Page 19 of Heartless Heathens

She was a quick learner.

“I-I-I didn’t think there was anyone living here,” she said looking down again.

“I don’t accept lies Romina, you have one more chance,” I warned her and she crossed her arms over her knees and bowed her head down.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Felix said in a hushed and gentle tone, fully kneeling down at her side.

He stroked his fingers through her hair.

At first she flinched at the touch, but in the end she didn’t oppose his petting. She cried, he soothed. It was like that for almost half an hour.

The sound of my feet impatiently tapping on the marble floor echoed out, and she looked up, a nervous expression painted on her face.

“Do you want Sonny to go away, Romina? Do you want to talk just to me?” he asked, making me roll my eyes with annoyance but she lifted her head up and nodded.

Fucking great.

“I’m not leaving,” I protested and Felix cut me a sharp look, “I’ll sit over there at best.” I pointed to the single pew that we’d left in the chapel.

It was the only one that was salvageable from before we renovated it. Felix begged me to keep it. Apparently, he was having some sort of moment about preserving old shit. We pushed it against a wall and surprisingly it didn’t look too bad.

He whispered something in her ear I couldn’t make out, and she gave him a soft smile and nodded her head. He wiped her tears and helped her stand before he shepherded her over to our brand new couch, disregarding the fact she was literally filthy and covered in whatever the fuck she’d been rolling all over in those woods.

I winced when she sat down, doing my best to contain my twitching upper lip.

“I’ll order one of those little steam cleaners from The Nile, it’ll come in the morning.” He winked at me.

“I will literally slit your fucking throat if you don’t stop ordering shit from them.” I scowled at him and he pressed his fingers to his lips to shush me.

He directed his attention back to her and murmured too softly for me to hear anything. She didn’t speak, she seemed to be answering his questions by nodding or shaking her head. She had these giant, beady, blue anime-like eyes that stared up at him like he was some sort of protector here to save her.

She didn’t need to be looking at him like that.

He was weak enough to let someone like her outfox him into losing his heart with a few bats of those giant eyelashes.

Felix was the youngest, but because of Corvin’s medical condition, he’d found himself as the most fit Escura to head their household. Not that it fucking mattered anymore. The whole idea that the Satanic Shrine would ever be what it used to be was laughable. A bunch of fucking orphans with no one but an old man with no blood ties to us who decided to raise us. He was supposed to shape us into the men he wanted us to become for the sake of carrying out his legacy. Keep the rituals and traditions going for the rest of the followers.

A fucking joke.

There was no denying the magic was real, or arguing that it wasn’t powerful and that it didn’t control us. It did. But to think tens of thousands of members would pay any attention to us was insane. We were just fucking kids.

Arlan was convinced it wouldn’t matter and that after we performed our ascension rituals the covenant would only see their leader. With his daughter dead and gone, he was really just putting all his cards into one basket. I knew his rituals like the back of my hand, to be fair I knew more than just his rituals. I had studied them all. Every sigil, every lore in that grimoire.

But I didn’t know if I wanted it.

I didn’t want anything.

Unlike Felix I had no desire, no urge, no need to claim anything for myself. There was nothing that kept me going other than the sheer need to live in spite of the asshole who made me. I went through the motions.

I wore my human costume.

I played along.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her, striding over to me.

He looked back at her. She was still hunched in, wrapping her arms over her bent knees and pressing them against her chest.

I didn’t speak, I just waited.