Page 164 of Feed Your Fiends

A glitter heel appears near Bart’s head, then a loafer. Stassi and Hale. They’re pinning Delphine down and frantically hissing back and forth. I can’t hear them. I can only hear my own words.

“Look at her,” I rasp.

But he doesn’t. He’s focused on me. More underwater shrieks, more chaos far off in the distance.

I pull Elle’s head halfway over mine, forcing him to see us. Together.

“You wondered why I really wanted you two to meet?” My hold on Elle weakens by the second, though she’s gripping me for dear life. “I needed you to meet the future, Ms Auclair. The person that’s going to carry your legacy with me.”

More screams.

“I need you to see Auclair Enterprise's future. To see that I’m not like you. That Elle’s not like Marisol, who married you out of desperation and what you could give her. Elle loves me and only me.”

I can see in his fading eyes how much he disagrees.

Long golden strands mixed with ashy blonde locks are flung beside his head and strewn across his face as Stassi pins a crawling Delphine to the floor. Bart can’t even blink the strands away.

For once in his life, he can’t do a single fucking thing.

“She’s here. It doesn’t matter that she came to save my brother. She’s still here with me. And all you have is your cheap dupe, Delphine. She won’t touch my mother’s company, by the way. I’d sooner let Hale turn those studios into menageries than have a traitorous cunt at my side. Someone intent on having everything her sister had, including me. Including you. And that’s never going to happen because you’re leaving, and she’s next.”

I’m so fucking sleepy.

“I’m going to have black-haired, black-eyed children that my wife looks at with love and not disdain because she hates me and, by default, them.”

Dove’s tear-streaked face hovers over mine as she rolls me onto my side off of Bart, her fingers as cold as ice on my cheek.

“Look at me,” I tell her. There’s so much more that I need to tell her, but I only have a few words left in me.

Her eyes, which I need to find forgiveness in, are leaking with tears that drip onto my face as she gently taps my cheeks as if it’ll keep me tethered to this world. To her.

“Do you forgive me?” I whisper.

“What?” her voice breaks, her features contorting with so much pain. “He’s falling asleep!” Her eyes leave me to dart to someone I can’t see above my head.

“Forgive me?” I force the question out, forcing her eyes back to me. “Deathbed. I got on it.” Just like she said.

A sob wracks her as she nods furiously, unable to speak until something snaps in her as my eyes roll back and forth. Back and forth. Her eyes grow wide, her lips falling open in horror because she’s seeing something I can feel.

More glass, more tinkling. But this time, the shatter is tiny, followed by wails.

Zedd’s.

Stassi’s.

Hale’s.

Delphine’s.

Dove’s.

“I’m banging on the door,” I say.

“HELP ME!” Dove’s voice drifts over my face like a fluttering veil.

Death’s door.

“It’s opening,” I whimper.

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