Page 56 of Deviant

Tears start to stream down Saul’s face. He’s muttering something that’s too incomprehensible to understand, but asit turns into a yell, I can make out every awful syllable and my stomach turns once more with bile.

“I loved her. I loved her. I loved her.”

He keeps saying it. Over and over.

My fists clench. My jaw tightens. I need him to stop. I need it to stop. I need everything to just shut up.

“Kill him.” Magnus says again. “Make him pay.”

I can’t think. I can’t even see. Everything seems to flip in my mind and nothing makes sense.

Nothing is logical.

“I loved her.”

My hand grips the blade, but I don’t know when the hell I got hold of a knife. Why would I be given a weapon, anyway? I stare at the metal, stare at my reflection in it. If I were smart, I would bury this deep into my stomach. I would slice my chest open and end this on my terms.

“I loved her. I loved her. I loved her.”

I snarl, shutting my eyes, raising my hands to my ears, needing those words to stop.

“Kill him.” Magnus repeats. “Prove that you are like me, prove that you arejustlike me. Let your hate out. Let your anger out. Fucking do it.”

I can’t. I can’t.

“You were tortured. Beaten. Raped.” Magnus states. “He did that. He ensured that would happen. He led you to the slaughter…”

Something snaps. Something twists.

I scream out, matching the high-pitched noise ringing in my head and I launch myself. My arm slices through the air, I’m slashing, cutting, butchering the man before me.

Blood covers my body, blood fills my mouth, and seeps it into every pore.

But I don’t stop.

I just keep slashing and slicing until my arm grows too heavy, until my exhaustion takes me, and I collapse into the pool of it congealing at the dead man’s feet.

My chest heaves, my breaths sound like they’re catching in my lungs.

“I loved her. I loved her. I loved her.”

I know the words are gone. I know I’ve silenced them forever and yet they keep repeating in my head, over and over.

“I loved her.”

“You didn’t love me.” I shout, even though he’s way past hearing me. “You never loved anyone but yourself. It was your ego I bruised, not your heart.”

A hand settles on my shoulder. Another grapples the blade from me before I can do anything more with it.

I deflate as I realise I’ve just missed the only real opportunity I had to escape. That Saul wasn’t the threat, Magnus was. I should have attacked him. Taken him out. Killed him first and left Saul here, while I made a run for it.

Once more, my stupidity hits me like a tidal wave.

But I had to do it.

I had to get that pain and the anger out. Saul betrayed me. He set me up, lured me in and left me to the vultures.

I’m helped to my feet. Magnus brushes the smear of blood from my eyes and, for a moment, he looks at me not with derision, or lust, but with pride.

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