29 #2
I coughed and sputtered as my vision cleared and hands dragged me along the ground. The bite of the cold stones warred with the bone-deep chill of reliving something I deemed one of my greatest failures. The guilt, a wound reopened and scrubbed raw, festered anew.
I should have been there. I should have been there to help him.
Sacha’s death sat on my chest—a weight I had no hopes of alleviating in this life. Even though he’d told me it was his battle, his past, I saw it differently. Another person I loved was dead—killed—and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
I lay on the ground, shaking as they cuffed my wrists and hauled me up by the chain again until I could only stand on the tips of my toes.
“Wonderful the way that works, isn’t it?” Mahoney’s voice drifted over the whisper of chains and the drops of water that ran from my hair onto the ground. “Psychological manipulation is so vastly underrated.”
My heart pounded in my ears as I lifted my head and glared at Mahoney. He stood near the entrance of the cell, hands in his pockets of that still immaculately pressed suit. Not a drop of water or dirt marred the creaseless fabric.
“It’s an amazing drug, really,” he continued. “It’s derived from the gases found on this island which already have potent hallucinogenic properties.”
Mahoney jerked his head toward a person in the room wearing a lab coat.
“Dose her again.”
The guards stepped away to give the man room as he filled a syringe. A prick in my neck and the room swam as I went under once more.
29
EMERSYN
The edges of reality blurred and softened, like something warm had been poured over every edge until it dulled. The shadows twisted and bled until they leaked into color and then—
Pine.
Like the previous hallucination, the scent of the forest sent a rush of longing through my body that ached.
I swallowed, my throat tightened until it burned, and I opened my eyes.
I wasn’t on the island anymore. Once again, I was in a forest—my forest—and for one precious second I let myself believe it was real.
I wasn’t restrained. Instead I was on my knees on the cold earth.
My fingers dug into the half-frozen ground beneath me, and cold seeped up through my veins and settled in my bones.
My mind glitched—
Again, this felt too real. A twig snapped behind me in a deliberate way. I turned too fast, the trees blurred, the earth tilted, and there he was, just the way I remembered him.
“Dad?” I breathed.
He stood at the edge of the trees and everything inside me shattered.
Because, it’s one thing to picture him in my memories, or have him as a blurred face in my dreams, but this—this was sharp, and the image of him cut clean through every wall I’d erected since that day in the clearing with Vetticus.
“Emy.”
I shoved to my feet, my name felt like a scar being reopened. I hadn’t heard someone call me that in over a decade. I stumbled toward him over the uneven ground, desperate to reach him.
“You came.” The words stuck in my throat. “You—you actually—”
No. This wasn’t real. Fuck! This wasn’t fucking real! He didn’t move. He didn’t reach for me, instead his eyes accused me of disobedience.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said.
I stopped in my tracks.
“I told you to stay hidden.”
“I waited,” I whispered. “I waited for you.”
His face remained emotionless, but everything inside me was breaking.
“I know.”
“That’s it?” My voice cracked, and the space between us stretched into something unbridgeable. “That’s all you have to say to me after all this time?”
My control was rapidly deteriorating as the emotions roiled like the sea during a storm. There was so much I wanted to say—so much I wanted to scream at him, even as my mind screamed to me that this wasn’t real.
“I did what I had to do,” he said.
The words sliced straight through my heart and twisted. Angry tears made the edges of him flicker like a dying flame as my rage overrode all reason. I took a step toward him, a cry on my lips, as words I’d only thought about threatened to spill out.
“I told you to run into the woods and hide,” my father said. “Why didn’t you listen?”
The words stuck in my throat. Everything I’d ever wanted to say to him lodged there and I couldn’t even make a sound.
Maybe it was because I knew, deep down I knew, that this wasn’t real.
Maybe it was because even after all this time I couldn’t bring myself to spill my truths to him.
Or maybe, it was simply because I was still too fucking hurt by it all.
You abandoned me.
I thought it. I screamed it in my head.
You failed Mom and Cole.
My tongue choked back the words from ever being voiced.
I hate you.
I didn’t. Not really. But, my rational mind didn’t care. I couldn’t do this—I couldn’t speak, and my mind wasn’t reliable in this state. I buried my head in my hands and collapsed onto my knees. I breathed in the dirt and begged the apparition to go away. The words started in my head—
Go away. Go away. Go away.
“Go away!” I abruptly screamed it.
Pain sliced across my back—once, twice—
The forest glitched. My head shot up as my shoulder muscles seized. I watched blood break through the skin of my wrists and slide down my arms. It defied gravity as it raced down my forearms without dripping into the dirt.
Another line of fire erupted along my thighs. The trees shimmered and the saturation bled away until it was nothing more than a greyscale rendering with ill-defined edges. The pain bloomed again, and reality jolted back into place.
My eyes fluttered open just in time to see a flogger descend on my stomach. A sharp bite of pain solidified the cell further. I smelled blood, and felt the lines of it as it ran down my arms from where my wrists had been sliced by the cuffs that held me.
Salt ran into the corners of my mouth. I hadn’t even realized I was crying, but my breathing shuddered in my chest with every inhale.
I glared at Mahoney whose smug smile and composed attitude did nothing to calm my raging thoughts.
I was mad at my father. I was mad at Mahoney. I was mad at the fucking world.
“Fuck you,” I stammered. My voice was weak and it cracked. I tried again. “Fuck. You!” I ground out through a tightened jaw that threatened to crack my teeth with the pressure.
Mahoney chuckled. “Again.”
“No!” I thrashed against the chain and slipped in my own blood. “I’m going to fucking kill you! I’m going to fucking kill you!”
I screamed the words, over and over and over again, as the man in the lab coat advanced. I hardly felt the prick this time, too consumed by my emotions to notice the external pain. I latched onto Mahoney’s eyes and refused to look away as it dragged me under into the darkness of my past.
I felt a soft touch on my shoulder and I froze.
“Hi, baby.”
My heart lurched—that voice and soft touch was too much. I slowly turned around, terrified to see who I knew would be behind me.
Mom. I barely saw her before cries ripped from me.
“No, no, no—no, this isn’t real!” I cried desperately.
The scent of vanilla enveloped me, and the arms I thought I’d never feel again wrapped around me.
I resisted—this wasn’t real and that truth hurt worse than my physical pain.
But, it felt real and I was tired of fighting.
My hands fisted her clothes as I buried my face into her shoulder, and sobs tore out of me in a way they hadn’t in years.
“I tried,” I choked. “I tried to be what you needed—I tried to be—”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmured. “You were never supposed to carry all of this.”
But, I did. I had. I was.
It didn’t matter though because the damage was done. This was who I was—a survivor. A killer. Someone who’d spent nearly her whole life in the shadows, while she drowned in her guilt and tried to figure out how to kill her demons.
“I shouldn’t have run,” I gasped. “I should have done something!”
I’d never realized I’d felt such guilt for that until now.
“That was never your job.” Her arms tightened. “You were a child. You did what you needed to do, and became who you needed to become to survive.”
“I don’t know how to be anyone else,” I said, my words muffled into her shoulder.
“One day you will,” she said with that quiet reassurance and firm belief.
I pulled back to look at her face. “Are you disappointed in me?”
Her warm hands cupped both sides of my face. I nearly collapsed at the love and warmth in her eyes.
“Never, my darling girl.”
The ground shook as the grief swept over me like a tidal wave.
I frantically grabbed for her, but the image of my mother wavered, and then dissolved.
The darkness pressed in on all sides again—swirling with demons and monsters I thought I’d had control over.
That was a lie. A big fat lie. I didn’t have control over anything.
I was so tired. I was so tired of being manipulated. I was so tired of being strong.
I was so…
“Em.”
I didn’t want to look. I squeezed my eyes shut because oh god, no…not that voice. The rage ceased to exist like I’d just been doused in cold water. I whirled around and there, standing a few steps away, was my twin. My other half. The other piece of my heart I’d been missing.
Cole.
Something inside me unraveled completely and I crossed the distance without thought. My hands grabbed him, even though I half expected him to disappear like the ghost he was. But, he didn’t. I hauled him into my arms.
“You’re not real.” My breath came in short gasps as I clung to him. “You’re not—this isn’t—”
His arms went around me and he chuckled softly. The sound bled through my skin and settled in my veins.
“Hey, Em.”
God, his voice. I heard it over and over again in my dreams, but not like this. It hit somewhere deep I’d tried to avoid for years because it hurt too badly to touch.
“You left me,” I whispered.