Page 128 of His Eternal Claim

She collapses into Zagreus’s arms, her body going limp.

I look at her. Then I slowly look down at my hands. They are covered in the same warm, wet crimson. The blood is sticking to my skin.

“No…” I whisper.

What did I do? What did I do?

“Selene.” Zagreus’s voice is broken. He is kneeling on the floor, holding his Mother’s bleeding body against his chest. His face is entirely white; there’s agony in his grey eyes that I have never seen before. But he looks up at me, and through the grief, he reaches out a hand, trying to grab my wrist. “Give me… give me the knife, Dolcezza. Please.”

“Don’t touch me!” I scream as I slash the knife through the air to keep him away from me. “You’re a monster! Get away!”

The sharp edge of the blade catches the side of his face.

It leaves a thin red line that immediately begins to bead with dark blood. He doesn’t even flinch. He just stares at me through the crimson mask of his family’s blood, his hand freezing in mid-air.

I freeze too.

The knife slips from my fingers, clattering loudly against the tile floor. The voices in my head are gone now. The fog clears entirely, leaving me stranded in the wreckage of my own shattered mind.

I didn’t kill a demon. I killed an innocent woman. I cut my husband.

I am just like him. I am worse.

I am a monster, too.

“No, no, no…” I sob, backing away from him, my bare feet slipping in the pooling blood on the floor. “No, I didn’t mean to… they said…”

“Selene, wait—” Zagreus chokes out, but his hands are pinned, pressing down on his Mother’s chest to stop the bleed.

“No!”

I turn on my heel and run.

I don’t look back. I don’t look at the shadows. I just run from the horror of what I’ve become.

The rain hits my face, washing the blood from my cheeks, but it can’t wash away the rot in my soul.

I sprint. In the distance, I see heavy gates. Freedom. If I can just get past the gate, everything will go back to what it was.

“Selene!”

I don’t stop.

“You’re trapped, Stina.” Mama’s voice whispers from the puddles at my feet.

“No, I’m not, I’m not!” I shriek at the empty air, spinning around to press my back against the gate.

A massive shadow crashes into me before I can even draw another breath.

He slams into me with enough force to pin me. His arms wrap around my torso, lifting my feet completely off the wet ground to stop my thrashing. I go wild beneath his touch, kicking, biting, and scratching at his chest as the madness takes total, violent control of my limbs.

“Let me go! You monster! You made me do it!” I scream as I throw my head back, snapping my jaw blindly toward his face, my eyes wide, bloodshot, and completely unfocused.

“Selene, look at me! Look at me, please!”

His voice comes apart. The Don of the Vitale family is trembling. His rough hands clamp onto my wet hair, forcing my head into the crook of his neck. The thin red line I sliced across his jawline is bleeding heavily, mixing with the rain and dripping onto my shoulder.

He buries his face into my neck, his broad shoulders shaking violently as hot tears mingle with the icy rain on my skin. “Come back, please… come back to me, Dolcezza. Don’t leave me in the dark. I have you. I have you, dammit, just come back…”