Page 15 of Pet: Torment

Ezra shifts his attention past me to Xion. But she won’t help him in this instance. He is in the wrong. And he will never learn if she keeps coming to his defense as she did in the hallway.

Ezra releases a humorless chuckle as he looks between us.

“Unbelievable,” he snaps.

Xion steps forward. “Ezra—”

“Don’t,” he growls as he leaves the room.

Xion waits until the door is closed to turn her attention to me.

“Must you always be so hard on him?” she asks.

“Someone needs to be,” I say. “Between you and our mother constantly shielding him from every bad thing that could possibly happen, he is never going to learn to stop jumping head first into everything.”

I trail off as a dull throb forms in my head, pressing my fingers against my temple to stop the pain.

“What’s wrong?” Xion asks.

I pull in a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I know this pain. It happened once before when I stopped feeding regularly. It’s how I almost took Iris’s life in my sleep. For the duration of our journey to now, I haven’t fed. I’ve been adamant on giving Iris her space and I know that if I took what I needed, she would once again retreat into herself further than she already has. And now, I desperately need to replenish myself. But Iris won’t have anything to do with me, further adding to the growing list of problems between us.

“It’s nothing,” I say, brushing her off. I shift my attention in the direction of the door. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish,” I say.

Xion scoffs, pulling my attention.

“Did you forget? He has a human of his own. He won’t be getting into any trouble any time soon,” she says.

I eye her in confusion, but then I remember the woman he brought with him from Earth. I forgot about her. According to Iris, her name is Sky. She was the one in charge of Ezra’s tests, which explains part of his vendetta against Iriel. I’m sure she worked in close quarters with Iriel, so Ezra is intimately aware of the extent of Iriel’s hatred.

I release a deep breath as I realize my mistake. Xion laughs, placing her hand on my shoulder as she speaks. “You’re not just his leader. You’re his older brother, Remus. Maybe you should start acting like it,” she says.

“I know. I just worry about him sometimes. And it comes out wrong,” I say, closing my eyes as the pain in my head intensifies. It’s as if something is prodding at my skull, trying to push through when I don’t want it to.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Xion asks.

I nod. “I’m fine—ngh!”

A sharp pain rips through my skull, momentarily blinding me, and I stumble as one word echoes through my mind. It’s in a different language. An ancient language that was taught to me long ago, and yet I don’t remember learning it.

“Remus.”

Something flashes in my mind, but it’s so brief that I can’t decipher everything. Just the overwhelming emotions that come with it.

I feel Xion’s hand on my shoulder, steadying me as the world spins. When I open my eyes, she has a frightened expression on her face, her eyes shifting to the table that was in front of us. It’s shattered. The solid wood has splintered into thousands of pieces, yet it continues float through the air, suspended in time.

Both of us stare at it in confusion. I didn’t mean to do it, I wasn’t even focused on it for this to happen. I reach for it, gently touching splintered pieces, and instead of it going back to its original form, it swirls into a mass of light before it disappears. And I have no idea where it went.

“Remus…”

I flinch as I hear my name, but it isn’t the voice in my head. It’s Xion. I quickly pull away from her.

“I’m fine. I just haven’t fed recently,” I say.

Xion continues to watch me, but I know she doesn’t believe me. I’ve never been this disoriented. Even so, I don’t give her a chance to grill me further about it as I make my way out of the room to go in search of Iris.

Iris

Remus is different since our return from the capital. I don’t know if it’s from his irritation with me, his argument with his siblings, or if something happened in that meeting. But he’s different. And it isn’t in the way he has been in the past. His lack of attention isn’t purposeful. He’s distracted, which, in my experience, has never been the case for Remus.