Page 79 of Delirium
“Do you want the truth or do you want me to tell you something that will make both of us feel better?” he asked, chuckling. I couldn’t stop the grin that appeared on my face. He was trying to make me feel better, but withholding the truth would only hurt him so much more.
“The truth, Kill,” I answered. “Always the truth.”
“Things suck,” he breathed out. “It’s bad, Phee. It’s fucking bad and I don’t know how to help them.”
Shit.
I assumed that things were bad when he didn’t come home, but I didn’t think it was that bad.
“Wanna talk about it?” I asked, hoping he would share some of it with me. For so many years, I’d failed to realize how good it was just talking about the things that bothered you. How good it felt sharing your burden with somebody else.
Maybe they didn’t have the answer to all your problems, but they were there to listen, to offer support in any way possible. I isolated myself from people when I first ran away from home, but that isolation only fed the demons in my mind, telling me I would never be good enough for other people.
I didn’t know how to ask for help. I still didn’t, but I was getting better at letting things go. I was getting better at letting people in, and I had a feeling that Cillian needed it as well. I worried that this entire ordeal would reopen old wounds for him. I was worried he would spiral, that his sanity would suffer.
“I don’t even know where to start, Birdy,” he murmured. “They’re… They remind me of us in a way, but not quite. We were raised in this world. We knew. All of us know how to handle things, but they don’t. They’re kids, Phee. They’re just kids for fuck’s sake, and I have no idea what to do to alleviate this pain that all of them are feeling.”
“Kill—”
“I know it’s stupid, you know. It’s so fucking stupid, but man,” he groaned. “The look on Skylar’s face is tearing me apart. The hollowness in her eyes, the lack of responsiveness, it’s terrible, Birdy. I don’t know what to do with Ash who’s so full of rage. I’m worried he’s going to do something stupid.”
“And Dylan?” I asked. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dylan back in Emercroft Lake, but that guy reminded me of, well, me. Me from a couple of years ago.
Lost, abandoned, angry… I was so fucking angry, and I let it guide me. I let it control my emotions, every single thing I did, and I let it destroy everything and everyone around me.
The tight skin could only hold you for so long before you snapped, shattering everything around you. Sanity could only hold for so long, before it shattered, pummeling you into the ring of fire, your own personal hell, until you were completely lost to what was truly wrong and what was right.
“Dylan… I don’t know where to start with Dylan,” Cillian mumbled. “He’s just… He’s here, you know? His body is here, but his mind is somewhere else. I can’t remember the last time that he said more than two words. He’s eating, he’s breathing, but he isn’t really existing. His mind is thousands of miles away from here, and Skylar can see it. Ash can see it, and I don’t know how to help them. I don’t.”
“Oh, Cillian.” I sniffed. “It’s all my fault,” I whispered. “If I hadn’t—”
“No,” he barked. “This isn’t your fault. You tried to help her. You tried to do the right thing.”
“Did I?” I asked. “I did it because I was angry at Storm and I wanted to show her that she didn’t need them to protect her. But she did. I failed to realize that Skylar isn’t me. She isn’t any of us. I should’ve seen that she was already tethering on the edge, and I pushed her. I fucking pushed her, Kill.”
“You didn’t push her,” he argued. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ophelia. Skylar has been asking about you, saying you showed her the way. She isn’t angry at you.”
But he wasn’t saying everything.
“But the other ones are,” I stated. There was no question in it, no doubt—Ash and Dylan blamed me.
“Ash is…” Cillian trailed off. “Ash is angry at everything. He’s angry at himself, at you, at me, at Judah Blackwood. Everything he ever knew just tumbled around him, falling apart like a house of cards. I can’t blame him. His uncle fed him lies, and the things they went through in that house… It wasn’t pretty, Phee.”
I could only imagine what they went through and how they felt. But—
“Where were they held?” I asked. I had to know. I needed to know if it was the same house.
“You’re not going to like it,” he answered, and I could hear shuffling in the background. “You’re not going to like it at all, but at least I can say that we destroyed it.”
“You destroyed what?”
“We destroyed the Red Manor, Phee. We burned it to the fucking ground. They will never be able to hurt another child there.”
Holy shit.
If I wasn’t already sitting, I would’ve tumbled down. The place that held so many bad memories for Storm. The place where we first met.
I couldn’t remember it. I couldn’t remember ever visiting, but from the stories Storm told me, I knew Nikolai brought me there once. Maybe it was his sick way of showing my mother what he could do if she dared to cross him, but he still brought a child into that house. He still pushed me into that world, way before that fateful day when I saw him and my mother in the basement.
