Page 55 of The Witch's Heart
Because everyone's survival depends on it.
In a reversal of roles that were never really our roles to begin with, I guide him to the truth as gently as I can.
"Dr. Cutter isn't who you think he is," I say softly, knowing my words will be the dynamite that blows apart his carefully constructed lie. "He's not trying to cure us. Or help us. He's trying to own us. To break us or maybe even harness our power for himself."
Dr. Livingstone sucks in a sharp breath, his fingers tightening around mine as I once again recount my strange and life-altering time with the madman who runs this place.
When I'm finished, I use my free hand to roll up my sleeve and show him where my blood was drawn. "I have no choice but to help him, at least until I can find another way."
“Your blood.” He looks up at me. “What will he do with it?”
“I don’t know, but it won’t involve helping Estelle, that I know for sure.”
“Estelle?”
“My sister.”
“Your sister is dead.” His confusion is too convincing to be fake.
Slowly, I tell him about Estelle. Finding her alive. Cutter’s deal with me. And of my true treatment thus far.
"If what you're saying is true," he says slowly, forcing the words out as if they cause him physical pain, "then it's all been a lie. I will never be cured."
I don't respond, because what can I say except yes.
"Whatever he truly has planned," I say, "it won't end well for anyone but himself."
He breaks eye contact with me to resume looking towards the sea, and I wonder at the thoughts a man who has seen and done what he has would have. What darkness of the soul does he carry?
"Do you believe me?" I finally ask. "Because quite frankly you haven't believed me about anything else since I got here."
He flinches as if I struck him with my words, and he turns to face me again. "Believing you means giving up on my own hope," he says simply, and it strikes me then that we all nurture our own lies, our own shortsightedness, when the truth is too shattering to our necessary realities. It's how we survive an inhospitable world.
It’s how we live with our pain.
I spent my life convincing myself the women in my family were all insane, because if I'd even once seriously considered we were of magical descent, born witches with power, I would have had to face the truth: that my mother died in vain. That every woman in my family lineage died for nothing.
Sometimes the truth is too painful to face.
But we've run out of time, and lies, and now we all must break the illusions we've been flirting with and commit to the reality we've been dealt. Before that reality destroys everything.
I am a witch. Descended from others like me. That’s my new truth.
I give the man beside me time to adjust his understanding ofhisown truth, before asking again. "Do you believe me?"
Finally, he looks at me, his lips set in a firm line, his eyes hardened to his new reality. "Yes, Celeste. I believe you. And I won't let him hurt you again."
13
Voices coax me awake. I stir slowly, a sense of safety cocooning me until the fog of sleep is chased off by a sudden awareness of reality. I’m still a prisoner. Wrapped in a down quilt and sharing a private room with twin werewolf brothers equally devoted to me and equally gorgeous, but a prisoner all the same. Beside me, propped against the headboard, Dean runs his fingers lightly over my hair.
Mouth dry, I pull my arm free from where I’d wound it tightly around his waist and grab for the water bottle on the nightstand. I tip it back and drink generously as I tune into the conversation they’ve apparently been having while I slept.
“He’s definitely playing his own game,” Declan says quietly from where he leans against the dresser, shirtless with his arms crossed over his chest. “It was bad enough when he was screwing with us, but now he’s pulled her into it. Taking her blood is only the beginning. When that doesn’t work, he’ll resort to the same torture he’s put us through.”
“We won’t let that happen.”
“Like we didn’t let him torture us?” Declan challenges.
