Page 159 of Deviant

I blink a couple of times before my eyes land on his, Elias, sitting in a chair beside our bed.

“I need to know,” he says after a pregnant pause.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I reply, more alert, knowing exactly what he’s referring to.

“I… need… to… know,” he says through gritted teeth this time, unable to keep his temper at bay.

I sit up and lean against the bed frame, hugging a pillow to my chest.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

His penetrating gaze tells me that I won’t leave this room until he gets what he came for.

“You’ll never look at me the same way if I tell you.”

“I don’t already,” he admits, causing me to cringe at the coldness in his voice.

He’s gone to me now.

I was so afraid of losing him toThe Scourgethat I didn’t even consider there was more than one way for that to happen.

“Very well.” I take a fortifying breath. “Where would you like me to start?”

“At the beginning. Leave nothing out. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“I’ve never lied to you. To everyone else, yes. But never to you.”

The scoff he lets out says he doesn’t believe me. I try to ignore how that makes me feel and start my tale from the beginning, just like he demanded.

And since he doesn’t want me to leave anything out, I make sure to tell him everything. Even the part where Nora told him about her intentions of enteringThe Scourge.I know it’s cruel of me, but if I didn’t include it, he might have sensed I was leaving something out. I tell him how I followed Nora into the church and then the cemetery, how I spied on her as she talked to the old priest. I tell him about how Nora told me she found a way to get selected for the Harvest Dozen and how terrified I was to lose her. I tell him how I planned to steal the drugs from the sheriff’s station and use them to incapacitate Nora long enough so she couldn’t complete the Harvest Moon ritual. I tell him how my father found us the next morning in the kitchen as I cradled Nora’s lifeless body to mine. I even go as far as telling him how, after killing Nora, life stopped having any meaning to it, how I would visit Grove Bridge every night with the sole intent of killing myself. But that every time I tried to fling myself off it, I would hear her voice stopping me. I even tell him that the only time I felt better was when he treated me like shit. Because that’s what I believed I deserved. And I still do, hence why I wanted him to kill me. But before I learned of his intention, being selected forThe Scourgewas the only way I had found to kill myself. I even tell him what my father told me just as we left Blackwater Falls.

By the time I’m done, I feel like I’ve relived every last traumatic memory all over again.

As I close my eyes and envision Nora’s lifeless body in my lap, I allow myself to feel just a glimpse of the pain and misery from that night, fully aware that if I open the door to such anguish, it will devour me whole.

“Is there anything else you want to know?” I ask just as coldly, wiping the tears that stream down my cheeks.

Elias just leans back into his seat, his mind working double time before he offers me a clipped no.

Since I doubt he’ll say anything else to me tonight, I slide out of bed, put on my shoes, and pick up my backpack.

“I’ll be staying at Lucy’s tonight. You have the room all to yourself. But tomorrow, maybe it would be best if you asked Five for your own room. I doubt you’ll want to share a bed with the person who stole your sister away from you.”

But as I grab the doorknob, I hear him call out my name. The word comes out faint—so very faint, it almost seems he didn’t want me to hear it.

I don’t turn around, preferring to keep my hand on the doorknob while I wait for him to say something. But when more than a few seconds pass, and he still doesn’t utter a word, I turn the knob and leave.

Once in the hallway, I slide to the floor and let all the misery I had kept inside me spill out.

I’ve lost him.

But then again, did I really have him? Was he ever mine to lose?

The answer to that question is so obvious to me now.

Elias was never mine.

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