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Warrose raises his brows, meeting eyes with Ruth in confusion.
“What demon?” he asks.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t make me say her fucking name.”
He stares at me for a long moment, sorting something out in his head. He blows out a breath, running a large hand through his thick hair. “Oh Christ, man, tell me you’re not talking about Skylenna.”
Her name singes my skin like acid. I taste blood as rage runs red through my mind. I have multiple flashbacks of her evil antics that replay at the mention of her name. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid that trigger.
“Why?” Ruth asks weakly. “What did she do?”
I glower down at her incredulously. “What the fuck didn’t she do?!”
Ruth recoils at my rising voice, and it makes me flush with shame. She’s done nothing to deserve the side effects of my anger.
“She’s made my life a fiery pit of hell,” I respond reluctantly.
Warrose crosses his arms and sighs. “They’ve fucked up his memories of her. Created this emotional response.”
“How do we fix it?” Niles’s jaw drops.
“Ironically, I think Skylenna is the only one who can fix it now.”
Red pours into my vision as I picture that demon’s face again.
“Stop. Saying. Her. Name.”
“You truly hate her?” Ruth inquires quietly.
I’m practically drunk with hatred. “With every fiber of my being.”
How can they even ask these questions right now? They know what she’s done to me. To all of us. She’s the reason Kane lost his baby brother and mother. She’s the demon that put us in the prison, that tortured me every single day in that asylum. She’s the trigger for every alter split, every form of trauma that we have worked so hard to recover from. Why are they acting like the demon’s spell worked on them? Did she convince them of her lies that she loves me?
“Do you all…believe her new story she’s telling?” I ask slowly as if I’m speaking to unintelligent children that need hand-holding.
The group looks around at each other, hesitant to answer. As if they’re afraid of making me angry.
“It isn’t a story. It’s your life,” Marilynn finally says.
I scoff. “So, she has gotten to all of you. Was it Mind Phantoms?”
“It was. But not on us. The Mind Phantoms were given to you by Kaspias. Not her.” Warrose watches me carefully with those piercing eyes that make me want to hit him. He’s cautious of any movement I make. Like I’m some feral animal he’s found scrounging for food in a ditch.
If it were Mind Phantoms, we wouldn’t all be affected by it, Kalidus clarifies.
But Warrose is giving me that look he used to give us as a child. The one where he’s waiting for me to solve a problem that he already knows the answer to. I rub my hands over my face, grinding my teeth against the confusion and frustration gnawing at my bones.
Take a breath. You’re okay, honey, Kane’s mother says, pushing to the front.
I’m not okay. Everything is pounding and rotting with an ache. My heart rate picks up as Warrose continues talking, something about Kane loving this girl his entire childhood. About protecting the demon. About meeting her in the asylum and falling in love. Disgust rolls through me like a rogue wave. My stomach heaves, and I wipe my hand over the sweat forming against my brow.
Breathe with me Dessin, Sophia murmurs, trying harder to reach me.
The dissociation affects my vision first. In and out of focus. I suddenly feel a disorienting amount of spaciness. Have I been sitting here staring at the floor for a few seconds or minutes? Hours? A few different alters crowd the front, flooding my thoughts and attention
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Ballaviranoz
