Page 38 of Mated To The King's Gamma
The darkness is gone.
The basement melted away, replaced by something softer. Something new.
Playing in the sun when our parents were with us, painting with the children, the apple fight, her smiling face, and as my memories began to paint the walls: a small cottage with wildflowers and pebble footpaths and my mother. Granny's house. Azalea watches herself in the memory. I can see her confusion. Does she still not remember?
Tile by tile, she helps build the walls up that kept me going, kept me strong, the little things worth fighting for until the blood evaporated, the bathroom was clean, and it was just us.
“More than my life,” she whispers to me.
“How are you doing this?” I ask as tears brim and spill from my eyes.
“I have no idea,” she chokes, clearly shocked.
“But it’s time you let it go,” she tells me.
“How?”
“By letting me replace the feeling behind it.” I’m confused by her words, yet I trust her completely.
“You can do that?” I ask, glancing around at all my memories.
“I don’t know, but I feel like I can,” she says, holding up her hand. It glows subtly.
She steps closer to the walls of my mind, and I watch. “What are you doing?”
“Replacing them.”
She touches one of Mrs Daley and it dissolves, barely visible on my wall of filed memories before it glows. Suddenly, I see Azalea and me as kids, huddled together under a torn blanket in the attic, whispering stories to each other, making up grand adventures to escape the hell we lived in. She moves to the next, replacing one of Kade’s with Gannon, holding my hands, and then to the lake for the second time, teaching me how to swim. His voice is patient, his hands steady. “I won’t let you go, Abbie. Just trust me.”
I see Tyson, his tiny fingers tugging at my sleeve, his wide eyes filled with love as he signed, Momma safe? when he first returned to me.
Each memory replaced the horrors in my mind, one by one. The past was still there, lingering, but it was pushed back by something stronger. I want to ask how, and she must feel the question I want to ask.
“I’m reinforcing these memories and overriding the others; I’m giving you something to live for,” she whispers, pressing her hands to the tiles. We are flooded with white light as each bad memory glows at once.
Azalea smiles, though tears fill her eyes as she is forced to live through each of mine all at once, enduring my memories as if they are her own before replacing them.
I swallow hard, my hands trembling.
“It’s time you let it go,” she whispers.
I want to.
I need to.
She reaches out again, pressing her palm against the memory in my mind.
And this time, instead of darkness?—
I let the light in.
I gasp, being thrown back into the real world, and I am shocked to find her hands in the same place, one on each side of my head.
I blink, the haze lifting.
My eyes met hers.
For the first time in what feels like forever, I feel light.
