Page 70 of Dark Night of the Soul

They’d taught me to attack him.

If they could reach into my mind and tilt it enough to make my body move before I chose to, then what else could they reach?

It terrified me more than the pain in my head.

I’d always trusted myself. My instincts. My ability to read a room, read a threat, read the space between action and consequence. That trust was how I’d survived the Knights. How I’d survived Lucifer and Azriel. How I’d survived the things I’d done in the name of stopping more terrifying monsters.

Now that trust felt… fractured.

Not gone. Not destroyed.

But cracked.

I kept thinking about the pause. The moment before I’d gone still. Before awareness had come flooding back in and I’d realized whose throat I had my arm across. That fraction of a second where I could have finished it and didn’t.

That mattered.

It meant whatever they’d done to me wasn’t complete.

They’d sped up the decision. Shortened the space. Tried to erase the pause entirely.

But they hadn’t succeeded.

Because the pause still existed.

Because I still existed inside it.

And because Kincade didn’t fight me when it mattered. Didn’t counter. Didn’t force control back into my body. He’d let the moment break instead of escalating it.

That choice—his choice—had given mine time to surface.

Which meant this wasn’t about what they’d done to me.

It was about what I did next.

I couldn’t undo the wiring in my head. Not completely. But I could learn its shape. Its tells. The way it flared before taking over. I could name the moments when the world sharpened too fast, when my body mistook care for confinement and precision for threat.

I could learn to guard the pause.

That realization settled something in my chest.

Fear didn’t vanish, but it shifted.

Because being weaponized didn’t mean I was a weapon.

It meant someone had tried to make me one.

And failed.

I tightened my hand on Kincade’s, not in panic. Not in reflex. Enough to remind myself I was here. That I was choosing this moment.

Whatever they’d done to me, they hadn’t taken that.

“Sebastian—” I started, then stopped. His name was bitter on my tongue. I hated saying it. I hated even thinking it. “He said…”

I paused. Took a breath. Because once the words were released, there was no going back.

“He said I’d stop resisting once I understood who I was meant to hurt.”