Page 165 of Dance With A Devil
She scowls. “That’s your fucking problem. Always collecting strangers like they’re stray pets. No vetting. No instinct.”
She moves past me, descending the stairs like a queen who's survived too many assassinations. “You wanna do this now, or you planning on stalling ‘til the next trauma hits?”
“Now’s fine,” I mutter, brushing past her. But I pause halfway down. “First… tell me what you remember about my childhood.”
She stops. Her whole face changes. The light vanishes from her eyes. Her lips twitch.
She knows something.
“Gaia,” I say, quiet and hollow. “Don’t play with me.Tell me.”
She exhales like it physically hurts her. “Mr. Henry and Mrs. Kaia were saints. Taking you in nearly destroyed them.”
“Why?” Her silence is answer enough. I press. “Why?”
“Because…” Her voice breaks. “Because they knew Bash.”
My stomach turns to ice. “What?”
She closes her eyes. “Athens, I swear I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this-”
“Say it.” My voice shakes. “Spit it the fuck out.”
“He had them killed. Mrs. Kaia. Mr. Henry. And your mother would’ve been next... if you hadn’t already fallen in love with the monster.”
Everything inside me cracks.
I can’t breathe.
My knees give out, and I hit the stairs hard, shoulder, hip, skull, bones rattling against wood like death knocking at every joint.
Each step slaps the breath from my lungs.
And then…Black.
“Hey, look, she’s waking up.” Fred’s voice cuts through the fog like a broken siren, too bright, too shrill, too alive for the dark weight pressing on my skull.
“Fuck,” I groan, squinting. “Why are you so goddamn loud?”
“Sorry,” she winces. “You scared the shit out of us.”
My head throbs in rhythm with the tension crawling through the room. The kind of silence that makes your skin itch. Something’s off. I feel it in the air. “What happened?”
They all share a look, the kind that says more than anyone’s brave enough to say out loud, until Mama steps forward, her voice low and velvet-soft. “You fainted. After Gaia answered your question.”
I sit up slowly, the room swaying like it’s been drugged. My temples pulse. My bones feel too soft, too small. “What question?” I whisper. “Why can’t I remember what I even asked? What thefuckis wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, baby,” Mama says. “You were trained to protect your mind. To lock the pain away. But no one ever taught you how to stop doing it.”
“Great.” I scoff. “So I’m still doing it?”
Mama nods once, grimly. “Yes.”
I rub my eyes like I can squeeze the answers out of them. “Gaia said… she knows how to reverse it. How to bring everything back.” Again, that silence. Four pairs of eyes land on me, all filled with caution, dread, maybe even guilt.
Ryan’s the one who breaks. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“No,” I snap. “It’s a terrible fucking idea. But I need tofeelit. I need to know why my father did what he did. What really happened between me and Wyck… before the last three years became all I had.”
