Page 151 of House of Crimson Kisses
I can’t take it, everything she says is true. I failed. I’m useless.
Amelia’s face shifts and contorts. Her two incisors fall out as new fangs draw down. Her nose flares. She glares at me with nothing but hate. She’s going to drain me; I’m going to be the human she drinks to complete her transition.
And I’m going to let it happen because she’s better off without me.
Everyone is better off without me.
Amelia’s fangs finish descending, and she sinks them into my neck. A blaze of pain so hot it blisters my core, courses through my body, as hot threads rush out of my neck. My sister is going to kill me and I deserve it.
I let it happen.
I want it to happen.
I don’t want to be here knowing I ruined everything.
Octavia rips Amelia off me, throwing her backwards.
“Oh, Red,” she says, cradling me. I’m weak. But I am also broken on a much deeper level than the blood loss.
I curl into her arms, and I break apart, sobbing. “I should have been there. I should have been there. I’m always there for her. This is my fault.”
“No. Blame me. I am the one who turned her. I did this.” But her voice is desperate, harried, and I don’t believe everything she’s saying.
“What happened?”
She explains. She tells me that Dahlia hunted her friends, drained Amelia. And with every word she says another piece of me withers.
I scramble out of her arms. Hysterical. I’m rocking. Screaming. “Make it go away. Make it go away.”
“Red,” Octavia pleads, desperately trying to get through to me. But I can’t hear her, my mind is shattered. Hurt. Desperate.
“I killed them all. Everyone dies because of me, Octavia. I don’t want to remember. Make it stop.” I lunge for her. Grabbing her and pleading with her.
“I can’t.” She shakes her head. “I swore I’d never do it again.”
“OCTAVIA. PLEASE. I can’t live like this, I can’t bear it. My sister is everything I despise because of me.”
“You despise me?”
“That’s… that’s not what I meant.”
But her eyes drop, the damage is already done.
She pulls away from me. “If I do this, if I take it away it’s because you asked me to, not because I wanted to do it. This isn’t the right thing to do.”
But I’m sat rocking on the floor again. “I killed them. I killed them all. You have to take it all away. Please, take it away.” It doesn’t matter that I’ve hurt her. Nothing matters. I can’t live with the knowledge of what I’ve done.
And then… Just like that, everything eases, and Octavia is whispering tales of hate and hurt, truth wrapped in lies. Tales of her betrayal. She played my villain. Gave me someone to hate because that was the only way to heal my mind. To stop the cataclysmic break that was my soul tearing in two.
She took it all away.
All because I asked.
And now, as I lay dying in the ring, Sadie walking away, the truth is finally mine.
And nothing is better because of it.
Everything is worse.
