Page 191 of Psycho Beasts

Aran shrugged like it didn’t matter, and smiled.

But her mouth wobbled, and her shoulders slumped.

“Still.” My eyes burned, and I couldn’t stop the tears that spilled over.

To have a word carved into your skin with such a hateful connotation.

It was one thing to jokingly call each other whores in an attempt to overcome the latent prejudice; it was another thing to have it carved into your skin, never to fade or be enchanted away.

I’d been so happy when the enchantment had removed the scars from my body. I’d felt so free.

Aran would never have that.

I gasped in air shakily. “I’m so sorry.”

There was nothing else to say.

My best friend didn’t cry, but her lip continued to tremble, and she sat down next to me.

She wrapped her arms around my shaking shoulders, and I hugged her back as tight as I could.

“I hate her so much,” she muttered, her voice monotone and eyes dry as I held her and cried for both of us. “She made sure it was enchanted to burn whenever my body got the least bit turned on.”

A sob wrenched from my throat.

I bunched my fingers into the cover as I fought the urge to scream.

My chest tightened with rage. “The half warriors did this. They sold you out to that monster.”

Aran shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter who is to blame. It’s already done.”

I hated how desensitized she sounded.

Aran was the brightest spirit I’d ever met. Her personality was as vibrant as her shockingly blue hair and eyes.

As she held on to me, I realized this was what she’d been silently battling these last few weeks.

It explained the constant hardness in her eyes and the homicidal impulses in her sleep.

How many times had I seen her compulsively itching at her back and dismissed it as something mundane, like a bugbite or a rash?

I’d been so ignorant.

This whole time, she’d been suffering.

We held each other as lightning cast eerie shadows across the room, and rain slammed against the side of the mansion.

“It will be all right,” I lied.

“It always is,” she lied back.

For the next few hours, neither of us spoke, slept, or moved. We just held each other desperately because the world wasn’t a nice place.

Hours passed, and I watched Aran withdraw deeper into herself, as if sharing her trauma had made it real.

No drug was powerful enough to shield her from herself.

* * *

---