Page 60 of Pet: Torment

Xion looks at me.

“For how long?” she asks.

I shake my head. “She said it in passing. She didn’t explain. She just said they felt like memories,” I say.

Xion turns away from me, placing her hands on the railing as she lowers her head.

“Fuck,” she whispers.

Discomfort twists at my insides as I imagine having to go against our mother. She’s always been so kind and gentle to me, it never crossed my mind to question her. But there is obviously more going on than we thought. I just can’t imagine what could be so bad that she would act on her own like this—that she would disregard how it looks to wipe Remus’s memory and murder the woman he bonded with.

“Maybe I should go talk to her,” I say.

“No,” Xion snaps.

“You can’t trust her. She wiped Remus’s mind and took their bond. We didn’t even know that was possible! She is not who we think she is, and there’s no telling what she would do to you if you went asking questions about things we aren’t supposed to know about. Just look at what she did to Remus,” she says.

Guilt gnaws at me as I think of Iris’s worries before Remus came back. She said things similar, stating that I didn’t know my mother in the way I thought I did. And now, because of my negligence, we have lost more than we intended.

She shifts her attention to the glass door that leads into her home.

“For now, Iris is our top priority. We protect her until we can figure out a way to get Remus back,” she says.

I pull in a trembling breath as I imagine the trouble it could bring. Remus almost snapped her neck in front of me. And that’s because he was being cruel. He could have ended her life with his touch alone, but he wanted to watch her fear—watch her realize how out of place she was for speaking to him before she died.

“What if we can’t get him back? What if the Remus Iris knows is gone?” I ask, looking at Xion.

Her back remains to me as she thinks.

“That isn’t an option.” She faces me, approaching before kneeling to my height.

She gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze, offering me a smile, but I see right through it. This is going to be an uphill battle and she’s scared. We both are.

“We’re the Divine Three. If one of us is in trouble, all of us are in trouble. We’ll get him back. We have to.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Iris

Remus’s hands are gentle underneath me as he holds my body up in the water, relaying the instructions needed for me to learn how to swim.

“You told me your brother taught you,” he laughs as I clumsily splash the water between my fingers like Iremember Cypress telling me to do. It felt much easier in my memory. Remus’s grip becomes firmer when he realizes I am having difficulty holding myself up, and I immediately stop paddling, my muscles aching from the exertion.

“He did. But it wasn’t something that was retained, seeing as I never used it growing up in the world you created for me,” I say bitterly.

Remus ignores my tone, however, laughing as he carries me away from the deeper end of the river so that I can stand on my own. He doesn’t speak as he lets me catch my breath and rein in my temper, but I can feel his eyes on me while I struggle to do so.

“There’s no need to be flustered. It’s the same as reading. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Keep in mind that the air quality and gravity are much different. Even if you already knew how, there would be much-needed adjustments,” he says gently.

After a moment, he notices my frustration is at more than just him taking over my planet. It’s also due to my lack of another ability I should have by now.

He gently shifts his finger under my chin, lifting my gaze to meet his.

“You’re doing fine, Iris. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re right. If I had never invaded, you probably would have improved over the years and maybe gone swimming every summer. But I did, and we’re here now to make up for it,” he says.

Even in the sunlight, his eyes are so vivid as he looks down at me, his words instantly ridding me of any doubt. This has become our new normal. I snap, angry and embarrassed, and Remus gives me an inspirational talk, showing me that he doesn’t lookdown on me—that he admires me. And then, we move on, him taking no offense to my anger but being annoyingly understanding of it.

I take a deep breath, looking past him to where the deeper end is, my desire to learn outweighing my guilt. After a moment, I look back at Remus, and he’s watching me with a small grin. He knows me better than I know myself, which is why his words come so easily. He knows I’ll keep at it until I can do it just like I did with learning his language.