Page 172 of Jagged Souls

“Siome –” I try again as she tries to dart around me, but I’m too quick, back in her way. Back in her face.

“Fuck you!” she screams. Her eyes flash wildly. Her pain is breaking my fucking heart. She shoves me in the chest with both hands. “You can’t keep me as a prisoner!” She lifts her chin. “Help! Someone help!”

“I am helping!”

“You’re hurting me!” She slaps me in the face.

My head whips to the side automatically, reducing the energy of her blow. I turn back to look at her in shock.

Her lips tremble, a moment of doubt, but then she shoves down her guilt. “You made me do that,” she says. “It was your fault.”

The agony I feel for her escapes on a twisted rasp. I will her to see the horror of her addiction. I let her see the pain in my eyes – something that once upon a time she couldn’t bear to see. I only ever had to sigh in despair for her to come running to my side.

“I smelled your tears all the way across town,Mymecia Pyiformis,” she says as she stops at the trunk of the tree I’m sitting in. She places her hands on her hips as she breathes hard, having just run from who knows where. “And what did I tell you about crying alone?”

“I’m not crying.” I shake my head as I push away the thoughts of her leaving me. Jack will keep her safe.

“It’s not a bad thing to cry, you know. I do it all the time, and I’m not weak”

“I know.” A smile pulls at my lips. Bittersweet with the knowledge that moments like this are going to be gone soon. “What’sMymecia pyiformis?” I ask to push aside the pain.

She climbs up into the tree, dragging her skirt along the bark in a very unladylike manner, but I love her so much for it. I scoot down the branch so she can sit closer to the trunk, where it’s safer. She looks at me and arches an eyebrow. She’s told me too many times that it’s ridiculous that I’m the one who sits further along the branch given I’m heavier, but I don’t care. I don’t want her falling from this height.

Besides, she knows I’m upset. She won’t fight me on it this time. I bite back another smile as she begrudgingly sits between me and the trunk of the tree.

She presses a kiss to my cheek, then grins. “Only the best ant ever,” she says as she places a hand on my thigh. “Their common name is the bulldog ant, and they’re aggressive and mean, which fits you as perfectly as your cock fits in my pu–”

“Siome!”

She laughs as she throws her arms around me so wildly she knocks me off balance. I curse as we both fall out of the tree. I hold her tight to my chest, using my body to protect her from the ground.

Still, she screams – at me.

Jumping to her feet, her dark skirts swishing around, she berates me for having taken the impact. I groan, and her eyes widen as she quickly starts to fuss over me, a smile at my lips as I stare at her beautiful face under the blue sky.

But today, there is none of that care in her dull red eyes.

All there is is a demand for V.

“Please, little helfire,” I beg. “Just let me help you.”

“You can help by going to hel!”

She throws a punch at me this time, but I grab her wrist and pull her towards me, wrapping her in my arms. I hold her as she screams. As she fights.

“Siome,please!”

“Fuck off!” she yells. She starts to shift in my arms, and panic hits me as I’m all too aware of the fight she is about to force on me. I don’t want to hurt her.

But I can’t let her leave either.

She shrieks in agony as her bones break and her tendons tear. Her skin rips beneath my fingers. Sharp shards of bone break through, cutting up my arms and chest.

Stepping back, I release her in fear of fucking up her change, of hurting her permanently. I watch on in horror, wondering if the girl I knew is still in there at all. She used to follow me around like my own little shadow. She loved me when I couldn’t even love myself. She was the only one who wasn’t afraid of my curse. Even my own parents hated me for the misery I brought them – but never her.

Never my little helfire who defied even the gods – being my friend when I wasn’t supposed to have any. Being the only light in a world I was supposed to walk in darkness.

I can’t leave her enslaved to the V.