Page 89 of Crucible

“Save it.” She gives me her back again and puts the lids on the tumblers.

I don’t hang back this time, though. I step up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist.

She tenses but doesn’t shrug me off.

Progress.

“Some day, I’ll tell you about what happened to Zeke,” I promise. “I’ll tell you about him, and me, and Bane. I’ll tell you what they did to us, but only when you’re not mad at me so that you don’t think I’m fessing up to make you feel sorry for me.”

Aurelia tries at first to pretend she doesn’t care, but then she’s turning around in my arms and peeking up at me. “You said his name last night. Zeke. Who is he?”

I take her hands and place them on my face. “He’s who you should see when you look at me. This is his body, Aurelia. I just live in it.”

Her lips part to respond, but then she shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Zeke and I share the same body, but we’re not the same people. We don’t just have different names. We have different memories, sometimes, and different mannerisms. We don’t always like the same things either. His favorite color is black. I like purple. We even sound different.”

I hold my breath, expecting her to freak out, but all she says is, “Purple? Wow. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“It looks fun,” I explain with a shrug. “I like fun.”

Finally, Aurelia grins at me, but it doesn’t last. I can see the wheels turning in her head and her struggling to name the pieces she’s putting together in her head. “So what you have is like…multiple personalities?”

“It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder, but yes.”

“Seth, that’s crazy.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Her light brown becomes flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I-I’m sorry. That was rude.” She starts trembling in my arms, too afraid that I’ll hurt her.

“Shh. It’s okay.” I turn my head and kiss her small hand that’s still holding my face. “It sounds pretty fucking whacked to me. One day, I just woke up in this body with no idea of who I was, where I came from, or why I was being tortured. I had no memories. All I had was Ezekiel.”

“Tortured?” she gasps.

I kiss her nose and say, “Later.”

“So this is his body, and you…”

Aurelia leaves me to fill in the blanks. “Bane and I protect him.”

“Bane?”

“You don’t want to meet him,” I warn. My grave tone makes her eyes widen. That guy freaks even me out, but I don’t want to scare Sunshine, so I leave it at that. Aurelia’s lucky it was me that Ezekiel woke up that day and not his guard dog.

“Is he scary?” I nod, so she peers at me curiously. “Scarier than you?”

I don’t like hearing that she’s scared of me, but I guess that’s fair. “Oh, yeah.”

Her voice is casual as she drops her hands from my face to my shoulders before sliding them down my chest. She touches me willingly for the first time, and maybe that’s why I think nothing of it when she asks, “Are Thorin and Khalil afraid of him?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. So if you all share the same body, how do you protect Zeke?”

The swift change in subject confuses me for a moment, but I go with it. “I take his pain. Zeke is…fragile. He wasn’t always, and it’s not as bad as before Thorin and Khalil got him out, but he has a setback every once in a while.”

“Out? Out of where?”

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