“Delphine, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s me.” He stripped his emotion back like shelling nuts. His maddening rush of words came undone. “I wish it could have been someone else. Someone better.”
“I don’t care.”
His moment vanished. “You don’t?”
“When you first went to prison, I paid off a group of inmates to beat you and film it so I could pleasure myself to you being horribly beaten. It’s alright, we’re even now.”
“Youwhat?”
Magnus looked down his nose at us like a God brewing in storm clouds about to enact judgement. His perpetual glare was cemented on Dig, throwing daggers with his eyes into the back of my Soulmate.
I clutched Dig’s hand. He felt the message of my touch and twisted on the bed to view my brother.
“He knew,” Dig said.
Magnus’s nostrils flared. “Dig—”
“You put clode in me!” I flung at my brother.
His brows sprung up so high they almost reached the ceiling. It seemed he needed a moment to recalibrate himself. Magnus rolled back his shoulders and rooted on one of his fake smiles he used when giving speeches. “That clode was for your own protection. Dig Graves, he cannot be your Soulmate. Absolutely not. Do you know who his father was?”
Anger bubbled up inside of me and my gut turned into a cauldron. I ripped off the quilt and got out of bed. Dig was about to protest, but he knew better than to stop my endeavours.
“Duckie.” Magnus chastised me. “Lie down before you open up your stiches.”
“You’re trying to get my inheritance!” I got on my own feet. The wounds in my body ached, but the pain in my heart was far crueller.
Confusion slapped Magnus into a frown at first, then hilarity. “No, Duckie.” He laughed with faint relief. “I don’t want your inheritance. You’ve spent so much on charities. I’ve even given you some of my own money to inflate your accounts. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You tried to turn me Soulless.” My step forward made my nerves scream.
“No,” Magnus said. A tinge of worry coasted through his features. “You don’t understand.”
“I thought you were my brother!”
“Duckie—”
“I thought you loved me!”
“I do love you!”
“You don’t love me!”
“You have no idea the depth of which I love you!”
“You asshole!”
“I am Soulless!”
I quietened. A tear dripped down my cheek and splattered on the floor. It took a long moment before I was able to move my lips again. “Wh—”
“I am Soulless,” he said it again. He dipped his fingers in his perfectly slicked hair, messing up the strands. “I’ve always known that I would be Soulless and so I ensured to cultivate my image as best I could over time. It was evident you were going to be Soulless too, but you couldn’t hide it wellenough. Our parents were going to take you away… so I took them away first. I killed them, for you.”
My mouth hung open as he robbed me from my anger and exchanged it for confusion. The pressure of his words hit into my skull like spikes.
“So we could be Soulless,together. But then damn Dig Graves came along, saying he had a connection to you. Yes, I gave you clode, to sever the connection. You are better off being Soulless than us having that monster in our family.”
Magnus stared back at me with pale desperation, waiting.
