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She changed us—the pack I remembered. Before, every new weight threatened to tug us under.Withher, the world felt brighter, more manageable, somehow.
Even now, a room away, I could feel my dread creeping back, the trauma too fresh. That stomach turning darkness, like a demon had me in its grip.
I hadn’t just been gone; I was trapped in a body that wouldn’t work.
There were flashes of brightness lighting up that darkness for brief moments. Memories lighting so briefly, like Dusk with his arm around my shoulder, holding me against him. There was a whole world out there, one that continued turning for all the seconds I’d been gone. But for me, this was it. This was my world: Umbra, Dusk, and now her.
I watched as he set up the rack, letting me work through the silence.
I just drank it in. The scent of midnight opium, an edge of bitterness spiked like strong coffee, overpowering the softer side of amber and vanilla.
He was on edge; I could see the clench to his jaw, even as he set up our game.
I loved Pool.
I used to play with him and Umbra for hours in the slices of reality I’d had before sickness took me completely. This room was one of the last memories I had.
“Sometimes you would come, right? Or Umbra would spend the night?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation from my voice. He tilted his head toward me as he placed the last ball.
“You… remember?”
Relief washed over me. I hadn’t imagined it, after all. “Fragments,” I said.
I would never tell him it was a worse nightmare when I did wake. When I surfaced for a few brief moments to see cuffs on my wrists. Aware for just one second too long. One second was enough to know what had happened to me.
Enough to know that I was going back in any of my next breaths.
It was hard to describe that horror. Like running in a dream, but you never moved, only a thousand times worse. Every time I blinked and woke, it could have been months—Dusk looked more gaunt, or Umbra’s hair was a different length.
Sometimes I would linger long enough to know what it cost my brother to come and see me. His scent would douse the room until I lost it, and he’d wake to my fist around his throat…
Dusk tossed me the chalk, and I caught it just in time, nodding for him to start. I ran it over the tip of my cue, still trying to drag my mind from the darkness. To dispel the tremor from my hands.
How many times had I wished I would die, so I didn’t risk hurting them again? So I wasn’t more of a burden on their lives that I had already broken beyond repair.
The demon’s claws had sunk deeper, with every memory, making every waking moment sickening and stomach wrenching.
Until her.
I thought, when nightshade seeped into my senses, waking me at last, and the demon was gone, that I had died at last.
My reaper. The beautiful angel that freed me.
Dusk made the breakshot and pocketed a solid. He’d feel me spiralling, but he said nothing as he sank another two.
“You got better,” I said. My voice was hoarse.
He surfaced in the bond, yellow eyes meeting mine with a grin, a rare moment of the part of him I’d so rarely seen, a moment of youth and happiness. He turned back to the table and sank another, and I had to clench my jaw to fight the tears that burned my eyes. Despite everything I’d just learned, he was happy.
He might die, but he was happy because I was here.
I’d grown up with obscene wealth and total and utter isolation. I’d known nothing but connections borne of dependence… need… money… Conditional and cold.
Dusk and Umbra had been here this whole time, fighting for me when I could give them nothing. If I’d died, they would have inherited my wealth.
They’d fought for me for no other reason than because they loved me.
Despite every agonising second of darkness, it was worth waking up for that.
