Valor

Chapter 40

Waking up this morning proved to be more painful than any other morning I've had to deal with before. I've dealt with bullets to almost every part of my body, burns on my most sensitive places, and cuts that went without stitches, yet waking up this morning was worse.

If I had to give it a reason it would be simple: because I woke up.

A part of my mind remembers being in a fever state last night and asking Kai to just let me die. He held me like I was the most precious thing in the world even after I shot his brothers and stabbed him and Dame. i don't even know where the words came from, but I'd be lying if I said they weren't true.

Waking up this morning, now without the fever to guide me, proved just how correct I was. As soon as I opened my eyes I wanted to scream bloody murder because heaven is definitely not the shitty room in the Valor's house.

Maybe hell is.

No matter how hard I try to take Kai's words to heart, I just can't. There is a dark cloud covering every expanse of space around me and frankly, I don't feel the need to shake it off. It's comforting.

I don't want my days to continue. I want to drown in the blackness and never feel anything else ever again.

"Lilah, come on, you need to eat something." Dame's voice comes in from somewhere in the small room I'm in.

I haven't moved and inch since I opened my eyes. I'm lying on my side on the mattress on the floor, my eyes glazed over with emptiness. Kai left this morning when Mav came in. He had to be an ass and tell him what I said last night which only made Mav more upset. Ever since then at least one of the brothers has taken a spot in this room simply watching me.

It's like they genuinely think I'm going to kill myself the second they take their eyes off me. Don't they understand that I can do it by simply signing off–closing my brain down and letting my body rot?

All they're doing is taking a front row seat to the show.

I can hear Dame's footsteps shuffle closer to me before his shoes come into view. He crouches down on the floor and places a bowl of soup and a glass of water near my head, then rubs his hand against my head, pushing the stray hairs away from my eyes.

It's not like it matters much, I'm still not seeing anything as it is.

"Please, Lilah. I need you here." Dame says, his voice so broken that I don't even need to look at him to see the hollowness in his eyes.

He lets out a breath when I don't respond, sitting down against the back wall, his hand still stroking my hair.

He doesn't say anything for a few moments; he simply continues petting me as I stare off into nothingness.

Finally he lets out a sigh, "It was so difficult watching you for those two weeks Lilah."

It didn't feel like two weeks. It felt like a split second in which I relived my worst nightmares. Every horrible thing that I have gone through or that has been done to me happened again. I felt every single knifestroke, heard every gunshot. It felt like my heart was being torn in two over and over again.

"You would have these terrible nightmares. You'd be screaming or crying. Sometimes you'd say things. No matter how hard we tried to wake you up, you wouldn't stop. We would hold you, trying to calm you down, and still, you could't escape."

It hurts to hear those things. Not so much because I'm imagining what I went through, but moreso because I'm imagining how Dame must have delt with that. Still, I don't let the glaze move from my eyes or let my body contract as it so badly wants.