Page 38 of The Kiss Of Death
So Mercier caged her after that. That bastard wasn’t even there, while his name would have looked delightful on a tombstone.
“That’s why you wanted to go to Pantheon?” But why would she want to go back? Why did she speak about it with my mother all those years with annoying, bright, shiny eyes even though it had taken everything from her?
“Yes.” She sniffed. “I couldn’t let them take away my dream, my happy memories, and our tradition. It belonged to Mom and me. Not them. Not to what they did. I thought I could be stronger, but I’m weak.”
She’d got it all wrong.
She was the opposite of weak.
I sat on the floor. It was my turn to stare at the void. She didn’t want to let them win. She went back to the place that had left her powerless while I avoided my past like a plague. Feelings were a weakness. They were unreliable, a decoy for our brain, but in Dalia’s hands, they gave her an unusual strength. All these years, I thought she was just daddy’s little girl who had never known pain.
“I’m terrified to play on that stage.” She closed her eyelids so tightly. “If it were to happen by some miracle, I’m not even sure I wouldn’t freeze. In my nightmares, they’re always in the crowd, watching me. What if I fail Mom? I’m weak!”
“And here I thought you would be a match for me, that you wouldn’t break so easily, but maybe I was wrong about you. If you think you’re weak, maybe you are.”
The Dalia I knew would never lose hope so easily.
Her eyes flicked open on me, and she rocked into a ball, her fingers gripping her thighs as if she wanted to tear apart her own skin. “I still hear the gunshots sometimes. The silence is so painful. That’s why I play music, to silence the ghosts.”
“I hear them too,” I said. Not like I meant to.
“You hear the ghosts too?” Her green eyes widened even more. “The ones who tell you that it’s all your fault? The guilt. The pain. The loneliness.”
My Adam’s apple bobbed, and thankfully, the midnight bell rang, announcing the end of the hazing and the beginning of the official party. I rose, feeling an unusual tightness, like thorns digging into the remnants of my rotten heart.
“I can leave now,” she said, trying to stand by putting herself on all fours, but she seemed to have forgotten how to do it.
“Kill me now.” I took a deep breath. “Stand up.”
“I can’t.” She winced. “Help me!”
“I won’t carry you, so stand, or I’ll leave you on the floor.”
She complained but eventually stood before tripping right after. I caught her, cursing myself for having to hold her. It sent a spasm in my arm, like a warning. Ignoring the tension seizing my body, as though her sole touch was shredding my muscles fibers apart, I scooped her over and cradled her in my arms.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“My room,” I said, not thinking twice. This was the closest place, and if her roommate was anything like her sister, I didn’t trust her not to drag her into trouble.
“No.” She gave me a weak shoulder slap before giggling. “No boy’s room, it’s forbidden.”
I ignored her, her mumbling, and the drunken students running in the hallway as I walked us there and snapped the door shut behind us.
“I’m in Levi’s room,” she sang, watching the boredom of it. “You need kittens.”
“Kittens?”
“Yes, they bring joy. It’s a scientific fact, just like Baron.” She slumped on my bed, not bothering to care her dirty clothes were on my freshly clean sheets. It irritated me. “I want to get naked and swim in a pool of milk and dahlias under the moonlight.”
That mental image of hers was unwanted. She was even more painful than usual when drunk. I picked up the trash and put it next to her bed,mybed, with a bottle of water.
“I want you gone tomorrow morning by six,” I rasped. “Don’t puke on my sheets. They’re satin. And drink. Water.”
“You’re not staying to torture me?”
“Torturing you isn’t pleasant right now.” It sounded like babysitting a girl who went to her first party or some shit. Plus, I needed to clear my head.
“You’re so beautiful but so horrendously scarred at the same time,” she said, half sad, half serious. She curled herself in a sleeping position as if this was her bed. “Who are you really, Levi?”
