I want you to.
My attention turns to the bars, pushing myself into them. Command over my power is sharper than a razor’s edge and just as perilous with Charade’s tint to it. Effortless precision. But I know in my heart this isn’t right. Like one wrong would take me over the edge, and I would never return.
The bars disintegrate under my control.
Gathering the remaining power coursing through my veins, I stretch. My injuries fade to little more than sore muscle. When I reach for Charade, body limp and mouth twisted in a snarl, he flinches.
“You’re a monster.” The words slip out of his lips and into my ear like a centipede as I settle him over my shoulder in a firefighter’s carry. They settle deep into the very center of me.
You’re a monster.
It echoes in my head as I fish the keys from his pocket?—
You’re a monster.
As I deposit him into the passenger seat of his car?—
Monster.
As I drive away from the city and search for somewhere that he would be safe to recover.
Monster.
Monster.
Monster.
Neither of us utters a word, not even when I open the door and leave. Maybe there are no words for a situation like this. We had gone through the flames together and came out—if not whole than unbroken.
He had saved me. And I was a monster.
Never again, I swear as I continue my now even longer walk home.
Screw your pride. Take my energy.
I never want to feel that pulse again.
15
ZANE
NOW
“Please, Kaye.” No matter how much I beg, she won’t listen. Her cold, dry fingers rest in my own, her body diverting its resources to keep the core organs functioning even at the expense of the rest of the body. “Why are you doing this?”
I remember what I said that night and many nights after. Every chance I had until she disappeared.Monster.And she was, in my mind. This all-powerful being who could take what she wanted from wherever—whomever—she wanted. Even if she never did.
Even when her life depends on it.
Her eyes, encased in dusky veined lids, dance from side to side. Is that normal for someone in this condition? A quick Google search yields no answers, but I wasn’t really expecting it to anyway. I can’t imagine there are all that many cases of poisoning via Monkshood after the early 1900s.
“I don’t know if I should give this to you. You need sleep.” Half-light shadows Angela from her spot in the doorway, but the steaming mug of coffee in her hand shines like a beacon.
“You are a goddess,” I tell her. “A benevolent goddess of caffeine and sanity. You wouldn’t hold out on me now, would you?”
Her eyes twinkle. She always treated me like one of her children, even before my parents passed away, and she never let me forget the love my parents carried for me.
That’s what best friends are for, she would tell me.
