The Demon's Half

Chapter 43

Bo and Odysseus had dragged my body behind the witch called Millicent. My feet scraped uselessly along the ground.
My brain was a graveyard. I should've been dead. How many times had I died inside the walls of this castle?

I couldn't open my eyes.
But I knew this wasn't the dungeon. The walls here weren't damp. The floor wasn't slick with mud, water and other things. The air up here was colder. Like being stuck in a freezer. The floor was against my cheek. Blood and drool slid from my lips, pooling beneath me in a sticky puddle that stung where it touched the raw skin of my chin. And weirdly, it felt like the sky was here. Touching me.

A soft hand brushed back my hair. So gentle and familiar, I relaxed under it.
"Mamá...?"

Small hand. It felt like her.

A voice cut through the fog.
"Is Millicent gone?"
My heart knew that voice.

I tried to open my eyes. They didn't work. The darkness pulled at me like sleep. Like peace.

"All clear."

"Okay, Morgan," he said. "I don't have the gentle touch my little brother has."

Hands grabbed me.
"No—"

"Close her mouth and keep her from screaming."

A flash.
A jolt.
A shatter.
My leg erupted, a starved beast chewing through muscle and tendon. I tried to scream.
But a hand clamped over my mouth. Her hand. Holding me down. Smothering the sound as I thrashed.

"Morgan, stop moving!" The woman's voice called, far away.

They were killing me.
She had come to break me.
Ornella.
She hadn't come to question me, or threaten. She'd come to end me.
I tried to fight. But my body refused. It hung limp in their hands, bones cracking, nerves screaming, shattering over and over and over.
It stopped.
Just like that.
The pain didn't fade. It pivoted. As if the wound was still there, but no longer open.

The hand lifted from my mouth. I gasped for air, and filled my lungs with it. Filling a body I didn't recognize. I forced my eyes open. The world came in pieces until I saw Odysseus. His hands were drenched in my blood. His face unreadable.

A hesitant touch. "Morgan—fuck."
Jade. She was trembling. "You scared me. I thought you..."

Her voice cracked and so did I.

"Logan," I said. "Logan."

It was all I had.

Jade's hand threaded deeper into my hair. "It's okay. I'm here."

But I kept sobbing his name. "Logan... Logan..."

Because I had ruined him.
I had lied to him. Ripped the truth from his mind. Dressed it up in silence and called it mercy. I violated the one person who trusted me with everything. Who loved me enough to beg through tears and blood. And I erased it. I erased him.
Logan's love was past tense now. And gods, it hurt. It burned. As if I'd swallowed the sun just to keep him warm, and now there was nothing left inside me but ash. But some sins aren't confessed; they're worn, like a crown of hooks.

I turned my head, wincing as pain was slowly being erased from my ribs. This place was huge.
And it was completely open to the sky next to us. I could almost touch the clouds.

Jade was crouched beside me, her hand still tangled in my hair.

"Mortals are so fragile," Bo drawled from somewhere behind us.

I sat, leaning against Jade. My body screamed. My tears didn't stop. Elena was gone. And now, so was Logan. Gone in different ways, but gone all the same. I wasn't grieving anymore, I was empty. And empty was worse.