her head back harder and brought the memory erasing potion to her lips, pouring a healthy measure down her throat which would destroy a few hours of memory, enough that she would have no recollection of me bringing her here.
Her eyes became dazed and Quentin appeared, ready with a sedative as he slipped the needle into her neck. She cursed me as she passed out and I let her slump back onto the bed, having the urge to wipe my hands off after touching this vile bitch. Quentin unlocked the magic cuffs on her wrists, his breaths coming heavily.
I turned to him and he backed up as he saw the decision in my eyes, shaking his head.
“I’ve served you well!” he protested, knocking over his trolley as he tried to escape. But I shot at him with my speed, locking my hand around his throat and forcing his head back before pouring the potion down his throat too. His eyes went blank and I shoved him across the room, shooting away from him and unlocking Janice from the bed, throwing her over my shoulder.
I snatched my Atlas and the money I’d paid Quentin as I left the room and raced back upstairs to Psych. I left her in the corridor where she was already stirring, the dose of sedative obviously low enough that it hadn’t completely knocked her out. I was gone before she opened her eyes, all evidence of what I’d done destroyed apart from the video on my Atlas. I promptly deleted it as I made it upstairs. It didn’t serve me. Only the truth locked in her head did. But unless I could convince the FIB to investigate her or one of the other assholes who worked down there, even that knowledge was useless.
As I pushed into my bedroom and stripped off my uniform to take a shower, I was filled with the unshakeable urge to go to Rosalie. To see that she was alright, still sleeping soundly in her bed. And by the time I’d done washing, the curse mark on my arm was throbbing as if begging me to follow through on that need. But I had no good reason to go marching down to her cell block and charging in there. The other guards would think I’d lost my damn mind and I didn’t need to draw attention to myself.
I sighed, drying myself off and pulling on a pair of boxers as I stepped back into my room. It was cold and bare and felt like the last place I wanted to be in the world. But I always felt this way here. And the problem wasn’t the room. It was being alone with myself.
As I fell into bed, trying to fight away the sickness over what I’d learned tonight, the curse turned on me once more. And I was dragged down into a sleep full of my past, returning to face the man who’d raised me as a monster. My personal nightmare. Benjamin Acrux.
I sat in group therapy, bored to fucking tears as Sparkle stood on the far side of the circle telling her story while holding the Stick of Truth. Mrs Gambol had produced it with a flourish at the start of today's session, claiming it was a branch from a pixie tree and had been blessed with a truth spell by Faerial the Great. Seeing as I was like eighty percent certain that Faerial the Great was nothing more than a bedtime story for kids, I had my doubts. If he had been real, I also firmly believed he was an idiota because the story of his death had always annoyed the hell out of me even if a bunch of the other stuff he was supposed to have done was pretty impressive.
Long story short, Faerial the Great was a Phoenix Shifter who had lived a few hundred years ago and during his lifetime he’d been responsible for coming up with all sorts of spells and creating countless magical artefacts. He’d supposedly used his Phoenix fire in never before tried ways as well as using his Elemental magic for things no one had ever considered before either. The man was a genius – assuming he really was responsible for the discovery of half of the things he’d been credited with – but as happened with a lot of great Fae, he’d clearly begun to believe in himself too much.
I’d read several books on him, gaining something of an obsession with him