Page 96 of Pet: Torment

Iris’s features contort in pain, and my mother releases her, letting her collapse at her feet as blood rapidly stains the dress she wears. Before I can reach her, bright blue beams rip from the ground, wrapping around my arms to hold me hostage less than two feet from her.

“Iris! Iris!” I scream her name as she looks at me in fear. Her eyes are wide, tears spilling from them as she focuses on me. Her breathing is short and desperate. Each struggle she has taking in air makes my chest squeeze tighter.

The ground cracks as my mother steps past me, continuing her bargain for Ezra’s life.

“One word, one small threat, and he will do as I say,” she says, gesturing to me. “He is mine, Kuron, until I release him. If you take my other son, if you try to make me go with you, I will take both of your children,” she says, emphasizing her threat by the heavy rumble of the ground giving out beneath us.

“And the future you dream of will never be realized,” she says.

The ground gives way and the entire cliffside begins to crumble. Our mother is going to take everyone with her to their graves if he doesn’t leave Ezra and her alone. The beams around me are taking my energy too fast, and I feel myself waning in consciousness. I slump slightly, keeping my focus on Iris. I am helpless.

Kuron laughs.

“You always were so arrogant,” he says.

My mother forms a weapon, holding it high above her head as she attempts to attack me this time. I feel the heat of it as it approaches my skin. But Kuron is faster. He’s between us, catching her attack, easily holding her at bay. He wrenches her arm, pulling her close to him as he murmurs something in her ear. I am too weak to hear it, and I am too focused on Iris to care.

My mother screams in rage, and I can see the battle between them as they try to siphon one another’s energy. The ground cracks violently, breaking apart and we all begin the slow descent into the ocean below. She’s losing, but making good on her threat. She is going to take us with her. She would rather die than return.

“No, no!” I shout. Iris is only a few feet from me, her eyes dull as she continues to watch me, her body descending with the falling rock. I can’t move. I am a prisoner, as is Xion as she screams as well, desperate for someone to release either of us, so that we can save them.

I note that my body isn’t falling with the rocks. The familiar barrier of a forcefield holds me up, and I look around me in panic when I see that it’s true. Kuron’s protecting us, but not the ones who truly need protecting.

“No!” I shout again and again as I watch Iris plunge into the crumbling cliffside. Xion and I remain where we are, our parents locked in a battle that has a clear winner, and our mother isso blinded to that fact, that she doesn’t realize her actions are causing Ezra to join them.

Our screams are drowned out by the crash of the rocks as everything we’ve ever cared for disappears into the ocean below.

Chapter Forty-Two

Remus

I jolt awake as the intense pain assaulting my body penetrates the silence. Vomit rushes violently past my lips, and I immediately taste the metallic tang of blood as my stomach and ribs clench in pain. I groan, unable to do anything to stop the pain that radiates over every inch of me. I can’t fight the shudderas vision after vision flashes across my mind, threatening to make me go insane right at this moment.

The nausea it causes is agonizing.

“It’s unbearable, isn’t it?” I flinch as the familiar voice cuts through the haze. Everything clears, even the visions, and I am able to focus on what’s in front of me—or rather, who. It’s theCelestivinewho claims he is my father.

Kuron.

With his presence comes everything else that has happened since. The battle, Ezra, the collapsing earth swallowing the defenseless humans because of my mother’s rage; all of it.

I lunge for him, but an intense wave of pain hits me, and I realize something is holding me back. I look down in a panic, noting that the same blue beams that held Xion and me at the cliffside are wrapped around my arms, tethering me to the ground, draining what little energy I have left. I flinch as another vision flashes across my mind. I’ve been held like this before…several times.

Each time, by my mother.

“Now is that any way to greet your father after all these centuries?” he asks.

“Fuck you,” I hiss at him.

My words mean nothing to him, however. He steps back, laughing.

“I see your mind isn’t the only thing Me’Rite has corrupted,” he says.

I don’t respond. I know nothing of this being. But he seems to know me. He’s comfortable in my presence and doesn’t fear me at all. If anything, after that battle, he’s continued to hold back to prove something to me. But he can’t possibly think I would do anything or agree to anything for him after what he’s done.

“Is there really no curiosity about your past? Where you come from? All the missing time in your mind that doesn’t make sense?” he asks.

I look away.