Page 27 of Vengeance of the Gods

His dad had treated him like a nuisance. His mom never truly loved him. And when Vega lost herself in all this for a long time, she wasn’t there to love him like she should—like she had.

Marlena made him feel like he was needed. Tolevarre needed him.

Vega’s anger towards him simmered, the waters between them calm for now.

Going against what she’d told him in the cafe, she looked up at the train’s ceiling, searching for the right story to tell.

“Chase’s attack today was child’s play compared to what other men have done to me.” Vega tried to look at anything but Bridger, but the lure of his full attention on her won. “These memories, these lives, make me who I am today. During my tenth life, I was homeless almost the entire time after getting kicked out by the man I’d been dating. I couch-hopped for as long as I could, but eventually everyone got sick of me overstaying my welcome.”

Vega nibbled at the inside of her lip, pausing to hold herself together. “I got really good at telling people what they wanted to hear and learned most people just needed a good sob story.” She fiddled with her thumbs. Vega was unable to make eye contact with Bridger, let alone anyone, while talking about this next part. “I lied. A lot… and I got really, really good at it. Lying and crawling into beds with strangers, whether they were good or bad, was better than sleeping on the streets where even worse things happen to you.”

Bridger didn’t interrupt, and Vega didn’t stop talking.

“I wanted to die a bunch in that life. I think it might have been my worst. Not caring whether you live or die”—those words took Vega back to Lake Vehemens, when she drove a knife through Bridger’s heart—“typically means you make all the wrong decisions. Because the worst that’s gonna happen is you die, right?” She finally looked up at him again. “I did so many drugs.” She laughed a humorless sound. Laughing in the face of her demons felt like the only way she’d ever heal from them.

“I guess what I’m getting at is these lives translated into who I was when I finally got back to Tolevarre. I’m sure you didn’t keep track of them but I did. I have. All twenty-one of them.” Clearing her throat, she continued on. “It was the life after you joined Marlena. I didn’t get my memories back in that one, but they told me you’d left me. Although I didn’t know who you were, the idea that even in a life and world where I belonged, the person I loved still gave up on me, meant I could never stand a chance. In any life.”

Bridger hadn’t moved an inch since Vega started talking. Only the movement of his rising chest and blinking eyes told her he was alive and listening.

Vega hoped this truth ate at him a little.

“I could have stopped the guard who snuck into my bed and did things to me I’ll never talk about before killing me…” Vega shoved the recent memory of seeing him again away, promising herself she wouldn’t let the feel of his hands on her be what she remembered. “But I didn’t because I didn’t want to. I wanted to die. Especially when I made it to a world where I was supposed to belong and felt nothing but violated and alone.” A lone tear slipped from Vega’s waterline, but she quickly wiped it away with the bottom of her palm. Do not break down now. Bridger’s words had followed her through every life, with or without him. Vega’s voice didn’t waver, didn’t falter. “This is real. I’m real. I lived through the darkest moments of my life. Alone.”

It wasn’t sadness in her tone.

It was anger.

Rage.

The train’s brakes started to squeak as they approached their stop.

The muscles in Bridger’s jaw ticked, giving away the emotion he tried to hide.

“Everyone expects me to be the same girl I was when all this started, but I can’t be. She died and so did all the others—but this new me, the one made from the lives of them… she’s the one with the upper hand.”

Bridger had lost most of his color when the train came to a complete stop.

“She’s the one who’s been tortured and stripped of everything that makes her who she is. She’s the one who’s stared death in the face so many times it no longer scares her.”

The doors opened, and people began to file out of the train.

“I won’t let all those things my past selves went through be for nothing.”

After pulling out as much as the ATM would allow, Vega moved to the next bullet point on her list of worries: figuring out where Bridger could crash while she worked out how to go about getting a fake passport.

Bridger couldn’t stay with her, and Vega couldn’t stay with him. She’d have to go back to Chase tonight, if for nothing more than to make sure he wasn’t going to become another issue for her to deal with.

Vega was starting to feel discouraged after being denied by two sketchy looking hotels. When the third sent them away, she was ready to shed some real tears… until the young woman running a hostel check-in desk fell for Vega’s rehearsed sob story about their travel documents being stolen and needing a place to stay until the U.S Embassy opened on Monday morning.

Vega handed over cash in exchange for the key to a private room with one bed and access to a communal bathroom down the hall.

Once inside, Bridger plopped down on the bed, groaning as he closed his eyes and positioned his hands behind his head.

Vega sat on the edge, releasing a breath she had probably been holding since the train. “If you want to get some sleep, go for it. I’m going to head to the common room and see what information I can find about the locals in the area.”

Hostels were usually full of people passing through with limited travel funds, but Vega also knew they were where some people went when they needed time to figure out what came next.

“I’d rather not sleep just yet,” Bridger responded, opening his eyes and rolling to his side.