Page 106 of Jagged Souls
Because now I can feel it coming. I’m about to pass out from the pain, and I’ll gladly take that over suffering from a broken heart.
Twenty-Nine
HER
I don’t feel any better when I wake up, lying on a bed in some new place – one that doesn’t smell of sex and blood and shit. The pain in my eyes... my eyesocketsis gone, as is all the physical damage Sadist dealt to me and the patch of skin cut from my pussy.
But the agony in my chest still burns with a crippling heat, and the fractures in my soul are still spreading out like a web across broken glass.
He took my eyes.
Variustold him to take my fucking eyes.
Furious rage pours through me as I think about all the lies he told me this last month. About how he was so called “devastated” over what he did to me, how he hated himself for listening to his brother and mother and the pain in his chest when he thought I had betrayed him. He swore to me he’d never hurt me again. He vowed to spend the rest of his life regaining my trust, and he’d fucking started to do it too.
Tears burn my throat as I think about what an utter fool I was. An utter fuckingfool.
My brain refused to forgive him, giving me nightmares every night about that hammer and screw and those cold, cold eyes that blanked me out as I screamed. But my dumb fucking heart swallowed up all the stories he told me about how he practically raised Rudy while their mother was busy with newborn Maddox and the other boys. It swooned over the fact that he conditioned himself to have a phobia of line-dancing goats just so Rudy could have something funny to concentrate on in crowded rooms, when his magic would grab on to all the terrible things people feared and demand he bring them to life.
And then…
Then it practically threw itself at him when I ordered a goat plushie, and he full-on freaked out when he saw it. It still sits with a knife through its face down in the basement, six rows of containment circles around it. He didn’t want to throw it away, considering it was a gift I’d gotten him, but he didn’t want to take the risk it could come to life either.
So I fell hard because he knew just what stories to tell. Stories that mirrored me taking care of Lou when our father was dealing with depression. And he did little acts that felt like genuine change. He showed me the ledger – the real one that not even his brothers (except for Khalid and Rudy) know about. He put his entire kingdom in my hands, and he was tearing down his walls for me, giving me weaknesses to exploit, trusting me even though I was angry at him.
Even though his paranoia was beaten into him by his friends, his first crush, his uncle, his cousin, his brother, his mother. He’s been fighting his instincts and twenty-odd years of experiencefor me.
And so I believed that he could change.
That he could eventually love me like I loved him.
But it was all just a fucking lie.
Variusis still capable of hurting me.
My chest aches so hard, I struggle to breathe.
How could he do that to me?
How could hechooseto take my eyes away?
Or did he wish to punish me because I offered up his tattoo? Because I revealed his weakness at the first sign of torture?
That thought almost breaks me, and I press my face into the pillow. Biting down on it, I touch the patch missing from my skin.
He poured his soul into that tattoo. Histrustwhen he never trusts anyone.
It was a symbol of his vulnerability, a declaration of his weakness.
A rebellion against all the rules he had to put on himself in order to survive being betrayed by those he loves.
It was hope.
It was fear.
It washimin all his jagged pieces.
With that simple scribble of ink, he claimed me, but he also gave himself to me. A collar to a sub. A ring to a wife. His heart in his eyes, he begged me never to remove it.
