I’m so sensitive, so aware I can’t even if I wanted. For the first time in what feels like forever, the weight has lifted. All the grief and sadness escaped, and I can breathe for just a second. I feel sane and momentarily happy before it all floods back with sharp blades of guilt.
“Shh,” the creature soothes when my pleasure dissolves into tears.
When the pressure becomes agony. The sight of Etienne bloody and broken balms a fraction, but I continue to drift in an endless ocean of such … pain.
“Why isn’t it gone?” I gasp, hand clutching the twisting torment in my chest.
“It will never be gone,” it whispers. “Grief is carved into your soul, hieroglyphs that will stay with you to the end.”
My lungs wheeze with my shredded inhale. “It hurts so much.”
“I know.”
Without another word, I’m bundled in what I assume is his chest and returned through the mirror to my room. To the destruction and darkness. To the faint scent of my boys still haunting the edges.
“I can make you forget a while longer, if you wish?”
Sleep will evade me the moment he sets me down. I know it before he even crosses the ocean of glittering shards of glass. I will lie in my empty bed and think. And remember.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Help me forget.”
His response is my placement on the bed and his tendrils setting straight to work distracting me. Even when I collapse in my first deep sleep in days, I feel him holding his promise.
Chapter Eighteen
Lenora
Iwakealone.
The darkness lingers despite the mucky light leaking through the glass. The demon is gone. As is his portal to Etienne Duval’s bedroom. The only notable sign that last night had even happened is the sore state of my body. The knicks and smudges of faded blood littering parts of me.
My gaze drifts across the walls, eyeing the corners, thinking I might find him waiting for me, but his absence hums. Not in the room, but in my bones.
I draw in a breath and push aside the ruined sheets. My attention lands on the heap of discarded blankets, the forgotten pillows, the items torn and shattered from their places, and I wonder where Mrs. Pym is. True, my room is usually my responsibility. Mrs. Pym seldom attempted to gain entrance when the boys were alive. But she would poke in and take the laundry, which she hasn’t.
Gingerly, I slip off the mattress, careful of the tiny glass mirror shards embedded in the carpet. I leave it all while I venture into the washroom for a long, hot shower. I rub my scalp and skin until my fingers ache and every part of me blisters a vicious pink. Not entirely sure what I’m trying to scrub clean, but I feel well enough that I dress in a simple, burgundy slip and set to work putting my room together.
The vanity is done. No amount of glue in the world can put the pieces together, but I gather up all the broken shards and toss them. I even manage to unhinge the arms that used to hold the mirror. While not at its original state, it’s marginally less painful to see with only the table part holding what remains of my items.
I even, with caution, prop my terrace doors open. Just a crack. I don’t fully trust my mental state enough. But the scent of wet earth and fresh snow sweep through the room, toys with the drapes I managed to put back in place.
It’s passable.
Standing at its center, observing the state of things, I don’t feel whole. I don’t feel accomplished or proud of myself. There is an indifference tightly fused around my heart like a brick wall restricting the flood building on the other side.
And all I want is Marcus.
Marcus!
Horrified by the defect of my mind, I tear out of my room. Bare feet slap against carpet all the way through the house. My mind and heart clap wildly with dread, skips with all the things that could have happened to him after the door slammed. The fact that he hadn’t broken down the door to get to me is all the confirmation I need to know something terrible must have happened.
The door to his room is open a crack. It takes only a nudge to push it open the rest of the way and step inside.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but finding him sprawled across his bed, powerful body naked, surprises me. I creep closer to watch his chest rise and fall evenly. Relieved he’s alive.
Then I notice the stains.
The wet patches all across the sheets. The white, sticky splatters across his chest, puddled over his abdomen. His cock lies in a puddle, hard and swollen. The slit trickles cum to add to the amount already on his skin.
