It’s like I can see her bright smile looking down at me and in that high-pitched, caring voice, saying,“Phiny-bear! You missedme?!”The name rolling off her tongue with ease as though it was given to me at birth.
“Yeah, I miss you.”
A weight presses against my stomach, slowly moving up my chest, and when I look, it’s Mister. “Nowyou,” I say through a laugh, dropping my hand to stroke down his back.
Murrrow.
“You always were hard to find.”I don’t know why I can hear Mister speak. It’s very aristocratic, and definitely what he would sound like if he could talk…
Maybe I’ve already gone insane.
Tragic.
“I’ve missed you, too.” Scratching above his tail, he claws at the blanket. “Are you with them now?” I ask, not entirely expecting a response, so I’m surprised when I get one.
“No, but I’m looking for you and them.”
“Pfft, good luck. They’re dead, and so am I.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“Optimistic… You’ve been around Sydni too long.”
Dropping my head back onto the pillow, I close my eyes. Before I speak, I take a long, healthy breath of air in.
“Belial, if you can hear me…” I haven’t reached for him in nearly six years—not since those train tracks—but now, a desperation I can’t overcome creeps into my still heart. “Take me away from this place. Bring me to Kairhyse… I don’t know if I truly deserve happiness… but I want it. I want him more than my revenge. I’d give you anything.” I pause, feeling the dread of my words rolling over my body. “Just as long as I can be with him for eternity. Alive, or in the Beyond. I don’t think that is asking for too much.”
As suspected, silence.
It’s so damn quiet. The deceptive comfort of temporary death.
A laugh bubbles from my lips, catching on my sob. “Fuck you… Because just like everyone else has, you’ve abandoned me.”
My eyes shoot open,greeted first by the darkness of the sea and the bars of my prison—but those aren’t what I fear most. It’s the sudden rush of water choking my throat and the realization that I’m alone. No Dreb. No Sinnix.
They put me down here as punishment, not because they succeeded. Tali said that between their “breaks” this would be my place of rest.
I need to get out, because I know Sinnix won’t be here to help me ever again. I’m on my own, as I’ve always been, and I’m tired of being that weak girl. In death, with Kairhyse, I can be the woman I used to dream about.
The one that didn’t want to spend forever alone.
The one that wanted to fall in love. To be cared for. To be treatedlike glass.
But not in this world. I am XeraphinemotherfuckingNora, and I will fight until I no longer can.
If not for him, then for myself.
“That’s my little demon.”Gods, how I miss his voice.
I know I have only a minute, maybe a little more, so I work quickly. The weapon I hadn’t possessed the last time I was down here might now be my only salvation. My hand, once again trapped in the metal cuff, moves with urgency as I lower my head, the sharp tip of my horn cutting into my wrist, and I curse—a mistake that lets more water flood into my already burning lungs.
But I don’t stop. Irefuseto.
I drive the horn beneath the cuff digging into my flesh, and pull. Pain sears through me, the strain tugging at my head. A silent scream rips through my mind, muffled by the water, as the sound of tearing skin echoes in my burning ears.
But I keep pulling.
Adrenaline surges through me, pushing me past the pain. The moment I feel the crack of my bone and hear the creak of bending metal, hope swells in my chest, rising like air I desperately need.
