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Aurora
I felt mixed up about what Carnage was saying. I was sure he was lying, but it felt almost like I had two overlapping memories about what happened at the farmhouse.
And they couldn't both be true.
How did I know which one was real?
He was trying to confuse me. He was trying to get me to doubt myself.
I pushed all that out of my mind as I focused on the task at hand. His eyes fluttered shut and I gave him a hard smack across the face.
"No passing out," I said. "We've barely gotten started. I don't want to waste your meds yet."
Drool poured out the corner of his mouth because his mouth kept opening and closing. Sometimes people in so much pain barely looked human. God, this was disgusting. My father had assigned me what was quite possibly my worst punishment when I was a kid, forcing me to skin corpses he'd already killed. For practice, he'd said. But the assignment had always come after I defied him.
Still, I went on doing my work. I used to disassociate from it, and so I let Carnage's voice fade and I just cut.
There was a pile of bloody ribbons at my feet when Cain's voice broke through my dissociation. "Aurora?"
"Mm?"
"He's dead. But we've got the video."
I hadn't even noticed when he stopped screaming.
"Oh."
"Stay with me." Cain's strong fingers took the knife from my hand. "What's going on?"
"Sometimes I don't know who I am," I said in a voice that was a whisper, because otherwise it would break.
"You're mine, of course." His hands cupped my chin.
"Sometimes I'm scared of what I can do..."
"I'm not."
He gathered me into his arms and carried me up to the bathroom in the house. Stellan waited on the first floor with Remington and Paxton, who must have just arrived, and they rose to their feet, but Cain shook his head quickly at them. He carried me into the bathroom.
"You are so fierce, Aurora. So fucking sexy. So dark, so perfect."
His voice grounded me in the moment.
Those two strange, conflicting memories slid away, and there was nothing but Cain.
I rested my hands on his chest, then realized I'd covered him in blood. "I'm sorry..."
"Don't be sorry," he ordered, taking my bloody hands and cupping them to his cheeks. "You and I are never sorry."
He turned his face to press a kiss to my palm."You're beautiful dressed in blood. He deserved it, Aurora. You stopped him from hurting anyone else. You protected your mother."
I stared up at this icy-eyed man who looked like a god, and I let myself believe.
For a few moments when I was killing Carnage, I'd...liked it. I didn't know what to make of that. I was supposed to be afraid.
But Cain told me I had done the right thing and I let myself believe him. It didn't matter if I'd liked it for a moment.
