My body leans down, placing my mouth to Cameron’s ear. “Don’t you crave forever? I feel how you want him. You both want forever.”
It’s using my own affection to harm him. It’s a manipulative, toxic dance that I’ve caught this sweet man in.
Cameron’s eyes are glazed over with tears, his body shaking as I keep him in my grasp.Let go,I scream, but no sound comes out.
Footsteps pound against the floor overhead, and suddenly Mother and Father reappear, pressing themselves to Julian and Atlas.
“Don’t do this, honey,” Mother cries, her normally perfectly composed face covered in tears.
“Silence!” my own distorted voice demands, and Cameron flinches in my hold. “Begin again.”
Cameron lifts his gaze to my family, lips trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his fingers gripping the paper I translated this stupid spell onto so many months ago.“Demon of night, you who dwells in the shadows…”
Something pleasure-filled and light expands in my chest again, and I resist the urge to groan in a mixture of pain and desire.
Oh, god. I’m going to die. I’m going to be cursed to live inside of this monster until I wither away or outright evaporate when he’s done.
My poor, sweet baby brother is being forced to experience this tragedy all over again. Cameron is going to die under the guilt of what he’s doing. And everyone else is being forced to observe this catastrophe firsthand.
But I’m powerless. I’mnothingin this moment. I cannot protect anyone.
Something in me crumbles; the fight is forced out of me. This destiny is inevitable, and sending Cameron away didn’t protect him from it. The pain was pointless.
“Meet me here in the valley of the living,”Cameron continues.
“No!” my brother shouts, attempting to free himself from Father’s hold. “Stop it! You’re going to kill him!”
“Atty,” Julian placates, his voice trembling.
“I have to do it! I have to! If I don’t, it’s going to hurt us all,” Cameron cries. And as his eyes flicker back to me, so wet and full of terror, I feel a small part of my soul die. “I’m so sorry, Atticus. I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
“If you do this, I’ll kill you,” Atlas grits out through his own tears, struggling like a wild animal against the arms that hold him.
It’s Julian now, who’s taken to wrapping Atlas up tight with a protective agony.
“I should have told you it was visiting me,” Cameron confesses to me, therealme that sits deep inside, tears soaking his face, his voice dropping to a quiet guilt. “I should have resisted. I just wanted you, you know? I wanted to have you in whatever way I could; I just never imagined it was likethis.”
“Finish,corculum,”is my only response.
Cameron takes in a stuttering, sob-filled breath and obeys. He always,alwaysobeys.“I call your name, with these words my soul I expose; grant my wish for a price befitting.”
“Julie, make him stop!Oh, god,make him stop!” Atlas screeches.
I can hear my parents crying, watching me with terrified eyes.
“Prince of darkness, extend your hand—”
My body begins to vibrate, to shove a gleeful pulse under my skin. It feels so good, and it makes me sick.
This is it. This is the moment in which I force the man who loves me to kill me, to give my body to another. Where my family is forced to watch.
“and I will be your humble—”
Julian takes a step forward, shoving Atlas at our father as ifhewill fight me off all on his own. He will put an end to this.
Sweet, martyring idiot.
