She swallows, and I wait for her to ask—“What did they do, Kane?”
Not Why did my father create them.
Not Why didn’t I tell her sooner.
She asks what they did tome.
I forgot how kind she is. Kind enough to look past her own pain. Kind enough to choose mine. Too kind.
Especially for someone like me.
That’s when I look down. It’s the only way to contain it—this thing clawing up my throat. The memory. The shame.
“I was his proclaimed protégé. I was their way in.” I twist the ring one way, then slowly the other, staring at the tiny obsidian rocks placed within the grooves. “I was so young. Naïve. Alone. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought these creatures cared for me. That this was what… love looked like.”
“No,” she whispers.
Somehow, that one word, soft and shaken, is more agonising than any blow. I feel it deep, deep in my bones.
I can’t look at her, but I see the way her fingers clasp the edge of the table.
“Tell me they didn’t—tell me you weren’t—” Her voice breaks, and another quiet, painful, dreadful sound ends her words.
It cuts into me, makes me physically wince. But I have to keep going.
“My darkness grew, and deep down, I knew something was wrong. But I was lonely, and these women… they made me feel wanted. Needed. I believed them when they said it was love. I didn’t know I was just a tool. A way to get closer to him.”
Her breath stutters, and flickers of heat lick across my knuckles.
“Even when my father returned, itdidn’t stop.” I stare at the ring. Twist it again. “They became cleverer. Visited me under false pretences. Said things I didn’t understand.” I push my thumb against the edge of the ring. Hard. “Touched me when I didn’t want them to.”
A cold sensation floods me. Then there’s more of those soft,awfulsounds—each one hitting harder than the last.
Jasmine is… she’s crying.
I’ve made her cry.
How can noises so quiet be so horrific? Because that’s what this is.
The sound is small. Contained. But it carves through me.
I grind my teeth. Stare at the table. I need to tell her the rest. She has to understand why I’ll never be worthy.
“And I let them,” I say. “I told myself it was love. That this was what love felt like.”
Jasmine doesn’t speak, but her darkness does. It brushes over my hands in soft touches. The warmth easing the cold, the ache, the memory.
When it curls around my thumb, I stop pressing. I clear my throat, and relax all my fingers.
“Then, one day, when I was an adolescent, my father wanted to show me something. He took me to a place called The Divide.” Her darkness still touches me, but I can’t look at her. “It was formed when my father destroyed the Light Realm and created a tear between realms. A direct link between Dark and Light—no Earth Realm between them. Unstable. Horrific. But somehow, it allowed all beings to survive there. Even those of light—just.”
I shut my eyes, drag another memory from deep within. For just a moment, I feel it again, the warmth of light brushing my cheek.
“When I sawthem—what he’d dragged back from the light, two of them. Angelic, ethereal beings of light in a place that shouldn’t exist… It was the first time I ever questioned anything he’d done.”
I don’t hide my grimace.
“Children of an angel. My half-siblings. Hidden for over a decade. They’d lived peaceful, content lives in a realm barely touched by darkness. Until my father sensed the flickers within them. Destroyed their home. And dragged them down.”
