Page 123 of The Cruelest Chaos

She didn’t even scream.

But that time, she fell.

All the way down.

She didn’t move, lying face up, her head swelling at her temple. I walked slowly toward her, and I heard someone shouting on the other end of the phone, back up on the steps. I didn’t listen. Didn’t go back for it.

But I swung again.

And again.

Until her warm blood coated my warm legs.

I didn’t stop until someone’s hands went to my arms, yanking the weapon from me.

Mayhem.

A crime that causes a disfiguring, permanent injury. It can include loss of a limb. An eye.Brain damage.

That’s what she got.

She got to forget. She went into a home and was taken off life support a few months later. She got to die.

I didn’t.

I didn’t get to forget. My parents tried. Brooklin tried.

I couldn’t.

I heard him scream.

I heard his little body hit the ground.

I never forgot.

Father Tomas and his whip were the closest I ever came to forgetting, because in the pain, it’s hard to remember. It’s hard to think.

But when the ache goes away, it always comes back.

Untilher. Until I met a little devil in the woods, it was always there in my brain.

But then she came around…and the past went quiet.

My wrists are tiedto the chair, rope digging into my skin. I blink, my eyelids so heavy, my throat so fucking dry.

The room feels damp, but there’s nothing but brick walls surrounding me. Brick walls and a tapestry ahead of me, white with a red sigil.

I squeeze my eyes closed. Force myself to take a few deep breaths, force myself to exhale longer than I inhale.

I open my eyes again.

It’s the Leviathan cross. The same one Father Tomas wears. My back itches when I think of him. The whip. The pain. The numbness in the sting.

Did he help with this year’s Noctem?

Does he know the worst thing I’ve ever done?

Ella does.