Page 77 of Will It Hurt?

Jinn

I stared at the hexhold in my palm, watching as it flashed red and silver. Somewhere in there, Belle waited, sleeping peacefully, yet I was immobile, sitting on the covenstead’s front steps as shavings of snow curled on my shoes.

“Why are you just staring at it?”

Aisla’s voice drifted out from the foyer. She stood in the doorway, her feet lined with fluffy pink socks that rose up to the middle of her shapely calves. A thick navy bathrobe was belted tight at her waist.

“Did you forget the words to release her?” she asked, rubbing her arms against the chill.

“No.”

How could I explain the tangle of fear inside me? The fear that curled in my stomach, cold and relentless?

I’d barely survived losing Belle the first time. Planning to get her back had simply been a crutch to cushion my grief. And now, I faced losing the crutch itself…

God help me, I might not have the strength to pull myself together.

Aisla’s footsteps were quiet over the brick as she closed the distance between us.

“I don’t mean to make light of your pain, Jinn,” she said, curling a palm over my bicep. “But you’re prolonging your agony. ”

“What if—” Ah hell, my voice cracked like an adolescent. I cleared my throat. “What if she doesn’t—”

“Then she doesn’t,” Aisla’s grip tightened. “That is her decision to make.”

She leaned close to rest her cheek on my shoulder.

“You are a good parent, you know? You did everything you could to save Belle from the decisions she made in life and death.”

“I coddled her,” I admitted, rolling the vial between my fingers.

“It was your job to coddle her,” she said kindly. “But she was an adult when you turned her. She was capable of making her own decisions.”

“They were wrong decisions,” I insisted.

“Yes, but they were hers.” Aisla’s eyes brimmed with something I couldn’t read.

“She saved me from an eternity in silence,” I admitted. “A never-ending life with misery for company.”

Aisla’s sigh ruffled my hair. “Then, yet again, this isn’t about her, is it? It’s about you. It’s about your inability to come to terms with the immortality you signed up for.”

“You don’t understand.” I glanced down at the gathering snow. “It’s a lonely thing to be left behind.”

“It’s heartbreaking.” She took my hand in hers and pressed her fingers against mine. “But maybe I understand grief like a mortal would. I wonder if it’s ten times worse for you.”

I was silent.

“Give it here,” she said, holding her palm out. “There’s no use dragging things out.”

I was inclined to agree with her.

When I placed the hexhold into the center of her palm, she held it gently as though feeling the pulse of trapped energy within .

“Ready?”

Never. I doubted I would ever be ready to confront eternity alone.

But I nodded instead.

She took a deep breath, and when she spoke, the words were steady, low, each syllable like a key turning in a lock. The air around us grew heady with ozone as the hexhold trembled.

“Lowse the tether o’nicht,” she chanted. “Be lowse. Be lowse.”

The glass cracked down the middle, two halves falling apart like symmetric puzzle pieces.

With a gasp loud enough to wake the dead, Belle appeared on the ground, her hands and knees buried in the snow.

***

She was the softest bundle in my arms. Belle’s red hair tickled my nose, her sobs quiet against my shoulder.

The truth was, despite everything, I’d thought she was gone. Lost to me. The rarest gem drowned in a sea never to be returned.

I opened my mouth, but no words came. There were too many things to say, too many emotions crashing into one another, tangling into knots I couldn't undo.

I had mourned her in my own way—screamed internally, grieved, shattered beneath the reality of being a terrible parent.

And yet, here she stood. She was real—breathing, crying, sniffling like a human thing and watching me with those familiar eyes I had stared into for the past four decades.

I tried to move, but even that was an impossible task. All I wanted was to touch her hair just to be sure it was as soft as I had remembered it. Or stroke her cheek to let her know there was nothing to fear.

After days of worry and abject sorrow, something in my brain refused to believe she was real. Something inside me kept whispering that this was a trick, a cruel illusion meant to break me further.

But Belle was here. Solid. Real.

Her lips parted, hesitation flickering across her face.

“What’s happening?” she whispered, her tears creating a splotch on my shirt. “I don’t understand. I thought… I thought I was gone.”

Shaky and pale, Belle glanced over at Aisla.

“You,” Belle muttered, recognition dawning in her eyes. “You’re the wytch. You neutralized me, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Aisla said carefully. “Because you wanted me to.”

Belle dashed the tears that continued to fall onto her cheeks.

“Then how…” She glanced between us, doubt etched into her frown. “How?”

“Jinn brought you back,” Aisla said, studying Belle with the same scrutiny I was. “Well, with my help.”

Belle swept her curls from her forehead as she considered Aisla’s words.

“If it’s all the same to the two of you,” Aisla interjected. “Could we have this conversation inside? It’s bloody freezing.”

With words still out of my reach, I followed Aisla mutely as she led us to the sitting room. Anaia, the paunchy cat, stretched lazily on the windowsill and crept toward me on quiet paws.

“I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Aisla said. “If you need me, just shout. ”

She disappeared around the corner, leaving us in the quiet of the covenstead with the crackle of the hearth and the motorboat noise of the purring cat. I perched on the edge of the worn leather sofa and Belle followed.

“I’m confused,” Belle began, placing her palm on my knee in an achingly familiar way. “How did the wytch bring me back? I was vanquished, wasn’t I? Neutralized.”

“It’s a spell.” My voice was rough like gravel as I spoke. “I—”

But I didn’t wish to talk about the spell, or Aisla, or the panic of the last few days.

I wanted to tell her how much I’d missed her. How much it had hurt . How her absence had carved a hollow space inside me that nothing else had been able to fill. But the words wouldn’t come. They sat like stones in my chest, heavy and immovable.

Her expression softened, something like understanding flickering in her gaze.

“I—I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she said, her voice a whisper I could barely make out above the roar of the fire.

“You must have known I’d do everything in my power to save you, Belle.” I forced myself to meet her gaze. “I will always save you. Always. ”

Her fingers tightened around my knee. “That’s why I didn’t say anything before I left. Because I knew you would try to intervene.”

“Because it was the wrong decision.”

Her lips tightened, a thin slash appearing where her cherubic pout once was.

“Jinn.”

She stood, treading across the room to the fire.

“You did your best with me,” she began. “Really—you did. But there’s something inside me that’s dangerous. It pushed me to overdose on heroin before you turned me. And it always comes back when I’m thirsty, pushing me to drink more, take more. Sometimes it even…”

“It pushes you to kill,” I finished for her. We had talked about her demons more than once.

“But we were working on it. We had it under control,” I insisted.

Belle shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “This thing inside me can’t be controlled. It wants more, demands more every single time. And the boy… the poor child…”

She faltered, her fingers curling into fists.

“You know what the worst part is, Jinn?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder with a tear-stained cheek.

“Even after I came back to myself and understood the horror of what I’d done…

I wanted more of him. I wanted to rip him apart and mangle his corpse, lick every bit of his innards until he was picked clean. ”

She huffed a short, humorless laugh.

“That’s the kind of monster I am.”

I stood, upsetting the cat from my lap.

“Belle, we’ve talked about this. You are not a monster.”

“You see what you wish to see, Jinn,” Belle scoffed.

“Because I’m your daughter, you overlook the terrible things I do, the stain I am on this earth.

But you can’t shield me from the world forever.

I can’t be under your wing until the end of time.

” Her silhouette was stark against the fire.

“You turned me forty-four years ago and I’m still just as feral and uncontrollable as that very first day. ”

“But that doesn’t mean I’ll give up on you.”

“No,” Belle shook her head, her gaze simmering with sadness. “I’ve given up on myself. ”

Everything inside me rebelled as I asked: “What are you trying to say?”

Belle turned, looking every bit as broken and bruised as the day I’d turned her. Even before she could speak, I knew she had decided. It was in the way she exhaled, the way her shoulders tensed. I could already hear the words forming, sharp like a blade poised to strike.

I wanted to stop her. To pretend, for just a moment longer, that I didn’t already know. But she looked at me then, eyes filled with something I didn’t want to name, and I knew—whatever she was about to say would break me.

Soft as a whisper, the words slid between my ribs and shattered like a piece of glass brought too close to a flame.