Page 136 of House of Crimson Kisses
I can fight.
I can win.
I just need to believe it.
“Yes,” I say.
“So be it,” she signs and then she steps up to me.
She places her hands on either side of my head and stares into my eyes. Hers are dark pools, endless orbs that hold so much more than I can access. A vastness I dare not tread into. It’s only now, this close to her, I notice that the perfume she wears is as cold as her personality. She smells like winter and frozen landscapes. A sharp scent that cuts through wind and water and makes my throat burn with the odour.
“Remember,” she says, and I frown. I hear a voice. But I’m not sure if I’m making it up or if it’s in my mind or if I actually heard it. I couldn’t have. She has no voice.
“Remember,” she says, stronger this time and definitely inside my mind. I relax now, letting her vampire magic undo what was done to me.
Her words wash over my consciousness like a blanket of silk, lulling me into a warm hug, a sense of safety, and then she rips something in my mind, and I am screaming.
I scream and scream and scream as my mind burns and sears as she tugs memories from lost places. I should have listened. These memories should have stayed hidden.
My vision whites, the pain spreads from the deep well of my brain outward, washing over my ears and down my neck.
I’m on the forest floor, leaf mould and detritus smothering me as a flood of memories tears through my mind.
I’m on my knees. We’re in her castle. I have no recollection of this. I don’t know what I did or said, but Octavia’s eyes well with unshed tears. She whispers quietly, “You need me.” Her words are in a tone I don’t understand. She’s never been like this with me. What led us here and why is she talking like that? She continues, her voice cold and callous.
“You need my blood. Without me, you’re nothing. You’re just another blood slut desperate for your next fix.”
I don’t know if it’s my actual hand or my hand in my memory, but my fingers come to my cheeks, and they’re wet. How could she say such awful things?
I sob, I wrap my arms around my legs. I cry out at her, “You don’t understand. I can’t leave. Or be what you want. I have a family. Responsibilities. I have to keep my job as a hunter.”
“And yet you can’t do that and keep me,” she says. “Or you’re not willing to. You’re throwing me away like I’m nothing but a fix, Red. Don’t you see?”
I’m screaming at her, my words fuzzy and muffled all at once.
Octavia sneers at me. “So be it.”
Then she’s towering over me, and once again, she tears the memories of her away, the memories of our love, our fights, our heartache. All of them stripped away.
I am now certain Octavia lied.
Not a small white lie. But a huge, cut-my-heart-in-two betrayal. She didn’t take one or two memories.
She fucking took them all.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
She erased herself from my life like we meant nothing.
For what feels like forever, Sadie reveals memories of the times Octavia removed little pieces and giant chunks of herself from my life, my heart. How fucking could she?
The night Amelia was turned comes flooding back. I’m laid on the floor of Dahlia’s mansion, Amelia screaming something I can’t hear, then she rushes toward me. Something is wrong. It doesn’t fit the motions that Octavia and Amelia told me. It’s like the night is slightly out of sync, a beat off. There’s another lie here. Another truth hidden from me.
I’m covered in blood, Amelia is sobbing, drenched in my blood, but when Octavia rounds to face me, I realise she compelled Amelia, too.
Oh Octavia, what did you do?
