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This goes on for several hours with over half of the tools Damian hand-selected for his torture until Mother finally gives him her truth serum.
His pulse races so quickly and his bloodshot eyes plead with her to make me stop, but he doesn’t grovel, doesn’t speak. He quietly takes his medicine and waits for me to continue.
“It bothers me to see you like this, my child.” Mother’s voice is almost soothing, punctuating the silence in between Damian’s pained breaths. “But you knew how valuable she was to me. It was your job to protect her or die trying.”
If he were anyone else, I would almost feel sorry for him when he recoils at the reminder that Mother placed Zaina’s life so far above his.
His entire body vibrates as the poison courses through his veins. His muscles spasm, and droplets of blood appear at his lips. With the smattering of blood and bruises covering his features, he’s almost unrecognizable, and that’s when it hits me.
What’s bothering me, what’s different about this time.
Because for a moment…Damian could be anyone.
He could be Remy.
My head spins as I imagine him in this chair, Mother or Damian employing the same techniques on him to teach me a lesson. To punish me for betraying her. All of my lies swarm in my mind like a nest of angry hornets.
It could happen so fast. If I give even one simple thing away, itwillbe Remy in this chair. And I’ll be in the one next to him, forced to watch as he begs for death. Forced to watch as she finally grants it, and the life bleeds from his eyes.
No one is safe from her.From us…
Mother’s hand wraps around my shoulder, squeezing affectionately, pulling me from my thoughts. I swallow the emotions threatening to drown me, shoving them deep down inside of myself until I’m sure she can’t reach them.
“You should take a break, my daughter. You’ve earned it.” Pride shines from her gaze as she passes me a glass of water, gesturing for me to move so she can take my seat.
I turn away to hide my trembling fingers before taking a drink. The water is the same kind she would leave for me after a night of being The Flame, laced with salt and citrus for hydration. It’s familiar. It might even be comforting, if it didn’t bring back memories of every depraved thing I’ve ever done in her name.
To make her proud, like she is right now.
She sits before Damian, a gentle hand on his bleeding chest. Her mouth is twisted in disappointment, like the man she calls her son isn’t suffering and bleeding out before her. Like he made an error in judgment and she’s chastising him for it in a perfectly reasonable way.
It’s so at odds with every rational thought racing through my brain that it’s disorienting. Is this what I’ve been fighting so hard to keep? Is this really the person I want to protect?
When her voice sounds again, I nearly drop the glass.
“I was ready to welcome you into my own family. Give you my own daughter. Andthisis how you repay me?”
Everything in the room slows to a grinding halt.
When Damian said Mother was giving my younger sister to him, I assumed he was lying. But she really had promised her daughter to this sadistic monster.
While she placed Zaina on a twisted pedestal, she used Mel as leverage to keep Damian obedient. I’m not sure where that leaves me.
No one is safe from her.
Zaina. Einar. Mel. Remy. Even the sands-damned monkey.
And spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulder for her?
My sister’s words echo like an accusation, and I can’t find it in myself to deny them, even in my head. Not when I’m surrounded by all the evidence of their indisputable truth.
“If you admit what you’ve done, if you take your punishment, it might not be too late for that,” Mother continues, tucking a blood-soaked lock of hair behind Damian’s ear.
His brow furrows, desperation finally brimming to the surface of his usually blank expression. Not for the pain to end. But to belong to Mother. To be her son.
Finally, he breaks.
And looking at the woman I’ve called Mother for half of my life, at the person she’s chosen to call her son, at this entire sands-forsaken room of horrors…I think I start to break, too.
