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It was so obvious, and yet everything inside me resisted accepting that the two were one and the same person.

No... That's impossible.

J was the oasis in the desert of my life that I hadn't expected to find when I had almost died of thirst out there. The last burning candle in a dark house through which I wandered, where I had made alliances with the monsters that would otherwise have pulled me into the shadows and devoured me completely. She made me forget what a bitter, vengeful, rotten man I was. To the point where I wanted to turn all the suffering that had eaten away at me, all the hatred for my fate, for the gods, all the aggression in my chest, into a weapon against anyone in this world who wronged her.

Julie, on the other hand, was an obstacle that put every fiber of my body on alert whenever she was near me. Not only had she used J against me, she had deceived me, played a twisted game with me, and made me believe I could trust her, even though I had seen the warning signs from the beginning.

Once again, I roared, throwing three more plates until a mess of shards spread across my kitchen floor and I could no longer feel the tears on my numb face.

There were two worlds that wanted to collide, and I wasn't ready for it, didn't want to be, because this, whatever it was, was madness.

Mom, Dad, Dylan, and Delilah... From the beginning, they had been the ones I lived for, the ones I had centered my life around.

How had I ever let it get this far, let her into my heart, let her make me forget that nothing but vengeance and rage should rage inside my chest?

I wanted to throw another plate, but there were none left. Instead, I ripped the double ring from my trembling finger, threw it against the wall, where it bounced off with a tinkle and then skipped across the shards with several clinks.

Powerless, I sank with my back against the refrigerator, laid my head back, and slumped down in tears.

“I'm sorry, Mom...” I sobbed like the little boy who had been passed from family to family and who had cried himself to sleep countless nights in unfamiliar beds that had not been meant to last forever, believing he would never have a family again.

He had been right.

How could I have believed, even for a fraction of a second, that I could have a future with a woman whom the gods had never intended for me from the beginning? Gods for whom I was a puppet on a string. A pawn. A sacrifice. But for what?

What powers deserved the name God when they led you into a flower garden and set all the flowers ablaze before your eyes? Over and over again...

It was as if everything inside me was contracting, with no prospect of salvation, of an end.

I wasn't someone who gave up, who wallowed in self-pity. Usually, I took all the pain, catalyzed it, turned it into the weapon with which I would exact revenge. But this...

I pulled my knees up, wrapped my arms around them, buried my head against them, and sobbed in confusion.

Like the little boy.

And suddenly they were back. The images of the car. The fire. The sharp grit on the cold asphalt beneath my scraped palms as I crawled backward with my eyes wide open while my family went up in flames. Their screams...

I grimaced and nausea tried to fight its way up my esophagus.

“I'm sorry, Dad...”

I had let them down.

They had given me everything. And me? I had strayed from the right path. And the worst part? Something inside me resisted feeling hatred, resisted rising to my feet and finally getting rid of the distraction, as I had done with every distraction in recent years.

What if she was lying to me? What if J was still out there and she had made her forget?

The tearing in my chest came unexpectedly violently. Mercilessly.

What if J had never existed? What if Julie was actually a weapon of the Councils who had tracked me down, ready to play their sick mind games with me?

Frustration, so much frustration...

But what if she was telling the truth?

No. No, Quentin. Bury that goddamn hope once and for all.

The confusion inside me grew with every passing second, and I could only helplessly reach for control as it spun further and further away from me.