THERAPY
Ferine (adjective): feral
Tick. Infinity. Tock.
The hands on the clock moved unnaturally slow as flaps of yellow wallpaper peeled off the office wall like tears.
Voices warbled in the background.
The foreground was nebulous.
It had been that way ever since we’d learned the truth about the war against the ungodly.
Sweat dripped down my rib cage as the air conditioner spewed cold air onto the top of my head. Rain battered against the cramped office’s single window.
My teeth chattered.
Outside, the climate was dreary; inside, the climate was lachrymose.
The sky was bloated with water, and the room was overflowing with regret, shame, anger, and every other unsavory emotion that no one wanted to talk about.
Feelings that destroyed.
We sat in morbid silence.
A reprieve from the war—lately words were our guns and lies our enchanted bullets.
“Aran, are you paying attention to me?” Dr. Palmer snapped her fingers in front of my face. Unfortunately, one person hadn’t gotten the “sit quietly and mope” memo.
I blinked.
She snapped her fingers again.
“No.” My voice cracked, and I wet my lips. “I wasn’t listening to you.”
My therapist breathed deeply. “The High Court says these men are your fated soulmates and you need to cooperate with them for the war effort. They’ve mandated these therapy sessions because you all need to learn how to work together and unlock the full extent of your powers.”
The only thing I would be unlocking was a muzzle for Malum.
She pointed her pen at the three devils sitting beside me on the threadbare couch.
The four of us shifted.
“But you said last week that you loathe them?” She frowned. “And then you refused to elaborate.”
I didn’t understand her bewilderment.
My loathing should have been a statement with a period: a form of punctuation used to end a complete sentence.
For some reason, no one wanted to accept my hatred as final.
The kings.
Dr. Palmer.
The High Court.
Everyone was waiting for me to change my mind.
Ice traveled down my limbs until I was completely numb, sitting still while simultaneously tumbling deeper into nothingness.
Space buckled.
Tick. Infinity. Tock.
Dr. Palmer pursed her lips. “Aran, could you answer the question?”
I stared back at her blankly. The ice had frozen my eyelids and embalmed my corneas.
“You hate these men?”
She pointed again like I needed the reminder that I was sandwiched beside my enemies in a claustrophobic room meant for two people.
I refused to turn my head because I’d seen enough: freakishly wide shoulders, long pale fingers, callous demeanors, warm brown eyes, cheeks that blushed pink as they betrayed me. Three disturbingly handsome faces.
The problem had never been their looks.
“Um—” I broke out into a coughing fit.
The tension in the room increased tenfold as everyone focused on me. I would have been embarrassed, but I’d stopped feeling anything meaningful ten years ago.
I’d stopped feeling anything at all last week in the war camp.
Dick had spoken, and the lies had crumbled.
The truth—ancient peace accords—was a heinous beast.
Now Dr. Palmer handed me a half-filled cup of lukewarm water, and I gulped it down until I choked.
Liquid spilled onto my shirt.
Orion patted my back, and I flinched away from his touch. He made a soft, wounded sound as he pulled his hand away.
The air conditioning buzzed loudly.
A gust of wind slammed rain against the side of the building with splatter.
I focused all my attention on choking to death on the water—vexingly, it didn’t work, so I redirected my concentration into slouching my shoulders until I was concave.
Placing the half-empty water cup by my feet on the once white but now light-brown carpet, I pretended not to notice that Dr. Palmer scowled at it like she knew I was going to forget to pick it up.
I cleared my throat three times.
Coughed.
Wet my lips.
“Aran, please take all the time you need.” Her mouth said one thing, but her narrowed eyes and pinched lips said another.
“Okay.” My voice sounded far away, and it felt like someone else was speaking.
Her right eye twitched. One. Two. Three. Four times.
I rotted on the couch.
“Aran.” Dr. Palmer snapped her fingers twice in rapid succession, and it sounded like a gunshot.
I sat up with a start.
She pointed her pen at me.
A weapon.
You could puncture someone’s corneal artery with a pen. You could gouge someone’s eyes out. You could shank them in the stomach.
“Aran,” Dr. Palmer said harshly.
I blurted, “Yes—I hate my mates. In fact, they disgust me.” I stuck my tongue out and pointed my finger at it while I gagged, just in case she wasn’t picking up what I was putting down.
The good (annoying) doctor wrote something down on her clipboard and nodded as my eyes grew heavier.
I was barreling into a war blind.
Free-falling.
I tried to sit up straight, but my shoulders slumped.
My back muscles burned with the phantom weight of retracted wings that I couldn’t get to work.
Even back in the Legionnaire Games, I’d never actually flown. I’d just tumbled toward the dirt and used my wings to slow us down before crashing into a pole.
At least I’m good at throwing myself off high heights. I should be a professional cliff diver.
Time warped.
“Your soulmates disgust you and you hate them?” Dr. Palmer spoke slowly and overenunciated “disgust” and “hate” like she was making a point. “That’s what you said last week. Correct?”
If she was hinting at something, I wasn’t getting it.
I nodded and tugged at the permanent scab on my lower lip.
“Stop picking,” Scorpius ordered harshly.
I jumped and pulled my hand away from my face.
A pen scribbled across paper.
Was she writing about me? Rude.
I rolled my eyes, brought my fingers back to my lip, and ripped off a juicy chunk of skin.
“I told you not to pick,” Scorpius said. “Orion, pull her hand away.”
Anyone else plagued by men? Just me? Nice.
“Touch me,” I said tiredly, “and I’ll kill you.” I left off the “I’ll kill us all” because of the doctor.
All I needed was to be diagnosed as a serial homicidal maniac.
Was I one? Maybe. Did I want to be heavily medicated and locked in a room for the rest of my life? Also, maybe. It depended if Sadie was there.
Orion stared down at me.
I stared at the wall.
I wasn’t the type of person to play favorites, especially not when it came to my enemies—but Orion was my favorite, and Malum was my least favorite. One hundred percent.
I was grateful the quiet man was a buffer between me and Scorpius and the two of them blocked my view of Malum.
The kings were seated in order of descending awfulness.
They had their arms draped over one another’s shoulders and whispered among themselves as Dr. Palmer talked.
The three of them fit together.
Then there was me.
Scorpius leaned forward to glare at me, and Orion’s muscular thigh pressed indecently against mine. We were both wearing sweatpants, but pain streaked down my back.
I exhaled harshly and managed not to whimper.
It was funny how pain felt sharper in certain situations. Sometimes adrenaline and depression masked the hurt, and other times they amplified the agony.
Nothing was masking it now.
I was raw.
Life’s a cruel bitch.
“Lean back.” Dr. Palmer glared at Scorpius until he settled back against the couch with a huff.
“I want to remind you all that these sessions are for your benefits.” She scowled at each of us. “I’m not the one the High Court forced into therapy—I’m not the one suffering from bond sickness with the people I have to lead a war with.” She scoffed, like if it were up to her, she would never have chosen us as leaders. “But you do.”
Her glare was cutting.
Why hadn’t we recruited her for the war effort? She’d make a good general.
As if she read my mind, Dr. Palmer narrowed her eyes.
I could so see her stabbing people.
Scorpius barked out a string of profanities.
E-x-h-a-u-s-t-i-o-n.
It pulled me apart.
“You should join the military,” I said, and at the same time, she asked, “Aran, how do you feel?”
She gave me a withering look. “Don’t speak unless spoken to.”
“Yes, General,” I whispered.
A rain droplet left a trail across the glass.
“So can I speak now to answer, or is there a time limit?” I asked as I debated how to tell her I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.
“Aran.” She said my name like a curse and took a deep breath. “Moving on, how do you feel when Scorpius tells you what to do?”
I dug my nail deeper into my lip.
“Do you not like when he orders you around?” She pointedly looked at the blood dripping down my chin.
I scoffed. “Obviously not.” I tried to wipe the copper taste off my tongue with the arm of my sweatshirt.
A beating heart throbbing against my tongue. Mother’s blood down my throat.
“The fact that he told you not to pick at your lip—” Dr. Palmer nodded like she was realizing something (she was delusional). “—is making you act out of spite. Spite is an intense psychological response to a negative valence such as disappointment or betrayal.”
Rain streaked drearily across the window. Cold air blew on the top of my head. Orion’s thigh pressed against mine.
“Have these men betrayed you?”
Scorpius’s chuckle was harsh, as if he wheezed with pain.
I would have joined him, but I didn’t laugh with men. I only laughed at them.
A voice in my head laughed at my joke, like a monster that didn’t exist, like the Angel Consciousness that did exist allegedly, like an angel guardian, like ancient peace accords that left us stranded, fighting a war.
It’s fine.
I’m fine.
I understand my brain, I reassured myself.
The paradox of the liar—you couldn’t lie if you knew it was false, but if it was false, then you were a liar. The cycle spiraled into infinity.
I rubbed at my wrist where the heavy diamond bracelet tingled like it was alive. It pulsed warm, then stopped, and I couldn’t decide if I’d imagined it.
My subconscious screamed something to my consciousness, but there was a dead space inside my brain that I couldn’t understand. There was an emptiness where knowledge fizzled. An abyss.
Perhaps it was hours spent screaming on a palace floor.
Perhaps it was the little sister I’d never had who’d stolen my memories.
Perhaps it was three men who’d tormented me.
Perhaps it was me.
I wanted to slam my skull against the wall.
“Your emotions make sense and are valid, especially if you feel betrayed,” Dr. Palmer said slowly, like I was an imbecile.
I stared at her deadpan.
“Perhaps you’re feeling spiteful because of your own deep sense of hurt based on their actions?” She nodded. “Have they done anything to make you feel especially disappointed?”
Black ice scorched my throat, and I needed to wipe the patronizing smirk off her face.
I blurted out, “Malum set me on fire until my face melted off—and he never apologized for it.”
Dr. Palmer stopped writing and blanched.
Both her eyes twitched. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven times. A new record.
Three men stiffened beside me.
Dr. Palmer opened and shut her mouth a few times. When she finally spoke, she overenunciated each word. “You’re telling me that your—” She cleared her throat and checked her clipboard. “—Ignis set you on fire—the mate whose role is to love and cherish you?”
She showed more emotion now than ever before.
She hadn’t even blinked when she’d learned I’d been disguised as a male because I was the wanted fae princess who’d murdered her mother, but now her eyes rounded with horror like she understood why the therapy session was awkward.
Finally.
Scorpius scoffed loudly. “An Ignis does not just love and cherish his Revered. That’s a provincial and pathetic description. His life’s purpose is to worship, provide, shelter, and obsess over his Revered—it’s nothing as menial as love.”
“It’s disrespectful to insinuate that I would only love her,” Malum said.
Ever completely missed the point of a conversation?
Dr. Palmer gaped at the kings with incredulity, and her complexion paled.
I smiled.
Everyone knew the point of couple’s therapy was to make your therapist like you more than your partner—I’d won.
“You want to talk about caring for your Revered, yet you set Aran on fire?” Her voice pitched uncharacteristically high as she gaped at Malum.
Abruptly, a picture on the wall burst into red flames, and two shifters frolicking in a field of rolling hills melted into ashes.
Dramatic irony.
Dr. Palmer’s voice climbed up another octave. “You’re telling me that Aran is your Revered?” She didn’t even glance at the flaming wall. All her attention was on the leader of the kings. “And it is your life’s purpose to care for her?”
Malum grunted in agreement.
“Yet you lit her on fire until her face melted off?”
He grunted again.
When she put it that way…he sucked.
She scribbled furiously on her clipboard and pushed her glasses against the top of her nose with so much force the wire bent. “Don’t you think that is something you should apologize to her for?”
Orion grimaced and pressed his leg harder against mine. Scorpius muttered something under his breath. I put my hand into my pockets and fondled my pipe.
Making the leader of the kings apologize was like trying to have a healthy relationship with a man.
Impossible and upsetting.
Malum gnashed his teeth. “She was disguised as a male at the time. I didn’t know she was my Revered. It was—different.” His voice was harsh and gritty.
The doctor turned her chair toward me. “How do Malum’s words make you feel, Aran?”
I brought my pipe between my lips and inhaled harshly.
For the first time since I’d seen her with Sadie months ago, she didn’t comment on my smoking addiction.
“I feel like I want to light him on fire until his skin melts off,” I said in a monotone voice.
“Then do it,” Malum snarled, and I was jostled as he leaned forward to glare at me. “Stop whining about it and light me on fire, and then we’ll be even—I don’t understand why you keep fucking bringing this up? Just let me care for you. We need to move past this—we have enough to worry about with this fucking war.”
Steel-gray eyes pinned me to my seat.
Flames cackled, and the awful scent of burning carpet filled the room.
No one moved to put it out.
I leaned forward and glared back. “Exactly. Since we’re already doomed, why should I care about your pathetic bid for forgiveness? Have you ever thought that maybe I want to hold a grudge?”
“How does holding a grudge make you feel?” Dr. Palmer cut in.
“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically.
Malum’s cheeks flushed. “Do whatever you need to do to forgive me—I’ve already said you could light me on fire.” Silver eyes softened. “I don’t know if it’s possible.” Malum cleared his throat. “But I will try to reject my abilities and let flames consume me—for you—so you can have your revenge.”
A pen dropped against a clipboard.
I gaped at my arch nemesis, and his cheekbones flushed redder the longer I stared.
“Okay, we’ll try it.” I nodded. “Get me a match and kerosene and I’ll do it. Right here, right now, since you’re asking for it.”
“I have a lighter,” Orion whispered. “But I don’t want Corvus to get hurt.”
Scorpius drawled sarcastically, “There’s no way it would work.” He wrapped his long fingers around Malum’s neck, then leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “He’s literally made of fire—he’ll be fine.”
Malum tried to pull away from Scorpius, but as his mate held him close and dug his nails into his skin, he gave up struggling.
Molten silver hardened into steel as he looked over at me. “I already fucking said you could do it.” He spread his arms wide. “I’m waiting. Between the two of us—I’m not the coward.”
“Give me the lighter.” I nudged Orion.
He hesitantly reached into his pocket.
“Stop!” Dr. Palmer’s shrill voice made all four of us wince. “No one—” She breathed deeply like she was trying to get control of herself. “—is lighting anyone on fire in this room.”
“So we should do it outside of the room?” I asked.
Knuckles whitened against a clipboard, and she stared at the ceiling like she was having a mental breakdown. Extremely relatable.
A timer went off.
With a fluid movement, she sat up straight and smiled at us. Her voice was honey sweet as she said, “Your hour session is over. Please leave.”
I stood and stuck out my hand for her to shake.
“Get out of my office.” She held her clipboard tight to her chest.
I let my hand drop and nodded as I took a long drag from my pipe. “You’re truly a goddess at your craft. Great stuff—I really liked how you just repeated the same phrases.”
“Out!” she snapped.
“I’ll let you know how lighting him on fire works.” I yawned.
“I didn’t suggest that.” Her pen snapped. “As an accredited professional, I’m informing all of you right now that I will report you to the relevant authorities if any of you light each other—or anyone else—on fire.”
The smoldering picture frame fell off the wall.
We all knew there were no authorities that would punish the champions of the gods. We were the appointed authorities. More proof that lunatics ran the realms.
Who looked at Malum and thought, “That man seems stable. Let’s give him insane powers and put him in charge?” I’d like to speak to that person’s manager…and shank them.
The kings stood up and embraced one another.
Then they turned, and all three of them crowded my space.
I looked down and noticed the water left in my cup had frozen into solid ice. Peculiar.
Shadows and muscles widened around me.
I pulled the RJE device with “therapy” engraved on its surface out of my pocket and grabbed Orion’s wrist. Scorpius and Malum wrapped their fingers around my forearm.
They could have just grabbed Orion, but in the last three weeks, they pointedly touched me every time we RJE’d.
As if the split second of contact meant something to them.
They were trying to show they chose me.
Like it wasn’t too late.
It was.
Fat droplets streaked drearily across the window, and I said cheerily, “I’ll keep you updated.” I pressed the glowing device.
Dr. Palmer shook her head frantically. “Please, don’t.”
“I will,” I whispered as I blinked and the therapist’s office disappeared.
Crack.
The air stank of wet dirt, regret, and secrets.
Location: the war camp.
