Page 220 of Jagged Souls

“I love you,” Varius murmurs, and I turn to him with pain in my eyes. To tell me that after I stabbed him in the head, after I said all those nasty things while I tortured him, after I made him believe I fell in love with another man, and then forced him to watch me fuck him…

My throat is an overworked dam, the water building up in my eyes, about to flood out.

He looks at me and hears my silence. But he does not push me into saying anything back. Does not attack me for being mute despite all he has done for me. The responding words are trapped in my throat or perhaps deeper inside of me.

In the soul of a girl I’m just not anymore…

No.

No, regardless of all the other emotions of uncertainty swirling around inside of me, I know that one to be true.

I reach for his hand. Let our pinkies brush – not ready for any more contact than that.

“I love you too,” I murmur, my voice cracking with all the feelings I’m struggling to express.

Through the blood bond, I can feel his desire to gather me in his arms and just hold me, but he doesn’t. He simply continues walking, and I follow.

I glance at him as we move along the tree-lined path, under green, overreaching branches that smell like fucking freedom. I inhale deeply, breathing in the scent around me, slowly letting myself believe that everything is over. There is no smell of the sea.

“You walked into hel for me,” I say just as the house comes into view. The lack of flowers hits me hard, and I stop short as my heart drops.

“Hel was being out here without you,” he says, his voice so raw and broken; I can feel his pain in the landscape itself though.

It isn’t scarred from war or a muddy brown field. But it’s missing the field of flowers that used to spread out from there to here and all the way down to the lake. He doesn’t need to tell me Leno is dead. The grass itself weeps. The land itself mourns.

“How?” I ask, my voice shaky.

“He got ripped apart by some of the chimeras at the school. Three of them are in the garage, but the main one was Timothy.”

FuckingSadist.

My hands ball into fists. “We should go back for him to make sure he doesn’t escape.”

“He can’t. Once I attacked, Khalid got the teleporters to destroy Eduardo’s teleportation circles.”

“You have teleporters now?” I ask in surprise. Khalid didn’t give me the whole rundown – just what I needed.

“No.”

He doesn’t explain, and I don’t care enough to push. We continue on, our footsteps heavy, our hearts even heavier.

“I never got to hold her,” I say softly.

A part of me wants him to tell me he hasn’t either, but the rest of me hopes he held her every night he could.

“There is not much left to hold,” he says sadly.

My throat tightens. We walk up the porch, where a small section of flowers lie. They bloom one by one as I sweep my gaze across them. My ears strain to hear the sound of a dog somewhere, but the house lies silent when we enter.

I don’t have the heart to ask about Krypto. Not right now. Not today.

A set of footsteps pound down the hall. “Micha!” Lou shouts as she flings herself at me. I tense, and Varius moves in front of me, catching my sister without a word. She starts to protest, but he murmurs something to her, and she stops.

Quiets.

He sets her down, and she places her hands behind her back as she looks at me. But despite her attempt to settle my nerves, that just pushes her stomach out, and my eyes latch on to her bump. She gets to have a baby while mine is lying dead upstairs.

I fucking hate her.