Page 7 of Splitting Secrets
“Yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard the stories,” my mother chastises playfully to ease the tension, earning a flirtatious smile from my father.
When she turns back around, he levels me with a serious expression. “You’re stronger than I expected.”
“The Mirrane blood is strong.”
He smiles at that. A real and proud, beaming smile. “That it is.”
“Then why can’t anyone know I have it?” I wonder.
I know why. Because the Mirranes are supposed to be long gone—our gifts snuffed out years ago by the Syndicate. We’re different from the other six bloodlines—our origin is unknown. My great-grandfather only survived because he convinced them he was a Null, just like the rest of Nocturne Valley. His brothers weren’t so fortunate. They couldn’t control their gifts under interrogation—days of torture and mind control—and they were never heard from again. Their family lines were eradicated overnight.
My great-grandfather taught his sons and daughters how to control their gifts when they matured through the same brutal tactics that broke his brothers. It’s become tradition among the Whitlocks—the final strand of the Mirrane bloodline—to undergo the same training. A rite of passage.
“Because they fear what they can’t control,” my father answers the way he always does.
“But one day they’ll pay,” I finish, reciting the same thing he always says when the conversation steers this way.
No one hates the Midnight Syndicate more than Elijah Whitlock. They just have no clue that their very own guard dog is plotting their demise.
“Absolutely, they will.”
4
Sonny
The darkness buzzes around me like a sentient being. There have been times it felt so thick—sopresent—I swore I could reach out and run my fingers over it.
And the silence . . .
The endless, screaming silence.
It warps all sense of time and perception.
I’m losing touch with reality. My mind is a torture chamber. My thoughts are weapons. And I’m trapped inside of it with no escape. No outlet.
There is nothing quite like being forced to sit with yourself and justfeel. To think of every fucking thing you’ve ever done wrong. Every action that led to this moment.
To experience everything and nothing, all at once.
Staring death in the face has reduced my old priorities to nothing.
My anger has fizzled down to nothing more than a softly burning ember. The generational rage that ignited my entirebeing before no longer has the energy to feed it, and all of this feels so inconsequential. Pointless.
They don’t feed me on any set schedule. Whatever they do bring is usually something small and tasteless—likely something from the cafeteria that no one wants. It’s always brought in when I’m asleep and I don’t notice until I trip over the plate on my way to the waste can—something I’ve used less as my body desperately absorbs any nutrients given to it.
I’ve essentially become one with the wooden planks I call a bed. What’s the point of getting up? Of working out or walking around? It’ll only use energy I don’t have and force me into fatigue.
“Wake up,” a familiar voice rushes out, startling me out of a dreamless slumber. I hadn’t even heard her make her way down. “Sonny, so help me God, if you’re ignoring me just to make me feel like a fool—” She cuts herself off.
I sit up in my makeshift bed and try to peer through the bars in my door. Of course, I can’t. The bars aren’t even visible from here.
Nothing but pitch black.
Why hasn’t she used a light?
“Sonny,” she hisses again.
“Divina?” I ask, my voice nothing more than a raspy croak from lack of fluids.
