Page 137 of House of Crimson Kisses
When I try to pull the memory closer, to make the sounds, voices and conversations clear, they’re yanked away.
Octavia rounds on me, and I glance behind her shoulder. Amelia is glassy-eyed and slack-mouthed. Everything they told me the other night was just another lie, another half-truth.
I don’t even know her.
I snort in my mind as I wonder, is Octavia even capable of telling the truth? Betray her? I will gladly lose this round. Fuck Octavia, I’ll get the cure for my sister no matter what. Even if I have to save for a lifetime to buy it once it’s been manufactured.
I want this to stop. I want to scream out to Sadie and beg her to stop this, but once again, I’m dragged through my mind and this time Octavia and I are in a village.
Oh gods.
Elysium. The village is called Elysium.
I remember now. This is where I met her for the first time. The village flares to life, small bungalows popping up around me, a brick wall bordering the village that I was walking around patrolling. A local bar.
A hoard of angry men screaming at her, trying to kill her. A pitchfork stabbed into her gut.
It moves on. I’m injured now. A scar across my belly. The memory flits forward and backward.
Octavia saves me. This is why I’ve always loved the name Elysium. It was the first time we met. And she never fucking told me.
The memory shifts again. I am in her arms. She feeds me her blood. Why the hell is she feeding me blood?
I know in my gut that this is the first time I’ve drunk blood. The addiction might not be her fault, but it never would have started if it weren’t for her. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for her.
I harden against the memory.
It flashes forward. We spend the night fucking and making each other come, drunk on the blood lust of her blood filling my veins.
And then morning comes, and I rise from the blood-drunk reverie. I panic. I’m afraid that I’ve fucked up, that the Hunter Academy will fire me, that I’ll lose everything and Amelia will starve because I’ve lost my job.
Octavia wants to see me again, but I’m stricken with guilt, and I tell her it was a mistake. That she was a mistake.
Her eyes flash. The pain in her expression breaks me. But what she does next hurts me even more.
Her expression hardens, and she rounds on me. “You don’t get to treat me like meat. You don’t get to take a piece of me and then leave. If you don’t want me, then you can’t have any of me.”
“Please don’t,” I beg. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Hurt you?” she snorts. “Gods, I thought you were different. I thought because you looked at me, actually lookedatme, that you were different. You’re just like everyone else. How could I be so fucking stupid? You’re never going to see me for who I am. So fine. You don’t need to see me at all.”
She grabs me by the scruff of my shirt, and she wipes the night out from my memory. Leaving me doe-eyed and confused as she races me back to Elysium and dumps me there to pick up the pieces from the incident that night.
She drops me in the heart of the bodies and blood and battle remnants. But I’m barely functional after having my memory wiped, and she discards me like I’m nothing but trash. When she races away, she doesn’t look back.
So many betrayals.
How could she take the first time we met, the first time we fucked, and the first time I drank from her away? Why would she take that from me? But there’s no time to dwell on this memory because Sadie unleashes more. One after the other, they come flooding into my head.
I thought Octavia was different.
I thought she was the only one who was on my side, the only one not manipulating me, and this whole time she’s been controlling my narrative. Controlling what I know, controlling what I remember…
Controlling me.
It’s time for that to stop.
Sadie releases my temples and raises her hands to sign. “Will you fulfil your end of the bargain?”
