Pretty Perfect Toy - Angel Payne Page 0,24

I let it all in. The fury. The hurt. The digging, despairing, is-this-what-crazy-feels-like confusion.

“And…she was not amenable to listening.”

“When she got home, she was already wasted.” I jam my hands into the pockets of my track pants. Burn every inch of the window with my glare. “And wasn’t really ‘amenable’ to anything, except keeping her high. Her roll. Whatever the fuck it was.”

“So she ran up here…and you followed.”

The dread eats me from the floorboards themselves. Mows up my body, ravenous and ruthless, before tearing into my brain. “She never allowed anyone up here, even me. This room was her sanctuary. But that afternoon, I only assumed it was where she was hiding more drugs.”

“Was she?”

“I don’t know.” I throw a glance around, feeling the corners of my eyes tighten. “But it wasn’t for lack of trying.” Burning memories. Heavy breaths. “I…went ballistic. Started tearing the room apart. It was either that or rip the walls out. She fought me. Screamed that the baby—our child—was sucking the life from her, and that I—” My throat clenches on the words. Tries to shove them down to my gut, where they’re fried in bile before surging back as a sparse croak. “She said that I was Lucifer. A demon for planting my spawn inside her.”

Another rasped Arcadian prayer. Determined steps, once more stopping far enough back to give me space…a blast zone for my memories. I hate it, that she knows such a thing is even necessary. I hate that she must stay away from me by even one fucking inch.

And yet—right now—I need it.

“And then she ran toward the window.”

The pokers flare me wide open now. Scorch away the layers of time, bringing images to life in my head—razing me all over again with their horror.

“Yeah,” I hear myself croak. “She ran toward the window.”

A threadbare sigh. A hurting gasp. “And she did not stop.”

Thundering blood. Hammering chest.

Fuck. Fuck.

“No. She did not stop.”

FOUR

*

Mishella

“Cassian.”

As soon as I lift my shaking hand to his rigid back, he plummets to his knees again.

This time, I fall with him.

Let him twist, crushing hard against me, grabbing me closer by fistfuls of my shirt, smashing his face into my neck. I wrap my other arm beneath, wrapping him tightly, gulping hard when the tidal wave of his anguish knocks into me like a storm wave, robbing my breath. Still, he does not make a sound. I wonder if he even allows himself to breathe. I wonder if he is afraid to.

But then he does. In tight rushes that feel like seizures, gripping at me just as violently. In spurts of just two seconds each, he breathes in pain and exhales grief, mourning the woman he could not save…the child he would never know…the fury he has stuffed down for so long.

So long.

“No longer.” The words are as much for him as me—for the thoughts I hear in him as well as me, for they are not a process of his mind. They are a cry from his soul—the light in him that fights to keep burning through the tears he refuses to shed. I clutch his nape with one hand and his waist with the other, lashing him to me before sending my spirit in to crouch over that flame…treasuring its strength and beauty. “Do not hide it any longer, Cassian. Any of it. You do not have to.”

Creator of ours, author of all the energy that binds us, please carry my words to his spirit. His flame…

But once again, his frame stiffens to utter stillness. Even his chest and shoulders seize, betraying his refusal to even let air in. I swallow hard, knowing he will eventually have to. Dreading the moment he does.

*

Cassian

I can’t breathe. I won’t. I refuse.

Why can’t I just subsist on her now?

Isn’t this all I need?

Her softness, making me forget all the shattered edges. Her scent, fresh jasmine, banishing the stigma of this old room, these forgotten books, these tired memories. Her voice, strong but silken, banishing the dirge of death that’s played for so long in my psyche.

No longer.

Her promise.

Isn’t it all I need? Why can’t it be all I need? The key to moving on…

But it isn’t.

Because I have to breathe again. Have to be reminded I’m still alive, dammit. That I lived on, and Lily didn’t.

My baby…didn’t.

Was murdered by the woman with my ring on her finger. Who couldn’t have looked at it, just once, and believed in what it represented. Chosen me. Chosen our child. Chosen our