Morpheus used her to call forth virgins to his doorstep. Men, women, and children alike flooded his dreamscape.
Xia never uncovered why he killed her sister. She had been sitting on the black beach as she watched Geia fall from the sky. She would never forget the sound of skin and bones hitting solid ground.
Phobetor liked to squeeze every drop of pain from the loss of her sisters. Every time he replayed their deaths and twisted their memory, guilt clogged her throat. She should have been stronger. She should have stepped from the shadows and fought the dream daemon just as strongly as her sisters had.
Instead, she flew under the radar and watched as they were slaughtered. Not once did she attempt to stop them. Fear was a vice around her chest and kept her feet firmly rooted to the shadows. Selfish enough to save herself rather than die fighting alongside those she loved most.
Once the Devil had her primed, he moved on to her darkest secret.
Her hunger for power and lust for blood when she fed.
It took a sky full of blood to satiate her and she loved every drop that fell in her favor.
“You’re a killer, Xia,” Phobetor whispered in her ear as her tear-stained face pressed against her downy pillow. “You’re a killer and you fucking love it.”
“No,” she whispered, pleading. “I don’t want to be a killer.” She stared blankly at the ceiling, her open eyes drying as nightmares danced behind them.
“But you are, and you’re so fucking good at it, little bird. I love to watch you on that beach as you drain the life from anyone who will listen to that pretty little mouth of yours.”
“Please,” she begged, her voice hoarse in the chaos of her mind.
Phobetor projected flashes of her standing on the beach of craggy rocks and black sand as the waves crashed. She looked like a goddess on a throne made of glass and hungry waves as her hands lifted to the stormy sky. Lightning flashed as blood speckled her skin, her body but a silhouette on the horizon.
His finger trailed up her leg and played with the line of her silk nightgown. Her skin pebbled beneath his touch and he chuckled.
Xia hated herself for her body’s reaction. She ached to be touched and was desperate for a kind love and doting attention, but this wasn’t it. Phobetor wasn’t it. Why, then, did her body betray her?
“I’ll never let you go, little bird. You are mine to break.”
***
Xia lay in the aftermath of Phobetor’s destruction. He carried her to the bathroom, collected her tears in a vile and dropped her to the floor as he always did. Though he never abused her physically, her body refused to move from the cold tile.
She wished she could just die there. Her muscles tremored as the convulsions from his torture finally started to ebb. Tears streaked her face and her nose ran as sobs wracked her body. Anger and despair sparked a flame of self-hatred in her chest, and Xia screamed for the life she wished she could have led.
Hopeless.
She ached for control, but it slipped further from her fingers each day.
Xia closed her eyes and reached for that tentative connection in her mind. It had saved her life all those years ago and she was desperate for him to save her again.
“Brooks?”
Anxiety crushed her chest, each breath a laborious effort.
“Brooks?” She said a little louder.
No answer.
“Brooks!” she screamed.
Silence.
Xia was alone in the dark.
She sobbed until her nose and throat were too swollen to continue, and then she cried until she had no tears left to give. She was unsure how long she’d been on the floor this time, but thought maybe tonight was the one she would finally stay there and never stand back up.
Soft whispers drifted through her bathroom, and she brushed it off as a trick of her numb mind. But, when she heard her name, her ears perked.
