Page 115 of Cursed to Be Mine
But I’ll walk through Hell for Khalid. He is all I have, and I know he would do the same for me.
“He’s killed cousins and uncles, people he once called dear friends.”
My nails dig into the wood of the counter, spasming in an onslaught of horror. All those deaths on his shoulders. All that guilt and pain. That’s why he doesn’t sleep well. Why he watched me through his window all those restless nights. He is the sacrificial lamb in this family, doing the dirty work so the rest can stay clean, whole, not haunted by the deeds they’ve done.
I suddenly hate the woman in front of me. Hate all of his brothers who I have yet to meet. Hate this house and everything about this fucking family. They treat him like ma treated me – a thing to destroy all happiness in.
They might have gone about it a different way. They might laugh with him like I hear when I’m hidingupstairs and he’s down here getting food. They might all willingly share this big house, thinking they’re this close family.
But they strip him of happiness just the same. They take everything good and taint it with the demands they make on him.
Is that why I’ve been drawn to him so quickly? I saw his pain the moment he moved in next door, but I never thought it was the same lonely experience as mine.
“How could you ask that of him?” I demand, my words raw and uncontrollable in pitch as my heart breaks for Khalid.
“He is the third oldest,” she says as if that explains it all, and I want to fly at her and gauge her eyes out.
“But he’s your son!”
“They are all,” she snaps before grabbing my hand too tight for me to pull away and squeezing on an exhale. “This life is not easy, Scarlett. It’s not some glorious movie where the gray heroes have lines they will not cross. You will suffer cruelly at the hands of fate and enemies of your own creation. You will lose more than you ever knew you had and still more will be ripped from you. Sometimes…” She takes a deep breath as she glances away, her eyes shining with a pain that’s quickly buried. “Sometimes you will just want to run and never look back, but these men,my boys, don’t have the luxury of running. Territories are claimed all across the world, and if we try to move elsewhere, we’ll just be going to war in a place whose terrain and people we don’t know. This is our home, and to protect it, weallhave to do things we don’t wish to do.”
She squeezes my hand as I continue to look at her inhorror.
“Trust me, if I could take Khalid’s job, I would. But I can’t. No one can.”
I want to believe her. I want to believe that his family did notchooseto sacrifice his soul for the sake of theirs, that some magic or fate bound to him, and no one can take his place.
But I know that isn’t true. Otherwise, she would have said it.
Pulling my hand away from her, I shake my head. “He deserves better.”
“I know,” she murmurs. “They all do. And I wish I could give them that life.” A short laugh of pain is pulled from her lips as she glances away. “You know, I tried so hard not to lose another child. I overlooked two thousand years of family feuds between us, Blood Fang, and Death Hunt just so we could sign a treaty that would bring peace to our territories.
“They had taken twelve children from me, many of whom were butchered and left on this very doorstep. I had been tortured by members of Death Hunt and nearly raped by their Boss. I carried so much rage for the two other gangs, but I put that all aside formy boys. So they could live in peace, never knowing the horrors I grew up with. That my parents grew up with. That two thousand years of ancestors grew up with.
“So don’t look at me as if I do not care for my children because you will never understand just how much I have given up for them.” The rawness in her words cuts across my heart, and I look away from her in shame. I jumped in and judged her without knowing anything.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, but she just shakes her head.
“Never apologize for defending my son, Scarlett. Heneeds someone who will always stand with him, and I am so very happy he’s found that in you.”
My throat working hard, I blush under her words.
Before I can find anything to say, she picks up the ladle again. “Now, would you like to learn how to make an ifrit potion?” she asks.
Taking the truce for what it is, I nod and step closer.
Despite this being the sixth batch (of different potions) I’ve helped her make, I am still surprised at how similar this is to cooking. The ingredients are added. The pot is stirred. The recipe is tested and then ‘salt and pepper’ is added, with salt and pepper being a list of ingredients I would never put in cooking – ground glass, shredded hair, drops of blood...
As Sau, Khalid’s mother, stands over the newest batch of potion, this one a lime green that smells of sewage that’s been eaten and vomited up again, I try not to gag with one hand over my mouth and nose.
“It needs more rotten meat,” she says after pipetting a drop onto a special strip of paper.
Walking over to the slab on the chopping board, trying not to think about what animal it is (and not having the courage), I grab the potato peeler and slice off a strip from the most rancid part, scooping up some of the puss oozing from it.
My gag reflex kicks in, and I turn quickly away as I struggle to keep my breakfast down. Carrying the peeler over to the stove, the piece of meat dangling from it and dripping puss, I shake it over the pot.
The liquid hisses, spurting boiling spray into the air, and I jerk back, dropping the peeler. Although Saudidn’t say not to get this one on me, the sheer smell of it makes me more nervous around it than I was around the ifrit potion, which causes a burn from one side of an organism to the other.
