Page 327 of Of Sins and Sacrifice

His fingers retreatfrom my eye sockets. Blood spurts forward, flowing down my cheeks in rivulets. I choke and sputter as more blood and bile rise up my throat from the onslaught of pain.

My throat is raw and sensitive as I heave and attempt to spit out all the buildup. But the position I’m in, frozen upright, my neck paralyzed, does not allow me to do anything but swallow up the foul liquid.

With no more constant pressure, my eyeballs start to heal. It’s a slow process. I’m so depleted of energy it takes every ounce of strength to force my body to heal and stop it from shutting down.

My sight, too, slowly returns, only to see him wipe his bloody fingers with a disgusted expression on his face.

I draw a sharp breath in and grind my teeth against the pain.

But he doesn’t care. For him, I’m just a means to an end—a task he needs to perfunctorily perform.

My eyes slowly accommodate to the blinding ceiling lights as I register my surroundings. The room is bare of any furniture. Translucent runes are etched into dark gray walls, blinking a stark white every now and then—a sign they are active. Some,I recognize. Others not so much. But they collectively keep me hostage here, pinned to the spot, unable to move a muscle.

These runes are used for high-level interrogations, with some of them activated only by an astounding amount of spiritual energy—I suppose Azerius has that in spades.

As my body begins to heal, so does my mind, and confusion sets in.

I blink and frown as things I knew to be true suddenly are not so true anymore. Memories are slipping away from me by the second, replaced by foreign images that are somehow extremely familiar.

My first kiss. I could have sworn it was with Marlowe. But now… All I can see is Mine.

Wait. Mine? I called Lucien Mine?

But as the question echoes through my mind, it becomes a certainty. He was Mine. I could never call him Lucien. That wasn’t him. Valerion either.

To me, he was only Mine.

Yet more things become confusing. Like our first meeting and the fact that I got punished by the House of Moirai for intervening in human fate. Didn’t I meet him at the movie theater? There’s a vague recollection of that happening, but the more I try to visualize it, the farther it gets from me until it disappears.

No, I met him at the site of the bombing and I helped him save those people. Why I would ever do that when I knew the consequences… I have no idea. But I did.

Our relationship, too. Wasn’t he too ill to do anything? As we moved from friendship to love, his illness became considerably worse.

Yet as I remember the past now, though he was still ill, he was far more capable than he should have been, stronger, more…virile.

We engaged in forbidden physical relations, and to my surprise, not only was I accepting of that, but often I was the one initiating them.

If it weren’t for the dire conditions I find myself in, I would have blushed at the new pieces of information flooding my mind.

I allowed him intimacies I never thought I would, at least not before. I asked him to claim me with no promise for the future—a mistake on my part, or at least it should have been.

It was him who wanted to wait, him who wanted to make it special. How? Why?

Then there’s his death. He was supposed to have died of a human illness. Tuberculosis, I believe. But my memories of his illness are changed. He never named the cause of it, only that it was engineered by people in his country to destroy minorities. Even now, after having absorbed so much information about the new, technologically advanced Anthropa, I have doubts that it’s even possible.

But he was ill. And his symptoms were unlike any I’ve ever seen before.

My brows furrow in confusion as some information disappears altogether. Tuberculosis? No, he never had that.

A sliver of terror grips me. What is going on? Why am I misremembering things? Why am I forgetting things?

I…

What’s wrong with me?

What did Azerius do to me?

All the other big events in my life remain unchanged, except for the order. Or is that something I’m getting confused about right now?

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