I pull the blade free with a wet, sucking sound and step back, letting her body slide down the wall.
“What have you done?”
I twist around.
Mary is standing in the middle of the room, eyes wide with horror, staring at the body behind me.
“It’s over,” I say, jaw clenched, voice raw with exhaustion and triumph. “It’s finally fucking over.”
“I told you,” she whispers, voice small and devastated. “I told you you’d kill her.”
I frown. Something’s wrong. The body behind me shifts. The hair changes from black to honey. The curves change. The face?—
Sophia.
She’s lying in the middle of the room now, not against the wall. Blood pooling beneath her, the long, vicious gash from navel to sternum still gaping open, intestinesglistening wetly in the low light. Her eyes—those beautiful green eyes—are open, staring at the ceiling, unblinking.
No.
I drop the karambit. It clatters loudly on the floor.
“No… no no no—” I stumble toward her, knees hitting the ground hard beside her body. My hands hover over the wound, shaking, covered in her blood.
“Sophia—fuck—Sophia, please?—”
Her head lolls toward me. Those eyes find mine, filled with betrayal and pain.
“You promised,” she whispers, blood bubbling at the corner of her mouth. “You promised you’d never hurt me.”
I press my hands to the wound, trying to hold her together, but the blood just keeps pouring between my fingers, hot and endless.
“I didn’t—I thought—I thought you wereher?—”
Mary’s voice comes from behind me. “Valeria was right. You are a monster.”
"Shut up!” I scream at her. “Please, God. Sophia,look at me,look at me, I need you to?—"
Suddenly, I’m on the other side of the room. And I'm holding the karambit again. Covered in blood.
My hand won't open. I’m screaming at it inside my skull—open, drop it, let go, you motherfucker, LET GO—but my fingers stay curled around the handle with that terrifying, ingrained precision.
Muscle memory. Years of training. Thousands of kills. The blade is part of me. The one thing Valeria made sure I would never hesitate with. The one thing that has always known what to do when the rest of me was too weak or too human to act.
"No." The word comes out in pieces. "No no no no. Whatthe fuck did I do? Sophia?” I scream, still unable to let go of the karambit.
The horror is bottomless.
The realization is worse than any drug, worse than any chain, worse than anything Valeria has ever done to me. It’s the kind of horror that strips a man down to the bone and leaves him staring at the monster he’s always been.
My vision tunnels. My heart hammers so hard like it’s trying to punch its way out of my chest. Sweat mixes with the blood on my skin, and I’m shaking.
“Sophia, no. Please. I would never— I couldn’t— I love you, Iloveyou?—”
The karambit stays in my grip. Warm. Wet. Accusing.
“It was you.”
Mary’s voice. Not Valeria’s. From everywhere.
