Page 65 of Touched By Darkness

“But you also killed my dad?”

“Semantics.”

They bicker back and forth while I study Lucifer’s brother in a new light.

The light of a monster who’ll stop at nothing to ensure his own success. He’ll even stare himself in the eye as he tears his own heart out. If he can’t emotionally connect to another version of himself, then he can’t connect to anyone. Not even his own son.

My throat jumps, and as if he can sense my fear, his eyes slide to me.

“The veil is fixed. I handled it.”

Slowly rising to my feet, I scoot my chair back and swallow thickly before asking Dmitriy if he’s ready to go.

Neither of us speaks until we’re halfway to school. We could fly there, but we chose to walk instead.

“It’s like I don’t know him anymore.”

Dmitriy is tall and broad, like Daemon, and he moves with the same lethal power.

But that’s where the similarities end.

Where the old Dmitriy was cruel and cold, this version of him is somehow softer.

Or maybe I want to see things.

Maybe I still have residual light inside me, and maybe that’s why I sympathize with his situation.

“Could you do that?” I ask.

“Do what?”

I worry my chapped lip. “Faced with a different version of yourself—a clone—could you do it? Kill yourself?”

He drags a hand down his face, then blows out a tired breath. “I don’t think so...”

“The other version of you, whom I know, is much more like your father. Cold, calculating, and cruel.”

Dmitriy stops walking and stares down at me while I crane my neck to look up at him.

The leaves rustle in the trees overhead as we continue studying each other. Searching for hidden secrets and untold mysteries. I don’t understand the conundrum in front of me—how he’s so different from the Dmitriy who fucked me in the classroom, then dumped me like a soiled rag.

Dmitriy looks away first, his jaw clenching. His dark eyes return to me, and when he says nothing, I set off walking. I’ve never felt more lost than I do at this moment. Lost and tired.

Why am I here in Hell?

“What I don’t get is why you escaped Eden in the first place?” he says, catching up to me.

My answering sigh is quiet in the ensuing beat of silence while he waits for my reply. I mull over what information to indulge him with.

“Why would you willingly leave a place of perfect peace?”

“Do you even know the meaning of the word ‘peace?’” I counter. “Perfect love, unity, and all the nonsense they spout.”

His body turns halfway, all two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of him. “Probably not.”

“Knowledge, or rather, yourexperience, is relative. It relates directly to the things you’ve been subjected to. Did I know ‘perfect love’ before I escaped Eden? I was told I existed in a permanent state of pure, untainted love, but I had no concept of love. Why? Because I had never experienced theoppositeof love.The word love held no meaning because I had nothing to compare it to. If you live in constant fear, it will soon lose its potency until it becomes your natural state, and you’re no longer aware of it. It loses its meaning. A kiss curls your toes the most when you believe it’s your last.”

“Did you just say ‘curls your toes?’”

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