Chapter Thirty #2
“Fuck you!” he screamed, but Skye’s fire engulfed her, and she disappeared from between him and the wall. Remi couldn’t rip his eyes away from the spot where she’d been standing. His chest heaved in heavy pants. The flash of flames had left a sunspot on his vision he couldn’t blink away.
He slammed his fist into the wall where the fire should have burned a scorch mark but hadn’t. Over and over and over again, he punished the wall for being unaffected. Punished himself because the scorch marks she’d left were seared into his heart instead.
The darkness in him writhed like a sick and oozing thing.
He wanted blood. He wanted pain. He wanted to feel the wall under his fist crack with the anger he pummeled into it.
His impotent anger shifted into anguish as an animalistic noise escaped his throat—half sob, half growl of distress.
The misery sinking into his bones didn’t only come from Skye playing him; even more than that, it came from the fact that a part of him had always known this was his fate.
It was familiar, the shame of his failure to see what everyone around him already knew.
When are you going to stop being such a worthless piece of shit?
Every fucking time, he fell for the same bullshit.
The lies his brain produced, which were masked as hope for the future.
An optimism that was just delusional and embarrassing.
A pathetic and needy desire to finally prove them all wrong.
Prove to his brother that he was someone worth his friendship.
Prove to this mother that he was someone worth her time.
Prove to the world that he was someone worth listening to.
Prove to Skye that he was someone worth loving.
How much evidence did he need to collect before he’d finally fucking get it through his thick skull?
He couldn’t stop being what he truly was. He was fucked up to the core. His brother saw through him—they all did. Everyone could take one look at him, at his clothes, at his makeup, at the way he fucking walked. It dripped from him. Desperate. Pathetic.
I didn’t have to compel him. He was already half in love with me when I entered his dreams.
Even as a hazy, unreal apparition in his imagination, Remi had been infatuated with the evil demoness whose whispers made his darkness and shame fade away.
Skye telling him that his music mattered, that what he was doing mattered, that he mattered—he hadn’t needed compulsion to fall under that spell.
But that wasn’t why he fell in love with her.
Demons aren’t capable of love, Remi. I don’t love anyone. Least of all you.
He’d thought she believed in the band, the music—in him, but what had really sealed his fate was the way he felt when they were together.
The passion that shone in her eyes when she was directing everyone backstage.
The confident tilt of her chin as she controlled everything in her orbit.
Remi loved her for that impossible, tough, sexy command she had on him, on everyone, and he loved her when she softened and let him see inside her heart.
Or what he thought was her heart. But it’d all been an act, a game. And he’d fallen for it.
“I can make all of this pain stop,” the Devil said, but it was like his voice was inside Remi’s head.
“I’ll erase the memories of my demons’ shenanigans.
I’ll give you and your band the fame you want, and you’ll never remember it was magic that fueled it.
Fame, fortune, your fans’ devotion, and the bliss of ignorance of how it came about. ”
The tantalizing image played in his head.
If he didn’t know that he’d bought his fans’ love, then he could believe it was real.
If the Devil took away the memories of his failures, he’d have no reason to think he didn’t deserve success.
He could finally be free of all of it—his brother’s voice, the three demons who’d ruined his life, the darkness inside that reminded him of his worthlessness.
Remi took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Fine,” he said, dejected and emotionless. “I’ll make the deal.”
The click of snapping fingers only a giant could make filled the room and stabbed Remi’s eardrums. A parchment floated to him and hovered in the air beside a floating gold fountain pen.
I, Remington Golding, by signing this agreement, do hereby agree to have my shadows stripped and sell my soul to the Devil in exchange for the following items.
He read each one with detached neutrality.
The Devil’s signature appeared in flaming cursive, burning the etching in the paper beside a blank spot where Remi’s name would go. He plucked the fountain pen out of the air.
“Of course you’ll make the deal,” Skye taunted him from behind. “You have no talent. You need magic to influence people into liking you. It’s too bad you didn’t have magic to make your brother love you, huh?”
Fury catapulted him around, and he dropped the fountain pen as a dark rebellion churned inside him. He didn’t bother to tamp it down. Fuck this bargain. Fuck all of this. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need any of this fucking bullshit. And fuck her. He wasn’t going to take shit from her.
He grabbed Skye’s arms, wanting to shake her, wanting to scream at her, but his outrage and self-righteous bluster screeched to a stop.
Skye’s nostrils flared, and she pressed her lips together—tiny, minute movements that anyone would have missed if they hadn’t spent months cataloging her every breath.
If they hadn’t categorized her every reaction.
At the time, it’d been so Remi could study the best way to get a rise out of her, but the knowledge flipped a switch within him, awakening something he couldn’t articulate.
He’d been about to sign the bargain, so why was she rubbing it in, why wasn’t she smirking in triumph like she had when he first signed—
She lifted her chin in defiance, and Remi noticed her bare neck.
Her necklace was missing. His eyes landed on the hollow of her throat, stayed there for a long moment, remembering what she’d told him about the necklace and the cigarette case.
About how magic couldn’t be created or destroyed. It only changed shape.
Magic, like energy, could change shape. Like the way Remi could change the shape of words and sound waves and create music that would change how people felt.
Because emotions were energy too. Magic and music and feelings. They couldn’t be created or destroyed. They only changed shape.
What shape was Skye changing their love into?