Chapter 75
Burn In Hell
Acold breeze slithered around my body. I pivoted and noticed the sliding door was slightly ajar, leaving the curtain fluttering.
“Amelia.” He was behind me.
My heart lurched to my throat and dropped again. I didn’t turn. I couldn’t.
I could smell his scent of honey and cinnamon and wild mountains. I loved him so much, and he had taken that love and crushed my heart with his bare fucking hands.
“The first time I saw you was that night of the accident. I mind-controlled you to forget about it and I left. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you for years after.
” His voice came out husky and raw, as if he’d been crying.
“The next time I saw you was at a bar in Ohio. You were working. You looked at me, and it was like a bolt of lightning struck my heart. There were people everywhere, but in that moment all I could see was you. Then you smiled.” His swallow sounded loud in the room.
“And it was like a light exploded through the darkness in my heart. And when we talked, the hollow, the emptiness inside me was filled with something warm and soft. Something I had never felt before. Like you were the one thing I’d been waiting for my entire life. ”
My stomach churned. I couldn’t stand the sound of his voice, couldn’t stand here and listen to his bullshit. Couldn’t bear to hear him talk about his warm, glowing fucking heart when he murdered my mother, and then took the man I loved and made him cheat on me, made him break my heart.
“Stop talking.” I meant to shout, but my voice snagged on the lump in my throat and came out as a whisper.
“Amelia, please,” he begged weakly. “I couldn’t have known what the witches had done. I—”
Rage began to vibrate through the pain. I turned to look at him.
He stood a few feet away, his eyes damp and filled with pleading, his chest heaving.
His grief-stricken face touched a place deep inside me.
But I knew the sympathy I felt for him was not real.
How could I feel sympathy after everything he had done?
No, it wasn’t real, it was the fucking spell.
“I said stop talking,” I whispered.
His shoulders slumped. “I tried to go back home, I tried to forget about you, but all I could think about was you. All I knew was I had to be with you.”
He stepped closer and I stepped back quickly. He paused, hesitant, looking lost and desperate. “Please, just listen. I know we can get through this.”
Fire roared in my heart. “You compelled Tom to sleep with my best friend, you compelled me to come to you.” My voice was shaking as it rose. “And you … How could you …? How could you …?” I couldn’t say killed my mother. The agony twisting inside my chest stole the words from my lips.
“Please, let me explain, I—”
“You stole everything from me,” I breathed. Tears tumbled down my face uncontrollably. A sob shuddered through my throat.
He held up his palms. “In my defense, I did not need to compel Kelly. She was already in love with Tom. And he was attracted to her. It was only a matter of time before he would have cheated.”
I couldn’t believe his capacity for delusion. He dropped his hands when I just stared at him, fury building like a fatal storm.
“Get out of my sight, Karson,” I spat. “I never, ever want to see your face again.”
He looked like I had stabbed him. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, tears trickled down his face. “After everything we have been through, you are just going to walk out? Leave it all behind now that we can finally get out lives back?”
“It’s a fucking lie!” I shouted hoarsely. “Everything about you, about us, is a fucking lie!”
“Amelia, stop, just stop, please.” His voice was thick with desperation. “I love you, and I know you love me. Does it really matter how it started?”
I laughed. It was maniacal. I didn’t know why I laughed, it just fell out of my mouth. Other than I was broken, I was broken down to my soul. All the moments we’d shared, all the love I felt for him, the love he supposedly felt for me, all of it was one big fucking betrayal.
His brow flickered as I stepped closer, confusion, pain, and a spark of hope burning in the hazel of his gaze. I stepped so close I had to tilt my head up to look into his eyes.
“Yes, it matters,” I whispered, my hand remarkably steady as I pressed it to his chest. I could feel his heart thudding in fast, hard beats.
“It matters,” I repeated, running my fingers down his chest to his stomach.
My other hand moved with a speed outside myself as I drove the ash-bone blade Dahlia had given me into his black fucking heart.
“Because the first time you saw me, and this all started, was the night you murdered my mother.”
He gasped, staggered back, his eyes wide with disbelief. Black vines twisted under his skin, up his chest, up his neck. He struggled to breathe as he murmured, “Amelia.”
I yanked the blade out.
He collapsed to his knees, face twisted in agony, tears slipping silently down his cheeks as he stared at me. “I love you.” His voice was ravaged with pain.
Guilt and grief panged through my chest at the sight of his despair. But I shoved it aside. He ruined me first.
I turned my back on him, my breathing scorching through my mouth as I heard him collapse to the floor. Maybe it wouldn’t kill The Death Bringer, but it would disable him long enough for me to get far, far away.
“Amelia, please,” he whispered.
“Burn in hell,” I grated as I slammed the door closed.