Page 142 of Endless Terrors
“Intimacy blurs lines,” Collith answered. There was heavy meaning in the way he said this, and if I hadn’t been so numb with shock, I probably would’ve flinched.
Collith knew. Of course he knew.
Though I hadn’t technically done anything wrong by having sex with Oliver, shame formed in my stomach, hard and tight as a fist. I should’ve known better. I should’ve seen it. But I’d been so blinded by my feelings, by my desperation for a distraction, that I’d looked right past the truth. It was so obvious that only someone in denial would miss it. I blinked rapidly, my heart ramming against my chest like a pair of frantic fists, beating at a door. Let me out, let me out!
I had all the pages now. The grim story of Fortuna Sworn.
When I was a child, my brother and I had made up a game. To practice using our powers, we claimed. We decided there was a creature that no one else could see, and it liked to gobble up little children if it could catch them. The grown-ups couldn’t protect us, so we had to save ourselves and defeat the monster with our abilities. If that didn’t work, we fought with invisible swords or hid places where the creature could never find us.
It frustrated our parents to no end when it came time for dinner and we were tucked away in a cupboard, or huddled in the shadowed space beneath the basement stairs. Frustrated and terrified them, sometimes, if we continued to ignore their calls. More than once, it was sensing Mom’s fear that made Damon and I abandon our game and crawl into the open, giving her guilty hugs and shame-faced apologies.
One afternoon, as Damon and I scrambled up a tree in a wild race for our lives, I actually pictured the beast we were pretending to be so afraid of.
And once the image formed in my head, I couldn’t get rid of it.
We reached the top of the tree. I barely registered the open sky all around us or the feel of the wind on my skin. Beside me, Damon’s scrawny chest heaved, his eyes bright with the thrill of it. But I didn’t return his smile. My fingers dug into the bark of the branch I clung onto, and as I peered down through the branches, staring at the leafy ground far below, I imagined a noise. An echo of what I thought the creature might sound like.
That same night, I started having nightmares about a great winged monster that shook the world with its roar.
I began denying Damon every time he asked to play, but it didn’t stop the dreams. Fear had taken root inside of me, and darkness only made it thrive. As the days went on, I started avoiding the basement and closing my closet door—places where a monster might lie in wait. The more I tried to ignore my mounting paranoia, the stronger it became.
Because of that game, that fear, one of my nightmares made a giant tree sprout to life in the middle of my bedroom.
It was the same tree I’d been climbing when I first pictured the creature. It was also irrefutable proof of my growing power. My parents had done the binding spell after that, but it hadn’t been enough. Not against the strength of a child’s fear, when their imaginations are most powerful, their hold on reality as thin as the veil between worlds.
I’d had one more dream. One more nightmare. One more terror. A terror that had never truly left me, so deep and endless that removing it would be tearing out something that had become vital. My power had cost our family the ultimate price.
Cost us everything.
I’d been so consumed by finding the memories hidden inside my head that I hadn’t really considered why I’d hidden them in the first place, but now it was crystal-clear—guilt. Searing, all-consuming guilt. The shadow I’d seen that night had been a monster of my own creation. There were no terrible men who’d broken into our house, no out-of-control werewolf who’d been drawn to our power. All the theories I had considered over the years had gone up in smoke, leaving just the ashes of truth behind.
“It’s my fault they’re dead,” I said. Saying it out loud felt like ripping something off. Suddenly I wasn’t numb anymore. Now I was bleeding all over the place and there was pain. So much pain that I couldn’t even tell where it was coming from. It was everywhere.
Collith’s arms tightened. He must’ve put the pieces together, too, because his response was immediate. “You were a child, Fortuna.”
I didn’t accept his comfort. I finally straightened and leaned away, turning my face toward the bedroom doors. Every single one was tightly shut, maybe even locked, but that wouldn’t be enough. Part of my mind was still in the past, and when I looked at those doors, all I could think was how thin that wood would be against Oliver’s strength. “I should warn the others. He could come back.”
“I can tell them, if you want. If that’s easier,” Collith added, his tone neutral. I nodded, and then he said, “Fortuna.”
Collith waited for me to look at him, but I stared down at my hands. I splayed my fingers wider and flexed them, watching how they bent and straightened. I needed to focus on something. Needed to get through the next second, and the next one, until I wasn’t on the verge of shattering. “Yes?” I asked faintly.
“You need to cry.”
“I do?”
“Yes,” Collith said firmly.
I looked at him with wide, tormented eyes. There was a faint voice at the back of my head, urging me to pick up the pieces of myself and get back to being the protector my family needed.
But then I let out a sound I’d never made before. Hearing it, Collith’s fingers buried in the hair at the base of my scalp, and he pulled our faces closer. I felt his forehead press against mine, and that was the moment I just … broke.
I cried until my eyes were stinging and swollen. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, filling the space up with my pain. At the end of it, when I had gone small and quiet, I finally said the thing I knew everyone else would think once they learned the truth about what I’d done.
“I’m a monster,” I whispered. I stared at the wall blankly. I was still curled against Collith, my temple resting on his chest.
Collith began to rock me gently, pressing his cheek to the top of my head. “You’re not,” he murmured. “I swear to you, you’re not.”
I didn’t answer. Minutes later, the weight of his cheek disappeared, and I felt him look up. The smell of springtime drifted past. Something in me stirred. Laurie is here.
