Page 59 of Deadfall

He stood at the edge of the trees and everything inside me shattered. Because, it’s one thing to picture him in my memories, or have him as a blurred face in my dreams, but this—this was sharp, and the image of him cut clean through every wall I’d erected since that day in the clearing with Vetticus.

“Emy.”

I shoved to my feet, my name felt like a scar being reopened. I hadn’t heard someone call me that in over a decade. I stumbled toward him over the uneven ground, desperate to reach him.

“You came.” The words stuck in my throat. “You—you actually—”

No. This wasn’t real. Fuck! This wasn’t fucking real! He didn’t move. He didn’t reach for me, instead his eyes accused me of disobedience.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said.

I stopped in my tracks.

“I told you to stay hidden.”

“I waited,” I whispered. “I waited for you.”

His face remained emotionless, but everything inside me was breaking.

“I know.”

“That’s it?” My voice cracked, and the space between us stretched into something unbridgeable. “That’s all you have to say to me after all this time?”

My control was rapidly deteriorating as the emotions roiled like the sea during a storm. There was so much I wanted to say—so much I wanted to scream at him, even as my mind screamed to me that this wasn’t real.

“I did what I had to do,” he said.

The words sliced straight through my heart and twisted. Angry tears made the edges of him flicker like a dying flame as my rage overrode all reason. I took a step toward him, a cry on my lips, as words I’d only thought about threatened to spill out.

“I told you to run into the woods and hide,” my father said. “Why didn’t you listen?”

The words stuck in my throat. Everything I’d ever wanted to say to him lodged there and I couldn’t even make a sound. Maybe it was because I knew, deep down I knew, that this wasn’t real. Maybe it was because even after all this time I couldn’t bring myself to spill my truths to him. Or maybe, it was simply because I was still too fucking hurt by it all.

You abandoned me.

I thought it. I screamed it in my head.

You failed Mom and Cole.

My tongue choked back the words from ever being voiced.

I hate you.

I didn’t. Not really. But, my rational mind didn’t care. I couldn’t do this—I couldn’t speak, and my mind wasn’t reliable in this state. I buried my head in my hands and collapsed onto my knees. I breathed in the dirt and begged the apparition to go away. The words started in my head—

Go away. Go away. Go away.

“Go away!” I abruptly screamed it.

Pain sliced across my back—once, twice—

The forest glitched. My head shot up as my shoulder muscles seized. I watched blood break through the skin of my wrists and slide down my arms. It defied gravity as it raced down my forearms without dripping into the dirt.

Another line of fire erupted along my thighs. The trees shimmered and the saturation bled away until it was nothing more than a greyscale rendering with ill-defined edges. The pain bloomed again, and reality jolted back into place.

My eyes fluttered open just in time to see a flogger descend on my stomach. A sharp bite of pain solidified the cell further. I smelled blood, and felt the lines of it as it ran down my arms from where my wrists had been sliced by the cuffs that held me.

Salt ran into the corners of my mouth. I hadn’t even realized I was crying, but my breathing shuddered in my chest with every inhale. I glared at Mahoney whose smug smile and composed attitude did nothing to calm my raging thoughts. I was mad at my father. I was mad at Mahoney. I was mad at the fucking world.