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In the scene in front of me, I was fighting. I was being held down, and that delicious drug was being forced into my veins.
The world tilted because for a moment I could feel it. I could feel how hard I had fought. I could feel the tears running down my face. I could feel the need inside me, and it wasn’t for the drug. Inside I had called out for Casey. I wanted to see Casey coming through those doors. Or Kelsey. I prayed she would bust through with Gladys in her hand, and she would kick all their asses and save me, and I never had to think about what he’d said to me.
I chose you, Olivia, because you’ll be easy to manipulate. You folded the first time something bad happened to you. Also because it will hurt so many people on the other side when they see what you’re about to become.
I shook my head. “He didn’t say that to me. He welcomed me to his family.”
“He doesn’t have family. He has minions. You see the way Nimue is standing? Like she sees nothing and hears nothing. She’s under his thrall. You’re lucky he didn’t have a couple more thrall stones on him.” Dean winced as he watched them force the blood in my veins and I screamed like I was dying.
A chill went through me. This wasn’t right.
Except there were parts of me that remembered how it felt. How my skin crawled and organs ached as they were flooded with that blood. “You’re doing this to me. I guess you’re not as squeaky clean as they seem to think you are. This is torture. What do you want to make you stop?”
“I’m not doing a thing,” Dean protested. “I can’t and you know it. I’m able to project, but the Uro spell stops all other magic. I’m disconnected from everything but my ability to astral project myself into other realms, in this case your dreams and memories. Apparently that isn’t magic, or isn’t something the spell recognizes as magic. Guess I’m talented in more ways than one. This is all you. This is your brain and memories beginning to rebuild after what he did to you. This is part of getting off the demon blood.”
He was wrong about that. I was still on the blood. Evan had come through. So he didn’t know what he was talking about.
I shook my head, wanting the wailing to stop. We were all doing it now—Shera and Calliope screaming, too, like banshees warning the world—and there were far more demons in the room than I remembered. They watched us as we were held down and our bodies convulsed with the first fire of that blood.
“Tell me something. What did Evan give you in exchange for saving me?”
I wasn’t about to tell him. He looked entirely too smug. Or rather there was a sympathy in his eyes I couldn’t abide. “It’s not your business. I want to wake up now.”
“I’m not holding you back. I want to wake up, too, but I can’t. Olivia, I am not the one who brought you here. I get the feeling you’re unconscious in a way that’s not from sleep. I can help you if you let me.”
I couldn’t trust him. He’d been far too influenced by the royals. “And why would you do that?”
“Because I wasn’t raised by the man who is violating you right now,” he began, a grim expression on his face. “Because I was raised by a billionaire cowboy who tries to help everyone he can. My real father taught me not to measure myself by how others treat me, but rather how I treat them. Even when it’s hard. And I take back what I said about the thrall stone. It would have been easier on you. He wouldn’t have been forced to suppress your memories and implant new ones. You would have complied with everything he asked. He wouldn’t have needed the demon blood if he’d had a thrall stone.”
“Needed the demon blood?” The demon blood made me strong. I was the one who needed it, not Myrddin.
“Yes.” He studied me for a moment. The cries were quieting now but only because we’d strained our throats and sobbed silently.
The deed was done. The blood was in our veins, and there was nothing else to do.
There was a voice inside me telling me there was something wrong. That something Dean was saying held more truth than I wanted to admit. “Why? He said it was part of the exchange. I gained power from the demon blood.”
“Only if the demon blood he fed you held power. What is the likelier scenario? That he selected three middling witches and gave them insane power from demonic lords? Or that he took his best and brightest, witches of great power who’d been made to believe they were weak, and fed them the blood of demons who would make them submissive and easy to lead? Like Nimue. All that power, and he controls it because he controls her.”
He was wrong about that. “She left him, so he didn’t control her very well. She left all of us.”
“No, she didn’t, and you remember that, too. Maybe when you let that memory out, you’ll see the truth. We don’t have much time left. I think you’re waking up. Casey’s worried you’ve been under for too long. I don’t know if this will work again, so I have to leave you here,” he said. “Just remember you can’t truly heal until you understand the wound you took, and I’m not talking about the one in the forest in Wyoming. He used that against you. He knew you were hurting and that taking away that pain would bring you closer. But don’t ever think you were important to him. We’re all pawns. Ask Nimue.”
“Is she with the rebels now?” Nimue had been my grounding force, my mentor. She’d helped me, come to visit me when I was in the education coven house. And then she’d been gone, and no one talked about her. Not for years. I’d started to forget about her because she hadn’t seemed important.
She’d been very important.
Why would I forget?
“Remember, Olivia,” Dean said quietly, but I could already sense him distancing from me. “And when you do, remember that sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. Give yourself grace. If it helps, I forgive you in advance. He’ll kill me, you know.”
He was being dramatic. “You’re his son.”
“I’m also part of a prophecy he knows well. He let me go the first time out of sentimentality and the fact that he didn’t exactly understand. He thought he’d taken care of the other threat, so he could let me go. He won’t make the same mistake again. If he kills me, all hope is lost.”
“He won’t. He’s your father.”
He looked both young and ageless in that moment, his eyes holding a maturity far beyond his years. “Then it seems my fate is in your hands. Like I said, I forgive you. What you went through, it could break the hardest of people. When the demons come, I hope you fare well and that this world can fight back. When the worst happens, find the Malones. I know he’s not my father on this plane, but JT Malone will fight, and he’ll know who can help him.”
