Page 29 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

We ported back to the kitchen a short while later and were promptly greeted by two very pissed off vampires in the form of Dominic and Gabriel. The second the room stabilized enough for me to take a step back from Trace, Dominic was off, barreling across the kitchen so swiftly that my tired human eyes hadn’t been able to track him.

He crashed into Trace with the force of an avalanche that made the floor beneath my unsteady feet rumble in anger as the two of them sailed backwards through the air and then slammed against the ground.

Dominic’s fist came down so hard that I thought I’d heard the sound of bone crunching as he perched atop Trace’s chest and rained down blow after blow in a blur that whipped like the wind.

I froze, a scream lodged in my mouth as I stood there immovable, my body all but calcified into stone.

A snarl thundered from Trace, half growl, half battle cry, and then he was matching Dominic’s hits tit for tat as the two of them mercilessly pounded their fists into each other, unleashing all of their rage and hatred and frustration into the other, as if it were warranted. As if it weren’t me who was solely responsible for all of this.

“Stop,” I finally cried out, the word so paralyzed by fear that it was barely audible to my ears. The house rattled again as Trace slammed Dominic onto his back, the ground spitting out tremor after tremor as blood marred their features and clothing, coating everything around them like an oil spill.

They were going to kill each other right there in my kitchen if I didn’t do something. If I didn’t find a way to stop them. The realization jolted me from my frozen stupor.

“Stop!” I screeched, louder this time, and then kicked off the ground, bolting toward them with my arms outstretched and my stomach in knots, but was promptly yanked backward before I could reach either one of them.

Gabriel’s arm coiled around my waist like a vice as he dragged me backwards, away from the warring gods and the swinging arms and spraying blood, and back to the safety of my useless corner.

“Gabriel! Let me go,” I roared back into his face, but he only held me tighter, refusing to loosen his hold on me, to let me fix the mess I’d created. “They’re going to kill each other!”

Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see how this was all my fault? That I needed to be the one to stop this?

“They won’t,” he answered calmly, as though they weren’t trying to disfigure each other with their bare hands. “This is between the two of them, Jemma. They need to get it out of their system.”

“No, they don’t! They don’t need to do this,” I yelled at him like the lunatic he obviously was, my panicked gaze darting back and forth between him and the horror scene unfolding before me, powerless to stop any of it.

Bile sloshed up the back of my throat as they flipped back the other way, bodies slamming into furniture and elbows, their fists still raining down hits like battle axes swinging down from the sky.

The blood was everywhere, smeared all over the floor and coming from so many places that I couldn’t tell where one injury ended and the other one started. They weren’t going to stop until one of them was dead and the realization made my body shake all over.

“Let me fucking go!” I roared, bucking against Gabriel’s hold as I threw my weight against his arm, trying to find a weak point to break free. Slapping and pushing and clawing at him until my nails were digging holes into his flesh.

And he still wasn’t letting me go.

“This isn’t your fight—”

“Yes it is! Yes it fucking is! I did this, Gabriel. I’m the one that did this,” I wailed in anguish, my eyes burning and blurring with guilt and shame and terror.

All I could see was the blood. So much blood everywhere that it looked as though it were the tiles that were bleeding. As though Hell itself were weeping bloody tears at the sight of them ripping into each other.

“They’re not going to stop unless we do something. Can’t you see that?” I said, a strangled sob lodged at the back of my throat. “Do something, Gabriel. Stop them or I swear to God I will never speak to you again!”

I didn’t care that this wasn’t his fault or his responsibility or that my threat wasn’t fair to him. I couldn’t let that matter. Not when they were trying to kill each other. All I cared about was stopping them.

Gabriels muscles flexed as though he were weighing out his options, as though he were deciding if I’d follow through with my threat, and then he released me. An angry noise sounded from him as he shoved me behind himself and then lunged forward at the two of them, dodging punches and hits as he tried to wrangle his way in between them.

“That’s enough,” snapped Gabriel as he fought to gain some sort of grip on either one of them, his feet slipping awkwardly on the bloody floor. It felt like forever, like an actual eternity burning in the depths of Hell had come and gone before he managed to get an arm in between the two of them, slowing down some of the hits that landed.

But they weren’t done. They were still going, still swinging over Gabriel’s head, still refusing to stop for anything or anyone.

“Please stop! Both of you! Please ,” I begged as I moved up behind Gabriel, my arms flailing and my feet sliding as I tried to shield Gabriel’s head. “JUST STOP!” I finally screamed, the words ripping out of me with so much force that I was sure they’d slashed my lungs.

Using the momentary distraction my outburst caused, Gabriel clasped both his arms around Trace’s torso, locking him into some sort of bearhug and then hauling him back and away, the two of them skating all over the bloody floor and then nearly tripping over a chair that had been upturned on the floor.

Dominic tried to chase after them, but I was right there in front of him, pushing him back the other way, desperately trying to put myself in his sightline, to distract him so that all he saw was me.

“Move,” he growled as I shook my head and stood my ground. “Get out of my way or I will move you myself,” he warned, his breath ragged and stretched impossibly thin.

“It’s not him you’re angry at,” I said, my hands splayed against his chest and then fisting into the fabric of his shirt as sticky tears ran down my face, mixing with my shame and sweat and remorse. “It’s me. It’s my fault. Take it out on me. Be mad at me ,” I pleaded with the whole of my heart.

As painful as it was to say out loud, to acknowledge, every single person in this room knew it was true. I was the one responsible for this mess, the one who had blindly led us here, fueling the flames of the fire over and over again by never choosing, never letting up with either of them, and I was the only one who deserved their wrath for it.

But I was going to fix it. My days of running from the bullet were over.

“I hope you’re both happy with yourselves,” snapped Gabriel, glaring at the two of them.

“Not particularly,” answered Dominic, his dark eyes still pinned on me as he swiped away a trickle of blood from a lip wound that was already healing.

“We’re supposed to be working together,” scolded Gabriel, trying to be the voice of reason. “Or did you forget why we’re even here in the first place? The last thing we need right now is to turn on each other. That’s precisely what they want. To divide us and conquer. Did either of you even bother to consider that while you were pounding each other’s faces in?”

Dominic’s gaze darted over my shoulder. “Should I have considered that before or after he ported her without her permission?” he retorted, alternating glares between Trace and his brother.

“What’s the matter? Can’t handle a little competition?” heckled Trace from across the room, apparently still out for blood. “Are you scared you can’t manipulate her anymore without your bloodbond tying her down to you?”

Dark, vicious eyes narrowed on Trace. “I’m not the one who needed to kidnap her to some cabin in the woods in order to be able to get a minute of her attention,” he said sweetly as a cunning, lopsided grin curled his mouth at the corners. “She already gives me all her attention quite freely. But you already know that good and well, don’t you?”

I cringed, dropping my head as I shoved my hands into my hair and cleared the matted strands from my face.

“And yet you still can’t close the deal.” Trace snorted mockingly. “I’ve been mostly fucking dead for how much of this year? And you still haven’t been able to win her over. What does that tell you?”

“That you ought to learn how to stay dead?” offered Dominic still smiling.

Trace smiled back, shucking off Gabriel’s hands and rolling his neck, his furious eyes never leaving Dominic. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That way you don’t ever have to look at the truth.”

“The truth?” Dominic arched his brow like a question.

“That you don’t have what it takes to make her happy.”

“And you do? Dead as you usually are.”

Trace’s jaw muscle ticked. “I’m here now, and I’m still her soulmate.”

“And yet she still leaves your arms to come find comfort in mine.”

“Because of the bloodbond,” growled Trace.

Dominic chuckled darkly. “We both know she’s been coming to me long before we ever sealed that bond.”

“Alright, that’s quite enough,” said Gabriel, but Dominic just ignored him.

“Perhaps if you had actually been capable of fulfilling her, she wouldn’t have felt the need to come to me in the first place.”

Trace’s expression fell, his eyes darkening with fury as he shoved forward again, as though he wanted to go another round with him, but Gabriel was right there to stop him.

“I said that’s enough!” he snapped, his gaze alternating between Trace and his brother, his brows running together into a tight, irritated line. “Both of you need to take a step back and cool off.”

“I’m already as cool as a cucumber, brother.” Dominic’s gaze slid back to mine as a cocky half-grin tilted his mouth up. “Care for a drink, angel? I’m sure you need one after the ordeal he put you through this morning.”

My breath caught in my throat as my guilty eyes met Trace’s. All sorts of damaging memories of his mouth on my breasts flashed through my mind and my cheeks immediately burned red.

“I could use a drink myself,” announced Trace, knowing full well that Dominic hadn’t been talking to him. “What do you say?” he asked me, his gaze rolling down my body as he licked his lips like he was remembering my taste. Like he was getting off on what we had done at the cabin all over again. Right there in my kitchen.

Tiny beads of sweat trickled down my back, because I knew something was coming and whatever it was, it was about to make everything so much worse.

His glimmering blue eyes climbed back to meet mine. “Or did you want to change again first?”

Sirens blared in my ears as all the blood rushed up to my head at once. “ Stop .”

“Not that you need to,” he went on, a devious smile pulling at his lips and making both his dimples pop off in tandem. “You always did look better in my clothes than I did.”

Please kill me now. Just strike me fucking dead .

Swallowing the bile at the back of my throat, I turned just in time to catch Dominic’s gaze raking over the white T-shirt I had on, as though he had only just noticed it. He knew it wasn’t what I had been wearing when I came downstairs this morning, and I knew he knew .

He knew and I wanted to die. I wanted the heavens to split open right then and there and smite me where I stood. No. better yet, I wanted to jump to the future and learn how to port just so that I could send myself back to the past and make sure I was never even born to begin with.

What the hell had I done? Why did I keep doing this? Why couldn’t I just stop hurting them?

I forced myself to meet Dominic’s eyes, to face the consequences of what I had done as I waited for him to say something to me, to cut me with his words and tell me what a traitorous bitch I was, but what he did was so much worse than any name he could have called me.

He just looked at me, saying nothing at all with the most gutted look in his eyes that I had ever seen. It was a million words of heartbreak and a thousand paintings of sorrow all wrapped up in the most tragic moment I’d ever experienced. No. Not experienced. Caused . I’d caused him that pain.

My traitorous heart clenched and stuttered in my chest as I took a small step toward him and then winced as his jaw line and dark eyes hardened at my uninvited proximity.

I wanted so badly to tell him that it wasn’t true. That it wasn’t what he thought. That it was all taken out of context. I wanted to tell him every pretty lie I could think of that would make that look disappear from his face.

But I couldn’t.

There was no more running. No hiding from the mirror that chased me relentlessly, throwing itself up to my face so that I could see myself and all the ugly things I had become.

I shook my head at him, at myself, at my inability to stop hurting them both, horrified that I’d once again trampled over all the lines in the sand and made an absolute mess out of everything.

“I…I’m sorry,” I rasped, the insignificant words coming out like the useless nothing that they were.

“You don’t need to apologize to him,” said Trace and I really wanted to tell him to shut the hell up then. I wouldn’t, of course, because this wasn’t his fault.

I did this all on my own.

Dominic’s broken eyes never left mine. “It appears my work here is nearly done.”

His work . The reason he came back here at all. To help Trace acclimate. To me. For me. To do the ‘right thing’ by me in an impossible situation.

And what did I do to repay him? What did I do with a gift so fucking precious and rare that most people could go their entire lives without feeling a selfless love like that? I beat it to the ground. Just like I did his heart and Trace’s and even my own. Because it was me all along. I was the one driving this. I had the wheel this whole time and I drove us all into the fucking ground.

I was the reason this never-ending cycle of pain and heartbreak had gone on for as long as it did. Because I refused to choose. I refused to let either one of them go. I could have ended it ages ago. I could have done the right thing and made a choice or walked away or tossed up a fucking coin and decided, but instead, I let them both love me. I let them both have me. I fed into it and nurtured it and craved it until it became so big and all-encompassing that neither one of us could ever come back from it.

“I…”

The three of them stared back at me, no one saying a word as the silence cut through the room like a knife, its silent judgment and accusations waiting for me testify to all of it.

To plead my case.

To admit to my wrongs.

My lips parted on all the things I needed to say to them, to the truths I’d been running from for so long, to the apologies that I owed the both of them. Even Gabriel.

But nothing like that came out. Nothing but tears and a wracked sob that felt as though it had started in the tips of my toes and then roiled through my body, gaining traction and power before it thundered out through my mouth.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I said as disgraced tears spilled from my eyes and down my cheeks, dripping off the edge of my jaw and down onto the shirt that bore the scarlet letter I’d worn so shamelessly for so long. “This is all my fault. All of it. You hate each other but it’s me you should be hating. I’m the one that did this to both of you. But…”

The lights flickered slowly and somberly, as though they were dying the same agonizing death my heart was.

“But I see it now. I see what I’ve done, and I’m so unbelievably sorry that I let this happen. That I hurt you both when all I wanted to do was love you.” I shook my head, more tears raining down from my eyes like water spilling from the heavens. “But I wasn’t loving either of you, was I? Not the right way anyway. Not the way you deserved. All this time, I thought I was, but I was just hurting you both, wasn’t I?” The realization made me sick to my stomach.

“Angel—” Dominic shook his head, his eyes glimmering woefully as Trace tried to take a step toward me, the fury in his eyes from earlier replaced with something much softer.

Something sadder.

Somehow, always sadder and never better.

Because that was what I did to them. I hurt them and made them feel sad.

“But I’m not going to do that anymore,” I declared, my chin quivering as strangled sobs corkscrewed out of me faster than I could control. “I see it now. I do and I’ll never hurt either of you again. I promise you that. I promise I’ll cut off my own hand before I ever make you feel like this again,” I said as a suffocating weight lifted off my chest as though I were finally doing the right thing. Despite the immeasurable pain and heartbreak and the agonizing loneliness I knew would come for me when this was over, I knew I was doing the right thing.

“Jemma, wait,” said Trace, trying to reach out for me as I trudged across the kitchen.

But I wouldn’t wait, and I wouldn’t string them along anymore either. I meant what I said. I was done hurting them.

I pushed his hand away and kept going, my feet slipping and sliding through the remains of the blood they had spilled for me, and I silently vowed that they would never spill another drop for me for as long as I lived.