Page 65 of Fabricated

“Say you love me, Darling. It would be a true tragedy if I never hear the words leave your beautiful mouth.”

“No,” I shake my head, laying mine on his, “you want to hear me say it, you better live.”

Sirens wail in the distance as Branson’s breathing becomes shallow.

“Branson?” I pull back. His eyes close. “Branson?” I cup his cheek. “No, baby. No… No! Don’t you dare fucking leave me!” My voice breaks as my vision goes blurry. Blinking my eyes rapidly so I can see him, I feel like if I look away, he might disappear. I feel it then. That snap in my chest. The crack in my soul as I clutch his shirt, curling it beneath my fist. “I love you,” I whisper, kissing his lips. “I love you, okay? I love you. I love you. I love you.” A sob crawls up my throat as I curl up against his chest. His bloody wound seeps between my fingers and through the material of my dress. “I love you,” I choke.

As his heart stops beating beneath my palm, mine dies along with it.

Chapter 27

@RaynePrescott: “Don't be frightened by the monster you created. For it is an image of yourself.”

Rayne

There is something about the way my eyes look as I see my reflection on my phone screen. The cold, dead stare that is a thousand miles away from here. The monster fully revealed as she peers out around her, heartbroken and nothing but rage to fill the cracks.

I stare at the altar being prepared for its next claim. As if taunting me, throwing my own words back at me, when I said that I’d never participate, but look where I am.

“May I beg for you to take mercy on her?” Raiden asks gently, a hand on my shoulder.

“You may, but I will not listen.” The clay statues mock me as I tilt my head to study them more.

“She’s our mother, Rayne.” His voice is full of despair and desperation. But my mind does not care. Cannot sympathize with him.

“No, she's your mother, she's nothing but an egg donor to me. The one who looked at me and saw me as something she could toss away. Someone who could take…” My voice breaks off and I spin on my heel, causing Raiden to take a step back. Tears glisten in his eyes.

I look over to the figures in robes, holding the worthless body that has already given up the fight. She hangs loosely in their grips.

“Put her on the altar. Anyone who chants her soul into the afterlife will join her up there.”

They tie her down, the leather straps slapping against her skin. I walk to the altar, peering down at her. She begins chanting. “Pray all you like, they will not find you worthy,” I whisper, my voice leaving cold chills in the air.

I take a step back, spinning on my heel as the fire grows. I am tired and fucking angry and after everything I have been through, why shouldn’t I be? They call me a monster, but where do they get the right when they had helped to make her the way she was?

* * *

“Any news?” I ask Emerald as I sit beside her in the waiting room on a couch.

She shakes her head, her hair falling from her bun. We have matching dark circles under our eyes and looked no better than when I lived on the streets.

“What are you drawing?” I nod to the notebook in her hand.

She tilts it for me to see. Branson and I on the stage, his face sketched in love as my eyes glitter with tears of happiness. Exactly as they are doing now, minus the happiness part. Emerald grabs my hand, squeezing.

“He will make it.”

“I cannot lose him. Without him, I will be nothing but a vengeful, rotting corpse.”

Her lip trembles, eyes shining as she lays her head on my shoulder. Her body shakes against mine as I wrap her up in my arms, my head on hers as I shield her from the world. He’d want that. His twin, his other half, to be protected. My eyes meet Tucker's watery ones as he walks in. Walking toward us, he sits between us, gathering us both into his arms as Emerald cries like half her soul is being torn from her. Silent tears stream down my face. My eyes close as I let the grief consume me, washing me away like ashes in the ocean. Slowly drifting to the bottom of the sea as I drown inside my thoughts until everything is dark. Until no thoughts exist.

* * *

I jump awake when I hear a bang. “Sir, please get back in the bed. You are not well.” The lady’s voice rings with alarm.

“And I said, fuck that.” The door in front of us crashes open, revealing a ridiculous image of Branson in a hospital nightgown, yanking IVs from his arms and heart monitor wires from his chest.

I jump up, almost tripping over my feet to get to him. “Branson!” I crash into him, wincing but not caring that I might have hurt him. Okay, I care, but I cannot stop myself.

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