Page 17 of Illusory

Tears scorched the corners of my eyes as I wondered howIwould have felt if the situation had been reversed and it was Trace or Dominic that had Turned me without my permission. Would it sting less to know that they’d done it to save my life? I honestly wasn’t sure.

“What about you? How are you holding up with everything?” he asked softly, his eyes sweeping over me as if to assess the damage. His gaze paused on my bandages, and he frowned.

“It’s fine,” I answered offhandedly. “It’s already healing.” As bad as Trace’s bite had been, the physical wounds on my body couldn’t hold a flame to the ones ravaging my heart. I’d take a million attacks to the jugular if it meant I didn’t have tofeel this other pain anymore. The emotional pain. The agony of it was nearly unbearable, like a knife twisting incessantly at your insides with no end in sight.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” he asked, his brows still creased with worry. I already knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he knew for sure that I was healing properly. Gabriel was nothing if not thorough when it came to these things. Possibly even slightly neurotic.

“Knock yourself out,” I said and then slapped away the lone tear that had slipped down my cheek without my permission.

Gabriel stilled, his eyes pinned to the wet streak along my cheek as though hypnotized by the sight of it. The way he was staring, you’d think he’d never seen someone cry before.

Squirming under the weight of his stare, I reached up and grabbed the top of the bandage before wrenching it off my skin, drawing his gaze back down to my neck and away from the tear that had practically taken over his life.

He cleared his throat and then leaned forward to gently prod the skin around my wound, assiduously examining the cavernous bite mark and the area around it. He was quiet for a long while and I took the opportunity to let my eyes slip shut and work on shoving my unshed tears and sadness back down into the pit of my stomach, wishing I could bury them there for good.

Not that there was anything wrong with crying. I’d done more than my fair share of it during my short life, and after the last couple of days I’d had, crying seemed like just about the only natural thing to do at this point. But I still didn’twantto, and especially not in front of Gabriel.

“It’s healing nicely,” he informed as he carefully reapplied the bandage to my neck, making sure the marred wound was fully covered and hidden from sight. “Despite the severity ofit,” he added more quietly, as if to not call attention to the fact that Trace had practically severed my neck from my head.

“I guess he doesn’t quite have the same finesse that Dominic has, huh?” I muttered darkly and then sank a little deeper into my despair. This was completely not the time for jokes. Nor was it the time to be thinking about Dominic and his full-of-finesse bites.

“No. Not quite,” he agreed, his expression somewhat shuddered as though he were hiding deeper truths just below the surface. “Have you two had a chance to speak since you released him?”

I swallowed roughly as my mind flitted back to Dominic and our last conversation. “I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t want all that much to do with me either at this point.” Just saying the words out loud made my chest tighten like the room was slowly being robbed of air. “I mean, I guess I deserve it. I did lock him in my basement and starve him half to death. I’m sure he has some feelings about that.”

“Is that what he said?” asked Gabriel, his brows banding together as though he didn’t believe it. As though the very idea of Dominic being crossed with me was completely preposterous to him.

But he hadn’t seen what I’d seen.

“He didn’t have to,” I answered and then met his querying eyes. “I couldfeelit.” The anger and contempt radiating off Dominic had practically choked me from across the room.

“Jemma,” he said, shaking his head at my assertion. “I very highly doubt —”

“Or maybe he’s just not into chicks with wings, you know?Heathers with feathersaren’t for everyone,” I went on, unable to listen to Gabriel’s minimization of what I’d felt and seen with my own eyes. “Not that I blame him. Pretty sure theyboththink I’m a complete freak of nature now.”

The truth was, I’d always suspected there was something off about me, even jokingly called myself a circus freak once or twice, but if ever there had been any doubt before, it was all cleared up now. I was a literal abomination of the highest fucking order.

“No one thinks you’re a freak of nature,” he said with the kind of certainly he had no business having. “Emotions were running high for everyone. A lot has happened over the last few days. I’m sure the dust will settle come morning.”

“Sure,” I said, knowing in my heart of hearts that it wouldn’t.

Come morning, I was still going to be the Nephilim freak who had locked away the man she loved in a basement prison while allowing the other one to be turned into a vampire. And I’d still have thewings…black ones…hiding but ever-present like an insignia of the corrupted blood that ran hotly through my veins.

Come morning, there would be no more running away from the truth. No more escaping its jagged claws with vaporous bouts of denial. I was Lucifer’s daughter, black wings and all, and noweveryonewould know it.

The Daughter of Hades. Princess of Darkness. In the fucking flesh.

A familiar thickness swelled at the back of my throat as though my despair were trying to squeeze its way back up again. All I could see was their horrified, frozen expressions and the way they’d gaped at me as the devil’s mark was made flesh right out from my bones.

“Things were already bad enough without the giant wings busting out of my back. I can’t even imagine how disturbing I must’ve looked,” I rasped, the scene replaying in my mind’s eye like a silent movie. My gaze cut away, shaking my head at the horror of it all. At the sheer humiliation.

Gabriel looked at me strangely, his lips tremulous as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t manage to wrestle the words out. “Whatever it is you’re thinking…about yourself…I assure you, it’s not that,” he finally said, the apples of his cheeks darkening at his maundering words.

“Right,” I said as I squinted back at him and then blinked a few times, trying to understand what that even meant. “Well, thanks…I think,” I added warily, assuming that somewhere in that mess of a sentence, he was most likely trying to say something to make me feel better. Because that was what Gabriel always did.

Not that his kind sentiments made a lick of difference. I knew what I’d seen—what I’d felt. Something had changed between me and Dominic, shifted irreversibly, and it wasn’t for the better.

“Maybe he just doesn’t feel the same way about me anymore,” I went on, quieter then, dejected, as though the weight of the words were too heavy for my tongue to lift. “Maybe his feelings for me just reset back to null and void when Pricilla shut his emotions off, and I was just too wrapped up in the moment the other night to realize—” My stomach felt as though it had dropped out of my body as the words sounded back to me.

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