Chapter 43
Threshold
THE REQUIEM | Past
Watch your mouth, Marcus,” Zagreus growls. “You are speaking about my wife. Choose your next words very carefully.”
I am sitting on the edge of the examination table. My hands are tightly tucked between my thighs to hide the violent tremor that hasn’t left my limbs since we arrived at this clinic in the dead of night.
I still can’t process what Marcus said earlier.
I am numb, paralyzed by the absurdity of this situation.
Even though I argued I did not need a doctor, Zagreus forced me to come.
Dr. Marcus, the Vitale family’s most trusted and discreet medical professional, quickly holds up his hands, his face turning a shade paler under his spectacles.
“I apologize, Don Vitale. I did not mean it as an allegation against her character. I am just stating what’s written in her reports. Her system is saturated with a highly potent, synthesized hallucinogen.”
My breath catches. I look up, my vision still slightly hazy around the edges as the doctor’s words echo in my ears.
Hallucinogens? Drugs?
“That’s impossible.” I shake my head. “I don’t take drugs. I don’t even drink coffee anymore. I’ve only been taking…”
My voice dies in my throat.
My head snaps up, meeting Zagreus’s stormy grey eyes.
“Only taking what, Selene?”
I swallow hard. “The… the calming pills. The herbal ones Mama gave me to help with the grief and the anxiety after Papa died. I take them every single day on time.”
Marcus steps forward. “Do you have these pills with you, Mrs. Vitale?”
With trembling fingers, I reach into the pocket of my oversized coat, pulling out the small, amber glass vial I’ve kept close to me for weeks. I hand it over to the doctor.
Marcus takes it, uncorking the top and shaking out a single, pale grey capsule into his gloved palm. He crushes it lightly, sniffing the powder before his expression hardens.
“This is no herbal remedy,” Marcus breathes, looking directly at Zagreus.
“This is a concentrated compound of scopolamine blended with a slow-release synthetic deliriant. In small, controlled doses, it causes mild sedation and pliancy. But with daily use? It induces severe paranoia, vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, extreme sleep deprivation, and a complete distortion of reality. It mimics the exact symptoms of a psychotic break.”
Mama gave me those pills.
She looked into my eyes, stroked my hair, and told me they would help me survive the sins of this world. She told me they would bring me peace.
You made him kill me.
My heart hammers, but the fear isn’t directed at the bottle anymore. It’s directed at them. At the men standing in this room.
They are lying.
They are trying to twist my mind. Zagreus is standing there with his jaw locked, looking at the bottle.
He wants this. He wants a reason to tear my family apart.
He already killed my Father, and now he wants me to believe my Mother is a monster too.
He wants me isolated. He wants me to have no one left but him.
“No,” I whisper, my voice cracking as I slide off the examination table. My bare feet slap against the cold tile floor. “No, you’re lying. You’re both lying!”
“Selene, sit back down,” Zagreus commands as he takes a step toward me.
“Don’t touch me!” I shriek, slapping his hands away. “You’re doing this! You fabricated the report! You want to destroy my family, you want to make me hate her so I’m trapped with you forever!”
“Sit right back down.”
“I won’t let you blame her!” I yell. I am powerless. “You’re a monster! You killed Crystella, you killed my Father, and now you want to take my Mother away from me too! I hate you! I hate you!”
With an animalistic cry, I lunge forward, striking out blindly at his massive chest. I fist my hands into his shirt, tearing at the fabric, kicking and scratching as I try to hurt him, try to force him away from me.
But my monster absorbs the blows, his arms wrapping around my waist to pin my flailing limbs against his body.
“Sedate her,” Zagreus mutters over my screams.
“Let me go! Get off of me!”
I thrash violently, biting his shoulder through his shirt, tasting the faint salt of his skin.
Two female nurses burst through the room’s doors.
Before I can process their entry, gloved hands seize my arms, ripping me out of Zagreus’s grip.
I scream louder, my legs kicking out into the empty air as they force me back onto the examination table, pinning my shoulders and wrists against the leather pads.
“Hold her steady!”
“Zagreus, help me! They’re going to kill me!” I sob as the ceiling spins out of control.
Zagreus stands at the foot of the bed. His fists are clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles are stark white, his chest heaving as he watches them restrain me.
He looks ready to murder everyone in the room, but he doesn’t move to stop them.
He stays back, his stormy eyes burning into mine.
Marcus moves to the counter, drawing a clear liquid into a syringe.
“What is happening to her?” Zagreus demands. “Why is she reacting like this?”
“It’s probably the timing, Don Vitale,” Marcus explains rapidly, tapping the side of the syringe to clear the air bubbles as he walks back toward my thrashing body.
“She said she takes them every single day on time. Look at the clock—it’s past three in the morning.
Her body is accustomed to a specific chemical schedule, and she has missed her dose. ”
Marcus cleans a patch of skin on my arm.
“This is acute withdrawal,” Marcus says grimly, plunging the needle into my vein. “Her brain is screaming for the drug, and without it, the psychosis is taking complete control.”