Page 66 of Pet: Torment

Ezra takes me from the room, and I lift my eyes as much as I can to see Xion still talking to Remus. He isn’t looking at her, however, he’s watching me. I immediately look away, unable to hold his gaze. My body shakes just from having him look at me.

As Ezra leads me through the hallway and back to my bedroom, I note that Sky follows us, her expression mingled with fear and worry as she watches me.

Ezra is gentle with me as he lays me back in the bed that I’ve been bound to for the past few days on Xion’s order. I hate this bed. It feels like all I ever do is lie in it and recover. This time no different.

Ezra still refuses to look at me as he sits in the chair beside the bed, running his fingers through his hair in distress.

“Do you have a death wish?” he asks.

I don’t respond.

“You can’t be volatile around him. If you ever want him to remember you again, you have to be alive for that to happen, Iris,” he says.

I look away from the window to Ezra, expecting to see anger in his expression, but I don’t. I only see desperation.

“It was an anomaly in the first place that he kept you around. I don’t think you realize how strange it was that he indulged you as much as he did. Right now, he is not that same person, not even the one you met. I understand we’re asking a lot. Just give us a chance to figure out how to approach him with this,” he says.

My irritation mounts at myself as tears fall and I look away.

“Fine,” I murmur.

Ezra is silent for a moment, his soft chuckle of disbelief filling the room.

“Fine? That easy?” he asks.

I don’t look at him as tears fall.

“When you took me back, and Remus attacked me that first time, he held my arms down so that I couldn’t even fight him for my life while he choked me. This time, he was going to crush me alive. He was going to flatten me while I screamed until my body gave out under the weight of his will.”

I pull in a trembling breath, clasping my fingers together in an attempt at comforting myself.

“Remus was never that cruel. He’s never used his abilities on me that way. Not even in the beginning. You’re right, my Remus is nowhere in there. He doesn’t recognize me,” I say, closing my eyes.

Silence drifts between us as I try to put what happened out of my mind. My hand grips my necklace as I try to fight the thought of him pushing past his siblings to finish what he started. At least before, Remus allowed me the illusion of a fight. But this time, he has been seconds from killing me with only his siblings quick reactions preventing him from doing so.

Ezra takes a soft breath, and I hear him standing to leave the room. I look up just in time to see him murmur something to Sky before leaving us alone. Sky waits a moment before moving to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she asks.

Fresh air is just what I needed. Being locked in that room, in that foreign place, with watchful eyes of the creatures who put me in that position in the first place constantly on me took its toll on my mental health. As we walk along the forest floor beneath Xion’s home, I feel more peaceful than I’ve felt in days.

When I lived on Earth, the forest was a dangerous place. That’s why we gravitated to the blight. The forests were filled with dangerous animals and even more dangerous people. So, being able to explore this one, even if it’s in a foreign world, is helpful.

“I know what you’re going through must be difficult. I’m sorry they can’t understand that,” Sky says behind me. “I think they’re as terrified as you are.”

I scoff, looking up at Xion’s home. Remus has yet to leave, making me curious about their conversation.

“Of course they are. They just figured out their life is a lie,” I say.

Sky shakes her head as she changes her pace to match mine. “I know your time on Earth with Remus was difficult. But there are things you don’t know about him that make them more cautious now that he is back to his original self—who he was before he met you,” she says.

“If you’re going to hint at things—”

“No, I won’t do that anymore. It does no one any good to keep you in the dark,” she says. I note that her hands twist in front of her as she finds the strength to speak.

“Did you see that planet on the way in? The one that looked like an implosion?” she asks.

I nod, recalling how weird Remus acted as we passed by.