But then he went in for the kill and told me, “Oh, little bird, don’t you know when you have been played?”
I frowned so hard it felt as if my face would crack.
“Ha! Says the one using his body as a puppet! The real Riley never played me!” I defended, but when he started laughingmanically, I felt it against my skin just like that blowtorch he had used.
Then he chilled me to the bone when he played on new fears and fed them with a hunger I never knew existed. All those doubts, all those times I questioned if it was real…
It all came crashing back at me like a wave of insecurities when he said,“I wasn’t talking about Riley.”
I took in a labored breath, making his grin deepen before he drove the dagger home, creating the biggest wound of all.
“I was talking about the King who left you to rot in this world while he is now free to cleanse his own…”
“…Thanks to the foolish key he made fall in love with him.”
“Thanks to the foolish key he made fall in love with him.”
Those words, fuck, they felt like a physical lash against my heart. Of course, the rational part of my brain screamed at me that this was all just a trick, a tool to use from a dark mind that preyed on a person’s fears. But I also couldn’t deny that small part of me that asked,what if he spoke the truth?
No. I couldn’t think that of Atlas.
I wouldn’t.
And what’s more, I wouldn’t give whatever dark entity had taken possession of Riley the power over me. So, I forced myself to ask the difficult question. To ask why it was easier to believe the evil that fed doubt, than it was to trust the fragile possibility that Atlas could truly love me. Regardless of what I could give him, even though the only thing I had to offer him was opening the Rift and returning him home.
Because the bad is always easier to believe, a small voice whispered in my mind.
A voice I crushed a second later when I heard Riley’s satisfied laughter echo in the empty room. A sick trick that I was letting work and weave around me, and my head snapped up as I gritted out, “Who are you?”
His smile grew wider.
“Your worst nightmare.”
I still couldn’t get used to that voice. It was Riley’s, but if he were the lead villain in a horror movie, full of evil and downright demonic. I hated it, but what I hated more was that I was already forgetting how his real voice sounded. The one that had reassured me things would be okay when I didn’t think I could handle anything else the Rift was throwing at us. The one who had called me cute girl. The first person to help me after the Rift. The man I once knew had disappeared in front of my eyes. Worse still, the Riley in my memories had begun to change, transforming to look like this and sound like this. But I pushed all that aside and decided to play him at his own game.
A game of doubt.
“Ha. You don’t even know me, let alone what you think my nightmares are.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he tested.
I grinned, faking my calm and nonchalant persona when I was anything but.
“And exactly what is it that you think I’m so afraid of?” I asked, testing a theory.
“I know all the boy has seen. All his memories,” he replied, and it was exactly as I thought.
His knowledge about me was simply what his stolen vessel knew.
“If that’s the case,” I said calmly, “then you’ll know exactly how I’ve never let fear claim me. You’ll know every one of your kind that I have fought and defeated.” I tilted my head slightly, studying him. “Just how many of those dark souls of yours were friends, I wonder?”
I watched his expression darken as I continued to taunt him. “I’ve always been curious what happens exactly after I decapitate one of you, burn one of you to a crisp, or blow you apart in the many ways I’ve made you bleed. It always fascinated me, the wayI saw the mist of darkness rise from the vessel you stole before evaporating. Does that mean each time I killed one of you, a little piece of you dies with it?”
When he slammed his fist against the mesh, rattling not just the metal, but the calm persona he had not long ago portrayed, satisfaction rolled through me at the knowledge I had won this round.
“And you will pay for each and every one of those deaths you took, you bitch!”
“Ah,” I replied softly. “So that’s a yes then.” Gratification dripped from every word.
