Page 87 of A Soul to Guide

She wasn’t sure.

Merikh wouldn’t kill her or harm her, since he needed her to get out of this world, but she also didn’t want him to hate her. She was growing fond of him. It was hard to sever that before it had truly finished blooming.

“I-I may be younger than him, but only by six years. I was five when he turned on everyone.”

Raewyn shut her eyes, wishing the memories of the day Jabez was locked in his prison cell would fade. She had been there, had witnessed his carnage in person, seen the blood that not only covered the walls but also his hands, feet, andmouth. She hated that she could remember his sickening chuckle as he walked the halls, searching for his next victim.

The moment his red eyes connected with her own in the long white-and-golden hallway still haunted her dreams.

“You were five years old?” Merikh scoffed, ready to take Jabez’s side when he didn’t know anything. “You would’ve had no idea what was happening to him from when he was born to when he was what... eleven? You really think the scientists at the time wouldn’t have poked and prodded what he was, since he was a half-breed? He told me how advanced your people were.”

Raewyn shook her head, feeling her hood slipping further back until it fell away completely. There were so few drops that the rain had practically stopped.

“I know they didn’t. My parents were the ones who examined him, and they were just trying to make sure he was okay, since he’d bitten a few people in the past and everyone was worried. They were the head scientists at the time, which is why I followed in their footsteps. They wouldn’t have done anything to harm him.”

“Your parents? That changes nothing. Parents lie to their children all the time, and I’m sure they covered up what they were doing, since you don’t seem to know about it. The humans here want to open up every freak they can find. I doubt you Elves would be much different.”

May the holy Gilded Maiden save her, he was truly shoving his heels in. She was surprised by just how deeply he was taking Jabez’s side after everything he’d said about him, how he’d turned on him.

“Merikh, whatever Jabez told you... it wasn’t the truth.”

“How can you know that with absolute certainty? What–”

“Because he’s my brother!” she yelled, before immediately covering her mouth, her eyes wide.

Merikh halted, and she only knew he twisted his head at her when the spark of yellow in her vision tilted to the side.

With her hands trembling over her mouth, she eventually lowered them as her head turned this way and that. It’d slipped out, but it was a secret only her parents and the synedrus councillors were aware of.

She could almost feel his gaze stabbing through her.

“He... Jabez is my brother. Well, half-brother really,” she softly uttered. “I was there for most of his treatments, that’s how I know. I would play with his hair, brush it while our mother drew blood to check on his wellbeing. He-he was really sick as a child, and both our mother and my father couldn’t figure out why.”

“He told me his birthing was not consensual, that it was due to terrible circumstances. Your mother was attacked?”

Rubbing her arm, Raewyn lowered her head.

“No. The truth is... his creation was an experiment. They discovered that Demons are half-formed creatures. They have all their organs, but their skin is made up of energy – it’s why they look like the night sky. They technically don’t have flesh, which is why it glistens like a void, a black hole, like nothingness. However, they aretechnicallyElves, just a different sub-species – one that must eat other humanoid creatures to finish forming. My mother wanted to see if naturally combining their DNA together could be a way to help the Demons, to aid them in their growth. The councilmembers at the time rejected the project, so she worked behind their back. She inseminated herself with Demon sperm to see what would happen, since she didn’t want to risk anyone else but herself just to prove her theory.”

“Your mother didsomething like that? She sounds insane.”

Raewyn laughed, but it bubbled with awkwardness.

“People often call her mad. You wouldn’t be the first.” She bit at both her lips until her teeth almost cut through them. “My mother said Jabez was born a healthy child, with all his flesh but with Demon qualities like horns, claws, fangs, and red eyes. A-and before you say anything, the Demon father was already dead from trying to attack our people.”

Merikh’s silence was unbearable, heavily weighing on her. Her ears flattened as she tried to make herself smaller in his arms by drawing her knees up.

“My father bonded with my mother years later, and I was born relatively quickly. We were loved equally. If I got a new toy, so would Jabez. If I wanted a treat from the market, Jabez would get one too. They would hold our hands when we walked the streets, proud of us both. They didn’t care he was half-Demon, only that he was my mother’s child and that he seemed perfectly normal. To me, he was just my older brother, and he protected me, did everything a good older brother is supposed to do.”

“Then what changed? Something must have happened to make him believe what he does.”

She sighed. “I was four when he got in trouble for biting another child. He started getting sick, and he was often hooked up to different medical lines to make him healthy again, but it only lasted so long.”

Raewyn cuddled herself, wishing this story didn’t exist. But it did, and now that she’d started talking about it, she couldn’t stop rambling. Every word made the cold ball in her stomach grow.

“When he’d get sick again, he’d bite people, and no one understood why. He didn’t seem to understand why; he couldn’t help himself. I remember him crying a lot. He kept saying he couldn’t remember why he’d done it. He’d just say his fangs ached and his stomach hurt, and then suddenly, he was hurting people. Other children grew afraid of him, and they would tease him, bully him, and he got into a lot of fights that would end in the child getting bitten.”

“He was a Demon, whether your parents ignored it or not,” Merikh stated.

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