Page 130 of A Dose of Agony
I am of no consequence.
Anger bubbles up from far, far away, but I don’t need Jarron to tell me how untrue those thoughts are. I know.
The anger siphons away, and Jarron’s thoughts remain distant. I force my mind back to fantasies of killing the council with blank faces. The access cuts off again.
“Jarron really doesn’t know this is happening?” Thompson asks, as if reading my mind.
I swallow. “He seems a bit distracted. I’m not keeping it from him, though, not anymore. If he figures it out at this point—”
“He can’t stop it now.” Manuela grins.
I nod.
“He’ll be pissed, though, right?”
“At me, mostly,” Manuela says. “My alliance with the demon prince hinges on today going well. If it works, I’ll remain an important part of his inner circle. If it fails, I may need to go into hiding along with Beatrice.”
“He’s not going to hateme, is he?” Thompson asks.
“No,” I say adamantly. “You’re just a tagalong bodyguard. You couldn’t have stopped me from going through with this if you tried, so now you’re just here to make sure I don’t die. He’ll appreciate that.”
He huffs out a breath, seemingly not all that convinced.
My attention shifts back to the cyclops and witch in the world through the mirror. “This is so crazy,” Janet says. “We’re like legit spies right now. Flies on the wall.” She shakes her head. Our portal is on the wall in the corner of this grand meeting hall. Just one mirror among a myriad of wall decor.
“Literally,” Thompson snorts. “Well, literally on the wall, not literally flies.”
Their hushed banter eases some of the pressure on my chest, but my fear is still pulsing.
“Calm down, little human,” Manuela purrs. “You’re going to make us all anxious.”
All of my friends shift their attention to me and my embarrassingly red ears. Janet finally sits beside me and squeezes my knee comfortingly.
Maybe Manuela was right that I am prey and have prey instincts. I will always feel inherent fear when I come face to face with a powerful predator.
“Fear is nothing to be embarrassed about,” Janet whispers to me.
I release a breath. She’s right. I do have prey instincts, and while it doesn’t mean I should bow before those instincts, they still serve a purpose.
Fear is not the enemy, so long as you don’t let it control you.
I used to let it control me. I used to make major life decisions based around my fear of the supernatural world. Even Liz said that in her journal. She knew it. She understood it.
Except, Liz is the one who fell into the trap.
She had an entirely different emotion controlling her—a thirst for power.
She hid how deeply she desired to feel important in the world we’d left.
I know she believed some of my rhetoric—we weren’t safe among the magical. She had the scar to prove it. It wasn’t glass that gave her that scar, like I told the tribunal. Jarron’s talon sliced through her skin. If I’d known that was proof Liz wasn’t his chosen back then, maybe some of this wouldn’t have happened.
Or maybe if it had been more common knowledge, Mr. Vandozer would have come after me instead of my sister. I doubt he would have gotten far manipulating me in the same way, but just the thought that he’d have tried sends a shiver down my spine.
He knew exactly how to lure Liz into a trap, promising her the world and power to go along with it.
As for me, I was just hiding in a trap I made for myself.
We were both wrong. We both allowed emotions to overwhelm our better judgment.
