Page 40 of Jagged Souls
“He’s our brother, you dick cheese,” Maddox snaps.
“Personally, I would’ve said he isn’t lost to the Craving. He’s just acting like a little bitch, like your dad did when Sau went missing,” Aleric pipes in cheerfully.
Everyone stills at his words.
Then slowly, they turn to face him.
“But what do I know?” he continues. “As your MILF so often points out, I should shut up more.”
“I’m going to cut out your tongue,” Mother vows.
He turns to her and purrs, “If you want my tongue, love, all you have to do is sit on my face.”
She takes a step towards him, a promise of hel in her eyes, but then she pivots towards me.
“Don’t release him, Leno,” she says.
I lunge forward, snapping free of the grass, but more just sprouts up out of the fucking ground.
“Let me go,” I snarl. “I need to get to Micha.”
“You need to rest. You go after her now, and you’ll get you and your brothers killed.”
“I’ll go alone.”
“You can’t stop them,” she says at the same time as they say:
“The hel you will.”
“Are you fucking stupid?”
“I didn’t just risk my life for you to kill yourself.”
Khalid simply removes his mask and deposits his scythe back into his shadows. If he isn’t killing me, then he’s going to help me. He always does.
I clench my teeth. It’s on the edge of my tongue to tell her they are acceptable losses, but I bite it back. They’re words I don’t mean, born from the overwhelming anger and fear inside of me.
My chest burning, I rasp, “I can feel her. He’s killing her.”
My body trembles.
I can’t breathe.
I need to go to her.
I start to tear off more strands of grass, but then Mother places a hand over my chest, over Bambi, and I stop.
Shudder.
“We’ll save her, Varius,” she says as she looks me in the eye. “But right now, you need to think rationally. Antonio doesn’t know you’ve bonded to her, so you have one chance to take him by surprise. If you go in half-cocked, he will kill you. He’s planned this for years.”
“Fuck off,” I snap. “If she dies, you won’t even care.”
Her eyes don’t waver. “You know why I picked her?” she asks. “Because she saves kids. Because there is nothing she would not risk or suffer through for those she loves. You get yourself killed, and you’ll make her feel like she’s survived for nothing. You’d be telling her that you think she is too weak to hold on long enough for you to make a plan. That her weakness is what got you killed.”
She lifts her hand from my chest, but her eyes don’t leave mine, and I can’t escape the truth within them. “I chose her, Varius, because she isn’t some damsel in distress. She’s a fighter. Your equal. Now fucking treat her as one.”
My lips tremble as I clench my fists. I want to swing at her.
