Page 103 of Her Psycho Beasts

Even now, she is stunning. Delicate perfection. We have the same nose, the same eyes too, though I won’t get to see those again. Her mouth is smaller than mine, her skin fairer, and she’s lost much weight. But sheismy mother, as real as my own self. Just…unmoving.

Quickly, they take out each remaining line. She has a central artery line for nutrition that goes right near her heart, and I remove the ECG dots on her chest, hating that I won’t get to hear the beep of her heart on the machine now.

“Turn around,” I command to my mates.

They oblige and Mina removes the catheter that goes to her bladder.

My mother’s body lies unmoving, lifeless before me. She looks as good as dead. I strain my ears and focus on her heartbeats. They are delicate, but there. She doesn’t have long.

And I don’t want anyone else to have access to her body ever again.

“I want to burn her,” I say quietly. “She needs a cremation.”

Lyle’s eyes are uncertain, but it’s Scythe who answers instead. “She is not yours to burn yet, Aurelia.”

I whip around in fury. “How dare you?—”

But he’s shaking his head and the look on his face scares me. “She is not only loved by you. There is someone else who needs to say goodbye to her first.”

It takes me a moment to get over the shock for a second. He doesn’t mean— He can’t mean?—

But now I glance at my mother with phoenix eyes and the bonds vibrating from her soul are visible to me: one grey and dormant in death andtwothat still shine with celestial light. The first reaches out north, laced with shadow. And the second, pure but hard as if calcified, stretches out east. Towards the coast.

I nod at Scythe.

Relief shines in his eyes.“Xander is here,”he says in the group chat, and just as matter-of-factly, says to Susan and Mina, “Mace will kill you for this, if not your blood contract. Do you want to die now, or later?”

They glance at each other with the realisation, then at me. There’s so much pain in my heart right now, I just don’t have room for any more. Glancing at Scythe, I realise he is offering them a kindness.

Anger mixes with grief then. That these women are now forced to choose this for themselves.

A heinous burn singes my innermost being. It moves through me, wild and fierce. It whispers for fury. And for justice.

“You should run,” I say, my voice dead. “Get as far away as you can.”

“He’ll find them,” Scythe says flatly.

“Try,” I say, looking them both in the eyes. “Try.”

They both nod.

“Lyle?” I turn to my lion, who’d never had the chance to save his own mother. My vision blurs. “Will you carry her for me?”

Completely understanding the gravity of this and the trust I have in him, his eyes flutter with emotion. “Of course, my regina.”

I carefully drape her blanket back over her and watch as Lyle gently picks her up, half using his telekinesis and half using muscle, so she remains cocooned in the blankets. She looks so small in his arms that I just stare for a moment as Susan and Mina hurry around us, gathering their things.

Finally, she will be free. Finally, there will be no more horrors done to her body. I reach up and stroke her inky dark hair, so like my own.

“While you’re at it,” Savage says to the eagles, “which way is out?”

We definitely can’t go back the way we came, I realise with shock. It’s way too far, and there’s that monster dwelling there.

“There is an air vent system,” Susan says nervously. “If you can climb or levitate everyone up, that is. It is hidden from the outside, you’ll just need to break through.”

They take us to a service room with a duct in the ceiling. Wide enough for beasts as big as Lyle and Scythe to fit through.

“These weren’t on the plans,”Scythe tells us.“But I sense no falsehood in them.”

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