He stiffens, eyes roaming over me and then the ravaged chambers he gestures to. “Then how do you explain this? How did you kill her?”
“I am possessed,” I bite out. My head dips immediately with the admission.
He aggressively drags a hand over his face and turns back, stare penetrating. Finally, seeing me for what I am, all the dark and tainted parts of me. Even darker and more tainted than I imagined. I know I deserve that look, but it stillhurts. Tears slip free, and I wipe at them in aggravation. I hide my face behind my hands and claw at my temples, the daemon still panging painfully. I want to scream. I want this thing out of me.
I want this thing.OUT. OF. ME.
A sound escapes, somewhere between a sob and a growl, muffled into my palm. The bed shifts, and I tense. His next words are calmer, more measured. “What do you mean?”
It’s not even a choice, really, with the potion coaxing me to answer. I speak to my hands, unable to bring myself to look at him. “We call it the daemon.”
“Tell me about it.”
Where do I even start? “When I was eleven, shortly before I took the Shroud, me and Syra found…a tunnel, and we followed it. It went for miles. We hoped that it would take us outside the Wall, but it took us to the Wall. Inside of it.” I sneak a glance up at him. It’s a mistake. I can see his impatience roiling. He doesn’t think this is relevant.
“There were stairs inside,” I rush out. “We wanted to get to the very top, hoping we could see the other side. We almost made it when something hit me here.” I gesture to my chest with still trembling fingers.
I brave another glance. He eyes my chest, where the daemon’s blight rests beneath my dress. His face is impassive, but his hands are still balled into fists in his lap, and I quickly look away. “It felt like lightning or…a burst of energy, and I fell. They said I shouldn't have survived it, but I did. I was completely unscathed, but when I woke up, I was…different.”
I suck in a deep breath, color blooming across my cheeks. “My hair started growing in like this, and I had this…thing inside of me.”
“Describe it,” he demands.
“It’s always moving. It feels like…lightning or sometimes fire. It hurts,” I say, voice strained as the potion pushes words up my throat I would prefer not to speak. “Sometimes worse than others. It breaks things,” I say, glancing around his ravaged chambers. “But I swear it’s never hit a—“ My voice gives out, and I force a swallow. “A person before,” I whisper, staring at my twisting fingers. “Until Valik…”
I look up to find his face but the mattress shifts as he rises and paces the floor in front of the bed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
He must’ve sealed his injury because there’s no sign of blood.
“The Priest and the Grand Prioress said the daemon often attaches to those with blackness in their soul. They tried to rid me of it, but nothing worked, and they—I….I pretended that it worked, that they got rid of it, and I got better at hiding it. I’ve had it mostly contained for years, but it seems to have gotten worse. It’s still getting worse, and now—“ More tears well and spill down my cheeks.
He swears under his breath, shoulders tense, still pacing. “How many people in Eden have this demon?”
“O—only me,” I say, head dipping in shame.
He stalks forward, and I shrink back into the wall. He stops suddenly with a pained look. “Why haven’t you told me this?”
A tangle of words work up my throat all at once, resulting in a garbled grunt, but the potion keeps gnawing at me, growing more uncomfortable by the second. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to see me like that—how everyone saw me. Everyone despised me—and—I—I wanted you to like me—“ Answers keep coming in half-strung sentences, and my face flames.I want you to like me.After what I just did. It’s horribly pathetic.
I fight against those next words, things I don’t want to say. I clap a hand over my mouth. “The last time I told someone, they tortured me. They almost killed me.” The words are muffled, indiscernible against the back of my hand. I groan, teeth clenched. “Please,” I manage to gasp out. “I was going to tell you—before—“
He raises his hand. “That’s enough.” The uncomfortable sensation of the potion ceases immediately. He stares at me for an uncomfortably long moment. I want to crawl out of my skin. I want to be anything else. There’s no anger in his face now. Only shock and pain. So much pain.
“Fuck,” he groans. He rakes his hands through his hair, another horrified look playing across his features. “Fuck!” He spouts even louder this time. He turns and stalks out of the room and out of his chambers without a word.
The silence is deafening.
Vast and unending.
That moment replays over and over in a loop in my mind. One moment, Delyah there…the next…gone. So blown apart, she almost disintegrated. Like a million things before her…but this time a person.
A person.
A person.
A whole fucking person.
Sitri’s outstretched bloody arms…the moment of recognition. In hindsight, it all feels so inevitable.
