Page 50 of Mantle

I startled as the expressionless cold eyes came toward me. Three pairs of them as usual, their faces hidden behind masks, their bodies covered in smocks.

I caught sight of each of them holding a beaker of bubbling gray liquid.

Demon essence, I heard them call it.

And that was all the warning I got, before they poured it into my wounds.

Shrill screams rang in my ears.

My own.

Pain became white-hot agony.

The liquid burned and bubbled into the too many open wounds.

I couldn’t thrash, the binds not even allowing me that mercy.

I couldn’t move at all.

Hands even grabbed my head, then a gag was stuffed into my mouth, silencing my cries, too.

“Hold on,” a quiet voice uttered.

Black eyes filled my vision.

There was peace in them, something I thought I’d never know again.

“You’ll survive. Hold on.”

I held onto it.

Even as I passed out, I held onto it.

I snapped backto my immediate reality with jarring force.

No. It… it couldn’t be.

I hadn’t remembered.

I hadn’t remembered a lot of what had happened back then.

I’d chosen not to.

I’dneedednot to.

Kai had spelled me at my behest—actually at my begging—to make me forget most of my time in the Chimera Circle lab.

But Ketheron had triggered those memories, somehow unlocked parts of them.

With all the chaos, the stakes, I hadn’t paid his comments to me much mind.

I’d hadn’t been able to.

But now… now I saw.

Now I understood.

“Hybrid. I know you.”

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