Page 154 of Once Upon a Fable

If she had my family, my life was over.

I had nothing left.

Nothing.

I bowed over my knees.

Eight years of conditioning. A decade of loneliness. A lifetime of pain.

I’d done everything I could and it wasn’t enough.

I’d tried.

I’d died.

I was hers.

And she was about to ruin me.

CHAPTER SIX

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“KILL ME, BUT I beg you, please don’t hurt them,” he whispered. Broken, bowing, utterly submissive in every way. “They had nothing to do with it. It was all my idea. Cut me, whip me, starve me, do whatever you want, justpromiseme you won’t touch them.”

I stood frozen.

My tiredness evaporated.

Shock and dread made me tingle with awareness. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t good. The man I’d fought with, slept with, and tried to save no longer existed.

He’d switched.

Changed.

His head remained lowered, his forehead almost touching his tied hands. His shoulders trembled, but there was a fierceness in him too. A burning fury that was barely hidden beneath his resignation and unbelievable defeatism.

I didn’t have a clue what to do.

How did you deal with someone who’d buried everything about themselves under the skin of someone you’d never met before?

My knees locked as I clamped both hands over my mouth. An ugly sob threatened to break free. I wasn’t equipped to help this man. I could make this situation a thousand times worse if I said the wrong thing.

“Say something!” he snarled. “Tell me you won’t lay a finger on any of them.Please!”

I jumped.

I couldn’t stop my tears.

Taking a jerky step toward him, I dropped my hands from my mouth and prepared to do whatever he needed. I would give anything, absolutelyanything, to take away the stark terror draping him and replace it with peace.

“Please...” he moaned, swaying in place and once again fighting the rope. Two sides of his personality warred. The dominating man I already knew struggled to be free, but the humbled prisoner kept begging. “It was all me. I did it. You have to believe me. Leave them alone.”

I didn’t know whotheywere, but instinct guided me. They said if you caught someone sleepwalking, not to try to wake them. That it was best to go along with their delusion, gently guiding them back to bed and preventing the mind from cracking any further.

That was how I’d deal with this.

I would go along with his story until he either fell back asleep or woke properly.