Page 74 of Dual
Then, like a door slamming open in my mind:wait, did someone come to kill me?
The thoughts crash into each other, a violent collision of horror and realization. Mads ran for a reason. She left Domhnall—the love of her life, the center of her universe—for a reason. The bitter taste of truth floods my mouth.
"She was protecting him," I whisper to the empty room, my voice barely audible over the crackling fire. A log shifts in the grate, sending up a shower of sparks that dance and die. "Us. She was protecting us."
While I was busy hating her, resenting her, plotting to get rid of her... she was the one making the sacrifice I couldn't bear to make. The weight of this realization presses down on melike a physical force, making it hard to breathe in the suddenly too-warm room.
I stagger to my feet, knees weak and trembling, snatching the page from the floor, and stumble back to the bathroom. The cold tile shocks my bare feet, a grounding sensation amid the chaos of my thoughts. The woman in the mirror is a stranger—hollow-eyed, pale as death, with panic bleeding from every pore. Strands of hair stick to her sweat-dampened forehead, and her pupils are so dilated her eyes look black in the harsh fluorescent light.
"Mads," I call to her, pressing my palms against the cold glass, feeling its smooth, unyielding surface. "Mads, I need you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't see it. I need you back."
Nothing. Just my own terrified reflection staring back at me, the bathroom's stark lighting casting harsh shadows under my eyes, highlighting every fear written across my face.
I fumble for my phone on the counter, nearly knocking over a bottle of Domhnall's cologne, its spicy scent briefly filling the air as it wobbles. I dial Dr. Resnick with shaking fingers, leaving smudges on the screen.
"I need a session," I blurt when he answers, the phone pressed so hard against my ear it hurts. "I made a terrible mistake. I need Mads back. I need you to undo it."
The silence on the line stretches so long I think he's hung up. All I can hear is the soft static of the connection and my own ragged breathing echoing back at me.
"Dr. Resnick!"
"I'm here." His voice is measured, careful, with thatclinical calm that suddenly feels like sandpaper against my raw nerves. "I explained when we began that this therapy can have unexpected consequences?—"
"I don't give a shit about consequences!" My voice cracks like thin ice, the words bouncing off the bathroom tiles. "Just put me back the way I was! Make her come back!"
"The mind isn't like children's blocks, Anna." The patronizing gentleness in his tone makes me want to scream. "You can't knock them down and set them up the same way again. The brain is?—"
“Can you at leasttry?” Desperation claws at my throat, making my words come out strangled. I catch sight of myself in the mirror again—eyes wild, chest heaving, knuckles white around the phone. “I need her. I need hernow.”
He sighs, the sound of a man who knows his limitations, the exhale crackling through the phone’s speaker. “I have an appointment at two?—”
“I’ll be there.” I hang up before he can say anything else, the phone slipping from my sweaty palm. I slide down the bathroom door until I’m a crumpled heap on the cold tile floor, the paper signed ‘RED’ crushed in my fist, its edges digging into my palm.
The hypnosis is a failure.
I sit in my car in the parking lot of Dr. Resnick’s office after our session, hands strangling the steering wheel as I tryto catch my breath. The leather is cool under my white-knuckled grip, the car’s interior still and silent save for my ragged breathing. The afternoon sun slants through the windshield, too bright, too normal for the nightmare unfolding around me. He couldn’t reach Mads. Couldn’t find a trace of her in the echoing chambers of my fractured mind.
“What have I done?” I whisper to my reflection in the rearview mirror, the words fogging the glass briefly before disappearing. “What have Idone?”
The bitter irony isn’t lost on me. After months of therapy to get Mads out of the picture, to have my fiancé all to myself, to be whole and normal and unbroken—I finally got what I wanted.
I can have sex with Domhnall now, from the sweetest love-making to the most primal, without disappearing into the darkness of my mind. The memory of his touch, his weight upon me, the pleasure uninterrupted by blackness—it should be a victory.
But at what cost?
I’ve lost the one person who understood the danger we were in. I’ve traded Mads for Red—a cold, ruthless protector who killed a man in our home and disposed of him like garbage. The air conditioning blows cold against my skin, raising goosebumps, but I barely notice, lost in the horror of what I’ve unleashed.
Maybe I’m more like my father than I ever dared admit. Selfish. Calculating. Willing to hurt even those I claim to love to get what I want.
Thethought turns my stomach, bile rising in my throat, bitter and burning.
Dr. Ezra always insisted Mads wasn’t separate from me—just another facet of who I am, dealing with our shared trauma in her own way.
Still, it’s a blow to realize that I might be far more like the plotting, sociopathic alter I wanted to be rid of after all.
Andshe might have been more like who you thoughtyouwere, sacrificing what she wanted in order to take care of the one she loved most.
I drop my face into my hands, paralyzed by the thought and so, so confused. Does this mean Mads and Ihaveintegrated? If so, why then has another alter emerged?
