“Get him, Julien! Fight back!”
“And my brother kept taunting me…”
“You’re so fucking weak.” A hard crack to the side of my skull. “You’re gonna let me kill you?” Another punch. “Like how he killed our mother? Infecting her with his fucking sickness. You’re gonna let me do that to you?” I fall, and a foot slams into my ribs. “You’re just like her, so fucking loyal, it’s so pathetic, weak.” Another kick. “I’ll kill you, and there will be nothing left of her. Nothing. Nothing,” he snarls, kicking and kicking. “She’ll have died for fucking nothing, you cowardly piece of shit—”
“And somewhere in that roar of grief, of rage and hate and betrayal, something took over me.”
There’s always been a beast inside me, my father tried to tame it with fists, but he only emboldened it. It was my mother, my smart, caring mother who could ease it, who helped me breathe through it.
But she was gone, and my brother just unchained it.
When the sounds of my memory slip through, Jasmine’s breath hitches.
The wet, sickening noise of fists on flesh, the spray of his blood, his gasps, then the feel of it soaking through my clothes, sticking to my skin.
Staining me.
“I didn’t mean to win,” I rasp, cutting the sounds away. “He always was the better fighter. Faster. Stronger. But there’s always been something in me, and when I had him on the ground, the ring red with our blood, I looked down and he… he smiled at me.”
My hand trembles, gripping the chain, letting it tether me to here, to this realm.
“And I—I couldn’t… I couldn’t kill him.” I take a shuddering breath. “So she did. Stamped on his neck, crushed it.”
That horrific sound rings in my ears, I lower my face, try to hide my wince.
“Ezekial has… offered to meld this memory away from me.” My lips pull into a brittle smile as I face her again. “But I don’t deserve that. I should feel it, I should remember it. Him.”
I don’t deserve to forget.
“I let her kill him, because I couldn’t. Just like how we let our father kill our mother.”
Because I was always too much of a coward to make the right choice. And now, that decision will haunt me forever.
“Julien…” she murmurs. “It wasn’t your fault. You were given an impossible choice and I’m… I’m so sorry you were put through that. No one should ever have to make a decision like that... I…” She clearly wants to say more, but she doesn’t understand there’s nothing more to be said.
Especially when her eyes say everything for her, the soft red brimming with tears that slowly trickle out.
I shift instinctively, stretching out my arm until my fingers brush hers, and she doesn’t pull away. She looks at my other hand instead, my fingers still wrapped tight around the chain.
“He wanted you to live,” she murmurs, stating what I realised only years later. The way he spoke to me, the things he said, it was all to make me live. “He chose you, Julien.”
I close my eyes. That smile again, his—bloodied, soft, resigned. A final gift.
Because heletme win.
And some days… Some days, I wish he hadn’t. Some days, I wish I had joined my mother.
“And after,” she swallows, being careful with her words. “After… what happened? How did you…”
“She drained me next,” I whisper, eager to have this part over. “Drank me to the edge of death, fed me her blood, turned me and then she just… left. But I wasn’t alone.”
I look away, fighting back that horrific memory, trying to calm the beast rattling inside. I can’t hold her gaze through this next part.
“A newborn vampire has no control. No mercy or conscience. Just a burning need to feed.”
“Julien… No… No don’t—”
Deafening screams, a room slick with my brothers’ blood, filled with half-gasping corpses as I sink my teeth into them, tearing away chunks of flesh, gnawing on muscle and bones until there’s nothing left…
