Page 171 of Jagged Souls

He is the enemy.

He is the enemy.

I shake my head, trembling so hard, I’m finding it hard to breathe.

“I never got to hold my children,” he murmurs, his face now lowered to mine. He’s crouched in front of me, well within my reach. My hands clench with the need to search him for the V, but his words slam into me, crushing me still with their weight. With their solidarity. An understanding. An experience shared that means I’m not alone.

And gods, I don’t want to be alone anymore.

“Sau’s monsters ate them,” he says slowly, “as well as the lower half of my mate. I held her in my arms as I begged the gods to intervene.” He’s quiet for a moment, but his words keep repeating inside of me. Screaming that he knows. Heunderstandsmy grief. “I even begged Sau. I pleaded with her to save the love of my life.”

My chin wobbles; I know the ending of this story.

But it isn’t fair.

I want it to be different. I wantmineto be different.

“Stop,” I beg, not wanting to hear the truth.

“Not speaking of it doesn’t change what happened,” he says. “They are still gone. I will never hear Siome’s laughter again. I will never see her eyes light up as she smiles at me, and I will never hold our children. Never see how they take after their mother, how they carry on the best parts of her.”

I sag forward, my hands hitting the floor again as I cry.

I press my hand to my stomach, feeling Rafiki’s absence, the death of her love and laughter and all the things she could have been.

Would she have taken Varius’ eyes or mine? Would she have had his hair? His dry sense of humor? Would she have held herself back, so fucking terrified to love, to be used for her position, to be killed for her genes? Or would we have figured out a way to make the world safe for her? Would she have driven us mad, feeling safe enough to dash out in the middle of the night to rendezvous with some boy? Or girl? Or just a bunch of friends?

How many of her lovers would Varius have killed? Or at least scared the living daylights out of? How many bodies would I have helped him bury? Would she have caught us? Told us off for being ‘so traditional and controlling and ugh,parents?’

My lips wobble as I think about all those milestones we will never have.

“I lost my entire family that day,” he continues, pulling me from my grief and tugging me into his. Where it’s a bit more bearable... “My mate, my three pups, and my brother-in-law, the last of her line.”

“How did you…” I start, only to flounder into silence.

“Continue on?” he says. Not ‘survived.’ Not ‘healed.’ The fact that he didn’t use either of those words makes me feel like he really does understand. There is nosurvivingthis. It has broken me. There is no way this can scab over and be forgotten. It will scar across my heart, my soul forever. But I can carry on… I can drag myself forward on broken legs.

His voice hardens, but I’m not scared of him anymore. He’s showing me that there is something to feel other than grief. “Because I am making her killer suffer like I am.”

I latch onto his words like an addict, trading one poison for another. A soul-numbing hatred. A righteous fury.

“And I will get her back.”

My throat closes, his hope burning into me, branding me, changing the essence of who I am.

“So if you help me, Micha” –there is so muchhonestyin his words, so much understanding of what I am feeling–“then when I venture into the Underworld to get Siome, I will bring your girl back too.”

My lips tremble as my hands ease from the tight fists they were in, no longer desperate to reach for the V. I still want it, but I want his words more.

He nails it home with a murmured, “Don’t you want her to know her name?”

Fifty-One

ANTONIO

June 29 1907, St. Augustine, Florida

“Go to hel!” Siome screams as she tries to shove past me, but I grab her shoulders and push her back into the middle of the living room. I can’t let her leave the house. I know she’s just going to try to score some V; the placebos I have been using are starting to lose affect – a placebo tolerance built up by her drug-obsessed mind.