Page 58 of Deviant Illusions

No teeth.

But there are metal fucking bars embedded into his gums. They can’t be any bigger than an inch in height and with his lips closed, it looks no different than if he had teeth. But his lips are parted, and he attempts to talk from the literal cage of his own body.

Pulling Delilah behind me so she can’t see, I try to decipher his urgent mumbling. None of it sounds remotely like words. I look for Helene before I quietly ask, “Do you know how to take them out?”

He rears back like I’ve offended him, then storms out of the room. His steps get further away, echoing through the house with the floor made of the same cold stone as the outside. Delilah jumps, pushing herself flat against my back as a door slams, and she wraps her arm around my waist.

I don’t move because she’s hugging me. My eyes close in relief. It’s like she’s aware that I can only bear her touch. She awkwardly wraps her other arm around me without untangling her fingers from mine.

“It’s okay,” she whispers into my back. “None of this is real. I made it up.”

Fuck. What I’d give to go back in time and be playing the role of Asher again. I had her then. So long as she didn’t say his name, we were fine. As much as I was lying to Delilah, I was doing the same to myself, if not more. That glimpse of normalcy, of a life I could have had, wasn’t as bittersweet as I thought it would be. I became accustomed to having her, sleeping beside her, doing normal shit like sitting with her on the sofa and watching horror movies. I even stopped picking the ones we’d spent our childhood watching in the hope that she wouldn’t relate the masks to them, that she wouldn’t remember me, because then the façade would be over. Kane would be dead along with his multitude of weaknesses.

The metallic tap of Helene’s stick breaks the silence as Delilah tightens her arms around me, muttering, “I won’t let anyone take you again.”

She hasn’t stopped saying weird shit since seeing her parents. At least her erratic behavior has stopped, and she only attempted to attack her father when we were leaving Austria. Bile burns the back of my throat at what the fuck I did. Entertainment isn’t the same as justice. One is explainable, the other is humiliation.

I turn rigid as Helene gets closer, but she’s not alone. Other voices softly mingle with hers as she says, “It has been put right now, and as long as there is order, we can continue.”

“As it should be,” an older man croaks.

Lead drops into my stomach. I rip Delilah’s arms off me. Her face falls faster than her limbs and she looks so small, fragile and breakable, as she looks up at me. I mask my features and roughly push her away with my hand flat on her chest as the three pairs of footsteps enter the room.

Her feet slip and she stumbles back.

Directly into her fucking grandfather.

He lifts his swollen, liver-spotted hand to hold her shoulder while I stop myself from tearing his hands off her. My interactions with Dr. Sinclair Leroux can be counted on one hand. I’ve had the misfortune of being around the old, pompous prick on two occasions. Both times, I’d feel even more invisible despite the way his eyes would bore into my soul when he’d shake my hand. So when he looks at me with eyes that are similar to Delilah’s, I look away to prevent anyone knowing what she means to me. It takes effort to distract myself with the stupid fucking painting while Delilah trembles.

“Grandpapa?” Her voice cracks and she pales. She tries to escape him, walking backwards into a sideboard. The dish collecting dust clatters against the wall, and she wildly shakes her head as he advances.

His once golden hair has turned white and I can see his pink scalp as he walks towards my wife. Her grandmother doesn’t offer any sympathy or make an attempt to calm her down. The old bitch adds more cruelty as Cordelia smooths her wrinkled hand over her blonde chignon, hissing, “Stop being insolent, you rotten child.”

Harkin looks exactly like his mother. Her hair has lost some of the golden hue in favor of silver, but the rest of her face remains unaged. Delilah’s grandfather hasn’t been so lucky. His sparkling, perfectly straight teeth stand out against his sun-damaged face and the years of shaving has turned the skin over his jaw and cheeks rough. I can almost hear the scratching sound of his rough skin as he pats his cheek, demanding, “Say hello to your grandpapa.”

Delilah’s chest heaves as she literally backs herself into a corner. Her grandfather is too close to her, and I move before I can be rational, stepping between them. I’m a foot taller than him, yet he opens his mouth to be a condescending prick.

“That girl ruined everything we worked for.”

I lean into him, my nose nearly touching his, and my voice drops as I say, “That girlis my wife. If anyone is going to punish her, it is me. Not you, not your wife, and not your son. Am I understood?”

My wife latches onto my shirt, pulling it taut around my chest as she hides behind me with her elbows tightly tucked either side of my spine. This crazy, formidable, violent woman is hiding behindme.She’s never been the person to cower. Not even when that was my only goal, but she’s doing it now. It’s another thing that fucks with my head, because she’s not supposed to be broken by anyone else. I tried to fucking kill her, and she was fine, but she choosesmeas a safe barrier between her family.

Instead of taking her into my arms like I want to, I meet each of the older generations’ eyes. Helene smirks like the self-righteous cunt she is and I ignore the others to ask, “Where are we staying?”

She lifts her stick to knock the goat’s horn against the wall. Steps thunder through the house and the creepy butler re-enters the room. He stops beside her with his hands clasped behind his back, his head dipped, and his eyes firmly fixed on the floor.

“Show them to their quarters.” She waves us away.

Delilah continues clinging to me, only letting out small whimpers as we pass her grandparents. I hated every member of her family when I was a child. That was because of jealousy and never being good enough in comparison to Asher. I hated them for accepting him in her life. It was easier to blame them for Delilah refusing to leave him. Now, it’s deeper. I hate them for who they are and what they’re doing to her because she’s too fucking strong to be this broken shell. She killed Asher, for fuck’s sake.

There’s less light as we’re led through the hallway to the back of the house. It’s colder both in atmosphere and temperature.There are wet patches on the floor as we pass black double doors lining the hall, but they’re locked with large brass padlocks.

If kitchens are the heart of a home, this one is dead. It’s all monochromatic and dull. The greenery of the trees isn’t visible through the gallery style windows overlooking the water. Even the lead strips breaking up the panes are gray rather than black, like they’ve had the color sucked out of them. Without any visible ground breaking up the water, it’s like we’re floating on the edge, and we’ll slip into the sea at any moment. The grime on the windows tinges the waters from the crystal blue we witnessed outside to a murky green, like everything in this house is removed from the real world where it doesn’t match the setting or even portray it correctly.

We’re guided through the kitchen to a set of double doors that open into an atrium and the stone floor gives way to checkered tiles. The black and white marble has more than the veining crawling across it. Vines stretch through the small gaps in the glass panels and invade the floor and walls.

Delilah pushes into my back as she walks on the tips of her toes to minimize the cold. Helene is nowhere in sight and her butler clearly can’t communicate back to her, so I turn and lift my girl into my arms. She wraps her legs around my waist, arms around my shoulders, and softly sighs as she lays her head on my shoulder.

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