The Legionnaire Games: Day 30, hour 11
The haze lifted.
For a few blessed hours, the world was a warm, bright place filled with Sadie, John, and warm hugs.
I laughed with John as three fake fae lunatics bowed and kissed my knuckles.
For once, everything was going my way.
I had an overwhelming urge to light scented candles and gossip with Sadie about how stupid the kings were. Go for a nice breezy jog. Paint my nails red and put on lip gloss.
In my mind I was fashionable and carefree.
In reality, there was no reality. I played pretend.
Malum even retracted his earlier statement and said we could rest. Blessings were truly raining down around me.
I shuffled down the lightning-streaked hall, leaning against John. To an outside observer, it would seem like we had our arms across each other’s shoulders in a friendly embrace.
John was fully supporting me.
Whatever they’d done to slow our healing was really screwing up my joints.
I hobbled. Stabbing pain shot through my hips and knees as cartilage popped and snapped.
Sweat dotted my brow as John leaned to his right so he was basically carrying me.
“Dude, I’m fine,” I said casually and tugged away from his grip.
John smirked. “Sure, dude.” His grip tightened, and he didn’t release me.
I didn’t fight him.
How did I get such loyal friends?
John had hauled my ass out of the freezing ocean, fought next to me in battles, matched my pace on runs, and helped me get away with murder. And Sadie had almost started an inter-realm war in her quest to save me from this academy.
I was lucky.
My heart was full of warmth.
So lucky.
Malum stopped in front of our door, and his harsh features pulled up into an evil sneer. “Change of plans. We’re going to let off some steam.”
His meaning doused me with a bucket of cold water.
Then Malum grabbed my arm and said I couldn’t go to the library.
My spirits sank further.
I was bound to them and couldn’t leave.
Then, to add insult to injury, Scorpius devoured Orion’s mouth and distracted the only devil that might have been on my side.
I ignored the streaks of pain that lit up my back as they kissed. And I didn’t dwell on the images of Orion and Scorpius kissing while I lay between them, which flooded my brain.
I needed a bottle of unidentified enchanted pills and a week of therapy. ASAP.
When Malum asked if John wanted a man or a woman, a horrible feeling crushed my chest. I felt sick, which was completely irrational. John was just my friend. I didn’t care who he had sex with.
You’re still so lucky, I reminded myself as I climbed into John’s bed.
A few beds down, the demons crawled under their sheets as they attacked each other with kisses. Proof that romance wasn’t dead for everyone.
Just some of us.
The door opened, and four women entered the room in a cloud of perfume.
They were a gaggle of smooth, unblemished skin, bright eyes, long glossy hair, shiny lips, and expertly applied makeup.
They sparkled.
From their coy smiles and effervescent laughter, they still possessed a will to live. I made a mental note to ask them after the party where they got their energy from.
Was it journaling, drinking green juice, or hitting men that kept the light shining in their eyes?
I’d try anything.
I pushed my pipe between my lips and turned my hands over.
Swollen knuckles and gnarled fingers stared back at me. Raw cuticles and ravaged nails. A long gash snaked across the top of my hand and trailed down my forearm. It puckered grotesquely.
Green-and-black bruises.
The sick sensation twisting in my lower stomach intensified.
I pulled my hoodie up. Covered my wild curls. Tucked my knees under so I was cocooned in soft fabric and tugged the sleeves over my hands.
Hid myself.
Leaned back against the wall.
I inhaled twice in rapid succession, then exhaled slowly.
Sixteen, twenty-five, thirty-six, forty-nine, sixty-four, eighty-one, one hundred, one hundred and twenty-one, I counted upward in square roots.
I held on to that feeling of being lucky with bloody nails.
You are blessed.
The demons writhed under their sheets, and each king had a woman beneath him. Grunts, slaps, and moans echoed.
The men fornicating was nothing new, but something felt different, and it wasn’t that I was no longer disguised as a dude.
I tried to look away.
Tried to not stare.
I failed.
I watched with morbid fascination.
Everyone was naked but John. He still wore his T-shirt, but his sweatpants were pushed down his muscular thighs.
A black-haired woman with curly hair knelt in front of him, and her impressive boobs were pushed up in a lacy bra.
She was small and curvy. Excessively pretty as she gagged with half his dick down her throat while John’s hands fisted her curls.
His face was barren of dimples.
His jaw clenched, his dark eyes hooded, and the muscular lines of his neck strained. He didn’t look like my happy-go-lucky friend.
John pulled the woman back and forth on his dick.
He looked intense.
His pace was slow, almost torturous, and it was a stark contrast to the kings’, who pistoned their hips like it was a race.
John leisurely wrung out his pleasure with smooth, hypnotizing movements.
Look away. You’re staring at your friend like a creep. What are you doing?
John’s tongue snaked out and licked his surprisingly full lower lip. He groaned softly as he dragged his hips back and forth.
Fireworks of pain exploded down my spine.
I meant to look away, I meant to study my cuticles or stare at Horse, I meant to do anything but watch my friend have sex.
But I didn’t.
Minutes stretched.
Now that I was staring at them, men were kinda ugly.
I couldn’t look away.
Goose bumps erupted across my skin, and I shivered. My flesh chilled. The blinds were still open, but the room twisted in shades of grayish red.
I picked my lip and tugged at the fine layer of skin.
Pulled it off. For a long moment, I debated selling it for money to my fae worshippers. Then I remembered I was rich and stopped wondering how much I could charge for my skin.
I forced myself to focus on the room.
Such a stupid thing—sex—just two bodies wringing pleasure from each other. Not a big deal, just a natural bodily response.
One I could never do without pain.
My head throbbed with the beginning of a tension migraine. The weight of an imaginary fae crown was heavy on my skull.
The word whore crushed my spine.
In my mind, I took the place of the leviathan competitor, and I was crucified to the sacred tree. Bleeding out slowly, I whimpered as people talked and chatted around me.
Sun god, he was being tortured a foot away from me as I’d laughed while feeling lucky.
Sari’s expression of disgust flashed through my mind.
I shivered harder.
She wasn’t wrong.
John glanced up, and his dark eyes pinned me as his mouth opened in ecstasy.
He held the woman’s face still as he found his release. Cum spilled out of the corner of her lips.
John tucked himself back into his pants, and he looked around the room. His expression went from pleasured to concerned as he gave me a questioning smile.
I tried to return it, but I couldn’t.
My facial muscles didn’t work.
The haze was back.
“You okay, Aran?” John asked as he climbed onto the bed beside me.
He smelled like sweat and sex.
Sick burned my throat as I rasped, “Sure.”
He pried the pipe from my icy fingers. “Here, let’s play a game. I’ve been wanting to do this.” He blew out a smoke eagle. “Now we’ll see who wins.”
His dimple flashed.
“Sounds fun.” My voice was far away, like I was speaking down a long, dark tunnel.
John pitted different animals against my crow, but each one lost the fight. Of course they did. Horse was named Horse for a reason. He was a majestic beast.
After a few rounds, John randomly blurted out, “I’m sorry.” He dragged his hands roughly through his messy brown hair.
“For what?” My voice had no inflection. “Everything’s fine.”
“Aran, I—”
I held my hand up. “Give me the pipe. I want to see Horse take on a dragon.”
John narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth like he was going to say something else.
With every ounce of strength I possessed, I forced my lips to curl upward and laughed. “Seriously, don’t be weird. I’m fine. Just tired.”
A long moment passed, then John grinned. “Okay, dude. All my money’s on the dragon.”
He draped his arm across my shoulder.
“You’re on.” I kept smiling until my cheeks ached.
Hours later, Malum’s silver eyes speared me as he bellowed his release. Because who didn’t love coming while staring into the eyes of their enemy? Normal people.
If John was smooth, then the fiery king was savage.
Brutal.
Wild.
He smiled at me, flashed white teeth-stained pink from where he’d bitten the woman beneath him. Scarlet flames trailed across his shoulders like a cape.
I studied my palm like I found something interesting, then flipped him off.
His head tipped back, bronze muscles tensed as he laughed.
Creep.
I shivered but didn’t let my cheeks pull downward as I matched his expression.
Two monsters. Acknowledging each other.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I pulled my hood lower.
I sank deeper into a state of fugue.
And my smile didn’t fall as I slept. It didn’t fall when we went for a fifteen-mile morning jog. It held as we stretched and did a circuit of push-ups, sit-ups, and burpees. It stayed in place for every. Single. Meal.
Even when I searched the great hall and found Sari glaring at me like I was repulsive.
I smiled wider.
Her lips curled with disgust, and she looked away as my heart cracked in my chest.
The grin was plastered on my face as Sadie and Jax rebraided my hair while we talked to the girls on the phone.
I spent days in a trancelike haze with a fake grin on my lips, thinking I’d fooled everyone.
I was wrong.
After my hair was sorted into two perfect French braids, I excused myself to use Sadie’s bathroom.
With the lights turned off, I splashed water on my face and hyperventilated at the sink. Let the darkness comfort me.
The door squealed, and I looked up.
Jinx’s midnight-black eyes hovered inches from my face, and since I was hunched over, we were the same height.
“Pull yourself together,” she ordered.
“Why are you in here?” I forced out a carefree chuckle. “Also, what are you talking about? I’m fine.”
Crack. A palm smacked my face.
“Ow, what the fuck?” I clutched my already bruised jaw as it throbbed in time with my heartbeat.
Jinx rolled her eyes. “You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. At least pretend you have a shred of emotional maturity.”
“Hmm.” I tapped my lip like I was considering it. “Get away from me before I murder you.”
Crack. She smacked me again.
“Horse, attack the small, malnourished bitch,” I snarled.
My crow didn’t budge from where he was perched on my shoulder. In fact, I was 99 percent certain he rolled his eyes at me. He’d never refused to obey me before.
I grumbled at him, “I’m renaming you Rat.”
Jinx leaned forward so our noses almost touched.
She whispered forcefully, “Concentrate, woman. This is serious. A lot is at stake right now, and you’re falling apart like you’ve earned the luxury to mope. You need to focus on acting righteously, starting post hoc.”
“Grow up,” I scoffed with disbelief. “There’s no such thing as righteousness. Name one thing in this realm that’s morally proper. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
Jinx’s pale features seemed pointier in the darkness, and I had the sudden urge to look away because it was like staring into the uncanny valley.
Something was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
She snarled, “If I had to tell you, then it wouldn’t be justifiable good. It would be you mimicking virtue to prop up your overinflated ego and hollow sense of self.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You think you’re so smart because you read Nietzsche and philosophers.” My laugh was raspy and harsh. “But you know nothing about the real world. I don’t take advice from sheltered little girls.”
Jinx grabbed the front of my hoodie with surprising strength. “You will listen or you will perish. I’m all you have. I’m all you’ve ever had, but you’re too blind and self-centered.”
“If you’re all I have”—I let her pull me closer—“then why would I care about righteousness when I’m already damned?” I scoffed. “Talk to me when you’ve suffered a tenth of what I’ve gone through. Until then, leave me alone.”
A noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl rumbled in Jinx’s chest.
She quivered with anger as she whisper-yelled, “You wouldn’t survive a day in my body. You have no idea what I’ve done or what’s at stake.” Her voice dripped with desperation.
I’d never seen her lose control like this.
I opened my mouth to argue back, then paused because she was a thirteen-year-old girl with a loving family. “What’s at stake? What’s wrong with your body?”
Since I was part of that family, it was my job to protect her.
“Forget I said that.” Jinx released my clothes and took a step away.
There was something she wasn’t telling me.
“No.” I grabbed her arm and pushed her back against the wall. I used my much larger body to intimidate her. “Explain yourself right now. What are you hiding from us?”
“I wasn’t planning on doing this, but,” Jinx mumbled under her breath.
The blacks of her corneas expanded until they consumed the whites of her eyes.
It was like staring into the vacuum of space.
I needed to look deeper.
If only I could search the depths, I’d discover things I’d never known.
My subconscious brain wrenched my head to the side before I’d consciously recognized that I needed to disengage.
“No, look at me. Don’t look away,” Jinx implored.
I stared at the tile floor as I gasped for air. My eyes also went black when I was enraged.
Are we somehow connected? Is she also fae?
My analytical mind whirled as it struggled to put together all the pieces. So many possibilities.
None of them good.
“Jinx, did you also go into the bathroom? Everything okay?” Sadie called from the other side of the door.
“Yes. We’re fine!” Jinx yelled back in a fake singsong voice.
Keeping my eyes averted on the ground, I gritted my teeth and whispered, “You have ten seconds to explain yourself or I will scream for Sadie and let everyone know that you have an ability you’ve been hiding from us. Also that you’re apparently suffering every day. I’m sure that won’t make everyone freak the fuck out.”
Jinx whined, “Friggin’ hell.”
“Did you just say ‘frig’?” I asked incredulously.
“Swearing,” she said coldly, “is the sign of a weak mind.”
“Well, you’re about to be grounded for the rest of your life, so you have five seconds to explain.” My voice rose as I spoke.
“Shut the hell up,” Jinx whispered.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a swear word. You’re a hypocrite. Also, you have two seconds.”
“Fine!” Jinx paused, then said, “I-have-the-ability-to-make-people-forget-things-if-they-look-into-my-eyes.”
I gaped.
Let her words sink in.
She can make people forget things if they look into her eyes.
I paused because she’d acquiesced way too easily.
Slowly I said, “And you’re telling me this because you still plan on making me forget this conversation. Correct?” I shook her back and forth, and her silence was damning. “Well, checkmate, little girl, I’m never looking at your face ever again.”
Jinx kicked the wall. “You’re a fool. You have no idea what’s going on.”
“Explain why I need to be righteous. Explain what’s going on.” I gasped as it dawned on me. “Oh my sun god. What else have you made me forget?”
Jinx said too quickly, “Nothing, just evidence that I’m in pain. Forget about this please. I’m begging you.”
I body-slammed her, pseudo-gently, into the wall.
She was lying.
“Sadie, I have something to tell you!” I whispered loudly as I kept my eyes averted.
“No, please, please, please,” Jinx begged, sounding for the first time in her life like the child she was.
I exhaled slowly and infused my voice with sincerity. “Just tell me why you need me to act a certain way and I won’t tell them anything. I promise.”
There was a long, silent moment.
Finally, Jinx’s voice broke, and she said, “I can’t. I really wish I could, but I swear on Sadie’s life that I can’t. It’s forbidden. All I can do is try to guide you into making the right choices. If I explain things, then your motivations are muddled. I swear.”
I released her.
Nodded and said, “Okay.”
Jinx sagged against the wall and said in a small voice, “Thanks for being a good friend, Aran.”
I screamed, “Sadie, Jinx has been erasing all our memories! She can look us in the eyes and make us forget things! She’s probably been doing it her whole life and is hiding things from us! Also, she’s apparently in pain every day!”
“WHAT?” Jax roared.
There was a loud cracking noise as the bathroom door was torn off the hinges. Five shifters crowded the space.
I shrieked, “No one look her in the eyes!”
Jinx whispered brokenly, “I’ll never forgive you for this.”
“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “I didn’t buy your pathetic ‘woe is me’ act for a second.” My voice dripped with sarcasm as I threw her words back at her, “And I’m trying to do the right thing. Keeping secrets isn’t right.”
Jinx emitted a high-pitched war cry as someone constrained her.
Ten minutes later, Jinx was tied to a chair with bed linens and was facing the wall.
She’d refused to talk until Jax promised he’d voluntarily withdraw from the competition and get strung up in the tree.
He wasn’t joking.
Even I was intimidated by the threat.
Jinx had never cried, and the full-body shudders that racked her weren’t acting. You couldn’t fake grief like that.
Everyone was silent.
Finally, Sadie asked softly, “What can you tell us? Why are you in pain? Please explain?” Her voice cracked.
A long moment passed.
“I don’t use it often, I promise,” Jinx replied weakly.
Jax alpha-barked, “Tell us. Now.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up as he used his persuasion and words were ripped from Jinx’s throat.
“I suffer,” she gasped. “Every night. That is all I can say.”
Jax roared like a wounded bear.
The awful sound tore through the room and made the hair on my neck stand up.
Jax alpha-barked, “What have you made us forget?”
Jinx whimpered, “So much.” She gasped and shuddered like she was in pain. “I’ve been enchanted to not speak of it.” Tears streamed down her face. “That is all I can say.” Her voice broke. “I promise.”
She trembled violently.
Her tiny figure was racked with anguish as she cowered before her family.
Jax’s hands trembled as he leaned forward and hugged Jinx’s tied-up figure.
My mind was buzzing with new information.
My breathing was ragged.
Bile burned my throat.
Jinx suffered, and she clearly wiped anyone’s memory who witnessed her episodes. Who knew what else she’d taken from us?
As she convulsed with pain, I remembered with startling clarity the first day I’d learned suffering.
Surprisingly, it had had nothing to do with Mother lighting me on fire.
When I was fourteen years old, the tutor at the palace had me take a five-hour-long written intelligence test. It was all questions about analytics and problem-solving.
I’d thought it was easy.
The next day, I’d been pulled out of the few classes I got to take with other children.
My tutor had never looked me in the eye again.
Palace aids had whispered as I passed in the halls. Mother had stared at me strangely during meals, and even the servants had refused to talk to me anymore.
I’d never received the results from that test, and whenever I’d asked about it, people acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about.
They’d lied to me.
Everyone had.
The collective betrayal had hurt worse than Mother lighting me on fire. Before then, my young brain had decided Mother was the villain and everyone else was nice. After I’d taken the test, the illusion disappeared.
Everyone could betray me.
Maybe it had been the increased isolation. Maybe it had been a chemical imbalance in my brain. Either way, after a week of everyone acting strange, I’d woken up to melancholy.
The world had been gray.
Ornate drapes had been pulled wide open, and two suns had filled the sky; rays had streamed across the lavish fabrics of my bedroom.
But my teeth had chattered from cold.
Everything had been steeped in shades of ashen blue. Colorless. One-dimensional and flat.
Servants’ faces had blurred around me as they spoke, and their words had been lost, because for the first time in my young life, time had warped and distorted around me.
Depression hadn’t slowly crept up on me like a wound left untreated. It hadn’t festered.
The haze had hit me like a bullet.
Numbness had ensconced my existence in a layer of impenetrable ice.
It had never left.
Back in the present, Jinx’s narrow shoulders shook back and forth as she sobbed in her brother’s arms.
When I was about her age, I’d also learned to suffer.
It was like staring in the mirror.
The acknowledgment made me feel profoundly uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t understand. There were limits to the conscious experience.
It had been a few hours in Sadie’s room, but it felt like days.
I stumbled away into the hall on shaky legs and barely noticed when Orion stood up from where he was waiting for me. He lunged for me.
Orion’s grip on my arm was the only thing that kept me from face-planting into the lightning that streaked down the walls.
I’d been so obsessed with my pain that I’d missed the signs.
A child under my care had suffered horribly, and I’d done nothing but whine about myself.
I keeled over and heaved liquids onto the marble floor.
Orion held my braids away from my face as he rubbed my back.
I pulled away from his touch.
The haze was becoming a vortex, and it was pulling me under.
Deeper.
Into the black.
