I had drugs.
I was stone.
Chapter Nine
Nila
I’D LIKE TO say life returned to normal.
But I’d be lying.
I’d like to say I slipped back into my previous existence as entrepreneur, seamstress, and daughter.
But I’d be bullshitting to the highest degree.
Every day was worse than the one before it.
I was lost.
Alone.
Unwanted.
* * * * *
Life was a death sentence.
The press hounded me for interviews on my disappearance. My assistants pestered me with hundreds of new designs and orders. My father tried to talk to me about what happened. And my brother suffocated me with love.
It was all toomuch.
It drove me to boiling point.
In the beginning, I suffered physical healing from the Second Debt payment. I coughed often, doctors checked me for pneumonia, and the bruises on my chest took forever to fade. I used the pain as a calendar, slowly ticking off the hours Jethro left me all alone and unresponsive. I waited for a message from Kite007. I became obsessed with daydreams of him swooping in and taking me away from the mess of the press and envy of misguided people.
At night, I lay in a room that’d been mine since I was born. The purple walls hadn’t changed. My unfinished designs draped on headless mannequins hadn’t vanished, yet nothing was home anymore.
I felt like a stranger. An imposter. And the sensation only grew worse.
The strength and power I’d found on my own dissolved. My joy at suffering fewer vertigo attacks disappeared as I went from managing the incurable disease to suffering the worst I’d ever had.
Yesterday, I’d suffered nine.
The day before, I’d had seven.
I had more bruises on my knees, elbows, and spine in just a week of being a true Weaver again than Ieverendured at Jethro’s hands.
Every second the same questions hounded me.
How was I supposed to return to my old life?
How was I supposed to forget about Jethro?
How was I supposed to give up my strength in order for my brother to adore me?
And how was I supposed to forgive my father and be grateful to him for rescuing me?
How.
