Even I was intimidated by the threat.
Jinx had never cried, and the full-body shudders that racked her weren’t acting. You couldn’t fake grief like that.
Everyone was silent.
Finally, Sadie asked softly, “What can you tell us? Why are you in pain? Please explain?” Her voice cracked.
A long moment passed.
“I don’t use it often, I promise,” Jinx replied weakly.
Jax alpha-barked, “Tell us. Now.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up as he used his persuasion and words were ripped from Jinx’s throat.
“I suffer,” she gasped. “Every night. That is all I can say.”
Jax roared like a wounded bear.
The awful sound tore through the room and made the hair on my neck stand up.
Jax alpha-barked, “What have you made us forget?”
Jinx whimpered, “So much.” She gasped and shuddered like she was in pain. “I’ve been enchanted to not speak of it.” Tears streamed down her face. “That is all I can say.” Her voice broke. “I promise.”
She trembled violently.
Her tiny figure was racked with anguish as she cowered before her family.
Jax’s hands trembled as he leaned forward and hugged Jinx’s tied-up figure.
My mind was buzzing with new information.
My breathing was ragged.
Bile burned my throat.
Jinx suffered, and she clearly wiped anyone’s memory who witnessed her episodes. Who knew what else she’d taken from us?
As she convulsed with pain, I remembered with startling clarity the first day I’d learned suffering.
Surprisingly, it had had nothing to do with Mother lighting me on fire.
When I was fourteen years old, the tutor at the palace had me take a five-hour-long written intelligence test. It was all questions about analytics and problem-solving.
I’d thought it was easy.
The next day, I’d been pulled out of the few classes I got to take with other children.
My tutor had never looked me in the eye again.
Palace aids had whispered as I passed in the halls. Mother had stared at me strangely during meals, and even the servants had refused to talk to me anymore.
I’d never received the results from that test, and whenever I’d asked about it, people acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about.
They’d lied to me.
Everyone had.
The collective betrayal had hurt worse than Mother lighting me on fire. Before then, my young brain had decided Mother was the villain and everyone else was nice. After I’d taken the test, the illusion disappeared.
Everyone could betray me.
Maybe it had been the increased isolation. Maybe it had been a chemical imbalance in my brain. Either way, after a week of everyone acting strange, I’d woken up to melancholy.
The world had been gray.
Ornate drapes had been pulled wide open, and two suns had filled the sky; rays had streamed across the lavish fabrics of my bedroom.
But my teeth had chattered from cold.
Everything had been steeped in shades of ashen blue. Colorless. One-dimensional and flat.
Servants’ faces had blurred around me as they spoke, and their words had been lost, because for the first time in my young life, time had warped and distorted around me.
Depression hadn’t slowly crept up on me like a wound left untreated. It hadn’t festered.
The haze had hit me like a bullet.
Numbness had ensconced my existence in a layer of impenetrable ice.
It had never left.
Back in the present, Jinx’s narrow shoulders shook back and forth as she sobbed in her brother’s arms.
When I was about her age, I’d also learned to suffer.
It was like staring in the mirror.
The acknowledgment made me feel profoundly uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t understand. There were limits to the conscious experience.
It had been a few hours in Sadie’s room, but it felt like days.
I stumbled away into the hall on shaky legs and barely noticed when Orion stood up from where he was waiting for me. He lunged for me.
Orion’s grip on my arm was the only thing that kept me from face-planting into the lightning that streaked down the walls.
I’d been so obsessed with my pain that I’d missed the signs.
A child under my care had suffered horribly, and I’d done nothing but whine about myself.
I keeled over and heaved liquids onto the marble floor.
Orion held my braids away from my face as he rubbed my back.
I pulled away from his touch.
The haze was becoming a vortex, and it was pulling me under.
Deeper.
Into the black.
Chapter 20
Orion
SWEETHEART
The Legionnaire Games: Day 32, hour 24
Arabella vomited on her hands and knees.
It was late, and we were the only ones in the hall. Everyone else was asleep, getting as much rest as they could before tomorrow’s competition.
“Please, let me help you,” I whispered as I reached down, but she pushed and kicked to get away from me.
I hated seeing her like this.
Broken.
Suffering.
She needed someone to protect her. I wanted to be that person.
A few hours ago, she’d entered the shifter legion’s room with wild hair and a smile on her face.
She’d left with braids and a haunted expression.
Now her movements were jerky and her eyes wide, unfocused, and sightless like she was far away.
“What happened, sweetheart?” I asked as I approached her with my palms up in a nonthreatening position.
I’d read a book about the psychology of body language.
Appearing approachable was important to fostering trust with someone.
The book had also said that if you stared into someone’s eyes for over a minute, chemicals would release in their brain that mimicked love. Attachment. Dependence.
I kept my eyes on Arabella every chance I got.
Problem was, it wasn’t working.
Now, as I approached her, either she couldn’t hear me over the sound of her retching or she didn’t care to answer.
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” I asked softly.
She pointedly turned her head in the other direction.
I scratched at my throat as the urge to scream tightened my chest.
Gasping for air, I couldn’t breathe.
I needed her to look at me, but I couldn’t do anything but whisper quietly, and I couldn’t get her attention. Sometimes I wished I couldn’t speak at all. At least then, words wouldn’t feel so close. Like I could taste them.
Eternally taunting me.
Losing your ability to speak was painful, but having the ability and being unable to use it was torture.
Every day.
Every night.
Every moment of my life.
I was trapped.
And there was no escaping it. No solution. No way out.
Just suffering.
And it was driving me to madness. My mates had recognized the signs and tried to coddle me to protect me from myself, but it wasn’t working.
Nothing was.
Slowly but surely my ability to cope was eroding around me.
More often than not, I woke with my mouth open on a silent scream. It was bubbling under my skin at all times, and all it would take was a little impetus and boom.
I’d explode.
All I wanted was to open my throat and scream until my vocal cords were shredded and my body vibrated with the pleasure of letting go.
As a teenager, I’d have sworn I’d never lose control. I wasn’t a monster, so I’d never release my voice unless it was absolutely necessary.