Page 238 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. Her smile was so proud it made my chest ache. “Like your daddy, brave boy.”

“Mine too?” Charles chirped, rising on his toes. In one scoop, Mama had us both pinned against her chest as she growled and snarled like a beast.

“My perfect, crazy boys!” She planted sloppy kisses on our cheeks as we both roared with laughter…

Freya staggered back, blood seeping through pale fingers clamped to her side as she panted for breath. I saw two things at once, the combination turning my blood to ice.

Fear slithered beneath those bright jades as my mother shifted her dagger almost imperceptibly, revealing her intent.

“Your heart, chérie. She’s coming for your heart!”

But as I lunged for her—throwing myself between them, wrapping Freya in my arms to shield her—she vanished. Spiders poured between my fingers, over my arms, down my chest. A torrent hit the earth while others kept climbing my skin.

“Fuck!” I staggered back, swatting at them, only for agony to rip up my side. I looked down past the spiders to the blade embedded between my ribs.

A cough racked up my throat, the wet heat of blood hitting my lips as my eyes met my mother’s.

Those bright blue eyes guttered. Then she was falling—falling into my arms as we both slumped to the ground.

“I love you, Cyrus.”

“You pick an inopportune time to show it.”

Only suddenly, it wasn’t Mother at all. It was Ansel, blood seeping from his lips, dripping down his chin. “Take care of her. I need you to watch out for my babygirl when I’m gone.”

All I could do was nod.

Then crimson poured from a line across his throat, and I was screaming.

Screaming as his limp body fell from my arms with a thud, his head rolling while blood flooded everywhere.

And then Freya was screaming. A cry so primal, so guttural I’d hear it for the rest of my life as she threw herself after the demon-witch. I wrapped my arms around her and hauled her back, fighting her weight as the others burst into furious motion. Because she was sobbing through that scream. Mouth open, canines flashing, fire devouring the city in a wall behind us, Freya screamed until the fight left her body and her knees gave out, dragging us both to the concrete rooftop.

And I was helpless. Trying desperately to turn her face. Pull her away from the brutality. Shield her from a world there was no running from.

And for the first time in my life, I was the useless piece of shit my mother had always made me out to be.

Because she was in agony. And there was nothing I could do about it.

“Oh fuck,” I muttered, scrambling off the bed and into the bathroom just in time to heave bile from my stomach.

It wasn’t new. This was the fifth night in a row I’d tried and failed to find rest.

Apparently, letting my guard down enough to sleep chipped away at the walls I’d built around the bullshit.

My childhood.

Charles.

My goddamn mother.

Freya.

Watching her blood spill.

That was the thing about surviving the unsurvivable. No matter how carefully I tried to craft neat little boxes for the pain of still existing in a world knocked off its axis, grief caught up eventually.