So yeah, she had a good reason to hate demons, but at a certain point, she had to get over herself. Meph and his brothers had proven they weren’t like Valefor. They were trying to be better.
She told Lily she’d accepted that, but had she really? She was so ready to accuse Meph of anything, so quick to throw him out the door when he softened toward her for a split second. Would she have been so cruel to him had he been human?
“Oh god,” she murmured against her palms as the image of his tortured face flashed through her mind.
The first feelings he’d probably ever had for anyone had been for her. And she’d had to go and ruin them immediately because feelings repulsed her.
Or maybe this had nothing to do with Meph’s feelings at all and everything to do with her own guilt and self-hatred. Maybe this was more about her intrinsic belief that she didn’t deserve to have good things because she wasn’t a good person.
Under all Iris’s bluster and abrasiveness, there was a girl that wished she’d been strong enough to fight the blood vow and save her parents. There was a girl that hated herself for standing there, incapable of action while they died. There was a girl that couldn’t fathom why she got to live while they did not.
Survivor’s guilt.She knew it was a thing. The therapist she’d seen for the first few years after the fire had told her as much. But while therapy had given her some handy terms to identify her thought patterns, it hadn’t solved her problems for her.
At the end of the day, Iris had to learn to live with herself. She had to live with the fact that her parents had sacrificed their lives to keep her and Lily safe. She had to live with the fact that she had lied to her sister about the most defining moment of their lives for nearly a decade.
And now, she had to live with the fact that she had hurt someone who’d become important to her. Someone she cared about. Someone who cared about her too. Someone who stood up for her, who had her back, who made her life better in every way.
What the fuck is wrong with me?Why was she like this?
At that moment, she was glad she was facing away from the mirror on the wall, because if she’d seen herself, she would have punched it until the glass shattered.
Faust peeked around the door, which had been left ajar from Meph’s hasty departure. The hound’s head cocked, and he watched her with red eyes that were so familiar it made her heart ache.
“I should have let Raum keep you,” she told him through a constricted throat.
She swore his puppy eyes got sadder.
“Because he’d do a better job taking care of you,” she quickly explained. “Because I can barely take care of myself, and I’m certainly not in any state to be caring for someone else. Just look at Grim. The one thing I took under my wing turned into a jerk. He hates everyone. I don’t even know where he is right now. Sometimes I don’t see him for days.” She laughed bitterly. “If I can screw up a cat that badly, remind me never to have kids.”
A phone rang from the kitchen at that moment, and Iris frowned. It wasn’t her ringtone, so what—
“Fuck,” she breathed, her eyes widening.
Climbing out of bed, she ignored the cold floor against her bare feet and ran naked into the kitchen to find the phone. It was under the table, probably having fallen there in the fray of Meph ripping his clothes off when he’d bent her over and screwed her brains out.
Oh god, that had been amazing. Her wildest fantasy come to life.
“Stop it,” she hissed and then grabbed the phone and stood up. “Hello?”
“Where are you? Bel is—” Raum’s gruff voice abruptly stopped. “Who is this?”
“It’s, um... Iris.”
There was a long silence.
Then, “’Sup, Iris.”
“Uh, not much.” Damn it, Raum always succeeded in making her squirm.
“You wanna give the phone to Meph?” There was a trace of humor in his voice.
Had Meph told him about their arrangement? Or had Raum just figured it out? She wasn’t going to ask. “He’s not here. He forgot his phone. Hey, uh, do you want to meet me somewhere so you can give it to him?”
“Why don’t you just give it to him yourself?”
“Um.” She winced. “I don’t know if we’ll be seeing each other for a while.”I don’t know if I deserve to see him. I don’t know if I even want to.
Another long, drawn-out silence. Then Raum sighed tiredly. “What’d he do now?”
