Revenant Slaves Chapter 57: Chapter 56: Luna

Read chapter 57 of Revenant Slaves by Zee on NovelPedia.

Avraham entered the room, and as Luna stared at her master, fear and apprehension began building inside her. For the briefest fraction of a second, she thought she saw that same fear reflected on his face. It vanished so quickly that she could not tell whether she had imagined it. By the time he stepped fully inside, Avraham’s expression had already settled back into its usual stoic calm. But this calm was different. Luna did not like it. Despite everything, she had always thought Avraham human. She had always been able to sense something in him, some emotion in his eyes or in the set of his mouth, even when he hid it well. But the stillness on his face now was too complete. It was not composure. It was emptiness. Looking at him felt almost like looking at a porcelain doll. “You wished to speak.” “Yes, Master,” Luna replied. She almost lost her nerve then. The questions had been pressing on her for days, but now that he stood in front of her, she suddenly feared the answers more than the uncertainty. Still, she had come too far to turn back. “Who are you, Avraham?” she asked quietly. “What are you?” “I am Avraham Darkflame. I am an Inquisitor, and I am your master. What more do you wish to know?” His face remained utterly devoid of emotion, and Luna hated that more than she expected. She hated the dead calm of him. She hated the thought that this might be the truest version of him she had ever seen. She had relied, without realizing it, on the signs of humanity she thought she saw in him. Now that they seemed gone, something inside her recoiled. “Who leaked my videos?” she asked. “Why do the people have them? Why do the rebels? If you really controlled every aspect of my life, if you weren’t orchestrating this image of me from the start, then why would you destroy everything by releasing that footage? You knew what would happen. You knew the harm it would cause. Or are you saying you weren’t smart enough to understand the consequences of your own actions? Was Lady Azarea right about you? Are you really just a hound, trained to do whatever your current master demands?” As Luna finished speaking, she looked hard at Avraham for any sign of a reaction, of a human emotion. Avraham simply looked at her. That blank expression only made her angrier. Was this who he really was? Was this what had always been buried beneath the lessons, the discipline, the cruelty, the strange moments of care? Was he really this empty? “I released those videos,” Avraham said at last. “I leaked them, knowing what would happen. I provided the material that helped start this war.” “To what end?” Luna asked, and despite herself, her voice was almost pleading. “To your end, Luna. For you. It has always been for you, Luna Lunaris Whiterock.” She recoiled from him as if he had spat venom in her face. He had not used her real name since they boarded the ship. Hearing it now felt wrong. Intimate in the worst possible way, like he was stripping something from her simply by saying it aloud. “Ask your questions, Luna,” he said. “You do not have much time. We are having this discussion only because I have cut the room from the eyes and ears of our High Inquisitor. She will not leave us in peace for long.” Luna stared at him, then forced out the question that had been growing in her mind for days. “Are you Ibrahim?” “Yes.” The answer came so quickly and so simply that Luna almost failed to understand it. Then she did, and the room seemed to turn cold around her. Avraham had just admitted to being the worst monster alive. “What do you want?” “To break the Empire.” “How is all of this for me?” she demanded. “Why am I part of this? Why did you do this to me?” “Because of your potential for greatness, because of your capacity for kindness, and because of your heritage. In you is the ultimate hope for the universe. It has taken centuries to place you exactly where you are, to have taught you exactly what you know. Countless lives had been sacrificed just for the concept of