Page 175 of The Doll and The Domination

“It’s him or me,” she says loudly.

My eyes leap from her to Arthur. He’s scared, clutching his rabbit, pleading with tears streaming down his plump cheeks.

“Please,” I beg, the word feeling foreign on my tongue. “Don’t do this to me.”

She grins, showing off her straight, white smile.

Everything in this room scorches my senses. The sight of red. It drips off the sides of the kitchen table. It puddles around the floor. It seeps from Sophia’s lips. The smell of copper and death. The sounds of Kane’s mother suffocating, convulsing, pleading for me to save Arthur.

“I’m not going to choose.” I swallow, holding the sickle against my chest.

“No?” She presses the tip of the knife into her skin. Beads of blood gush around the blade, drizzling down her chest one drop at a time.

Conflicting emotions jet through me from Kane. He cries out for her, for his brother. I search her eyes for what I should do, questioning her actions, begging for mercy.

But the blood continues to stream.

“I know this isn’t your heart,” I say somberly. “I love you.”

And Kane howls as Arthur hits the floor, never letting go of that rabbit.

~

Skylenna

“Where is he?!” I push my way through a crowd of inmates gathered at the entrance to the stadium doors.

Helga Bee pops up from her seated position on the stage.

“Where is Dessin?” I shout, eyes stinging with tears at the void blowing up in chaos.

She shrugs in confusion. “Thought they went back to you by now. I told them about the new stock of Honey in here. They ran off like they were gonna get it, but when I showed up, it was still here.”

My hands clench into fists. A dead end. Where would they go? Did something happen?

Dessin’s heartbeat hammers through the void. It’s haunting, fast, and filled with morbid intentions.

“Fuck!” I screech, throwing my hands down to my sides. I spin in a circle, desperate to find any sign of him, catch a hint of a trail that will lead to my friends. “Dessin!”

Perplexed faces, sweaty bodies, and strobing lights make me dizzy as I jog aimlessly into the stands of organized seating. I feel it in my gut, in my bones that something is horribly wrong. After finding my memories again, learning of the deep, profound relationship we really have, it’s been different between us. Like we were meant to breathe the same air, share the same thoughts, be fueled by the same power.

And something is disrupting that fuel.

It’s like someone is sawing down the bridge that links me to him.

“Dessin!” I bellow with a red face and trembling hands. “DESSIN!”

A cold fingertip grazes my shoulder lightly, a touch that resembles the softness of a feather. I jerk around like a rabid animal foaming at the mouth, thrusting my hand forward to snatch the figure’s wrist midair.

The girl yelps, fumbling back into the arms of a man appearing just as startled.

“Do you remember me?” The girl exhales shakily.

I blink through the warm wall of tears, focusing in on her bruised face. Familiar. Tan skin, copper hair, both matted and stringy, with a heartbreaking glint in her gaze. The kind that screams pity, and maybe compassion. The last time I saw them, they were dressed in white, surviving in a different setting of captivity.

“You’re the two I broke out of the asylum,” I say cautiously.

“Yes.”

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