tells you, Sienna, remember this above all:

He has my memories. He knows what I know.

He remembers every kiss, every argument, every night you slept in my arms.

But memory is not love. Do not confuse the two.

—Cassian’

Sienna remained motionless long after the final line.

Tears had fallen onto the page without her noticing.

“No,” she whispered.

She turned toward the cage. The door stood open.

Her chair scraped violently backward. “Cassian?”

Nothing answered.

Then warmth pressed against her back.

Two arms slid around her waist with terrible familiarity, drawing her against a solid body while the journal slipped from her fingers.

Sienna froze.

His mouth hovered beside her ear.

“Memory isn't love?” the creature murmured, almost amused.

His hand settled over hers.

“Then why do I remember exactly how much I loved you?”