Jareth and Neo snatched him, preventing him from falling face-first into cave rock.
I chose that moment to use the authority I’d gathered over the past few years. I hadn’t deliberately become the leader of our mismatched group, but I’d cultivated respect and done things to keep them safe that’d left scars upon scars inside me.
I’d done that so one day I could do this.
“If you love me, you’ll leave. Wes doesn’t have much time. Find somewhere safe, wait, and I’ll return to you, I promise.”
Looking at each one a final time, I turned on my heel and ran.
I sprinted back to Fables.
I left them in an unwinnable situation.
Wes was sick.
I was not.
They would do the right thing and leave.
By the time I returned to the mansion, I couldn’t fucking stand up.
It was empty.
Silent.
Too silent.
My guts were a mess. My heart howled for their disappearance. My loneliness was a crushing, pulverizing madness.
Things that were already fractured inside me splintered a little more.
I could feel it happening.
A fissure in my psyche. A crack in my memories.
For three days, I swam in insurmountable pain.
I channeled that pain into energy that enabled me to dig a mass grave on the boundary of the forest. I’d wanted it to be farther away from the house. I’d tossed around the idea of a mass cremation.
Neither were viable for multiple reasons.
Whenever my heart howled for my family, I’d grab a pair of decaying ankles and drag a Fable guest down the stairs, out of the house, through the gardens, and into the communal grave.
By night, I didn’t sleep.
Their ghosts haunted me until my throat choked with blood from my screams.
By day, I existed in a repetitive cycle of dragging bodies, burying cadavers, and dealing with the stench of death in the noonday sun.
And by the time Storymaker and his guests were jumbled together and covered in mountains of earth, I was close to death myself.
My body was nearing critical, yet I couldn’t rest. My mind was creeping closer to a complete shutdown, but I had too many things still to do.
I had to burn Storymaker’s paperwork, but first I had to read them, hoping to find the homes of my family, so I could return them to their true loved ones.
I had to undo all the evil he’d done, so I could somehow, someway, deserve my own salvation.
Unfortunately, the longer I lived at Fables on my own, the more my thoughts twisted and churned. The evil in the house was repugnant, spread by blood, flies, and the unmistakable scent of rot.
Fables had become a crypt.
Because of me.
I was a murderer.
I had their blackened souls on my hands, and that blackness seeped inside me. Molecule by molecule, drop by drop, their filth spread from my fingers to my wrists and my wrists to my arms. Inching through my bloodstream, coating my lungs, my heart, my bones until it reached my mind.
Until it slipped into my skull and claimed me.
You’re as bad as them.
You’re evil.
Diseased.
I tried to wash it away.
I became obsessive.
Days turned into weeks as I cleaned carpets and bleached bedding.
I scrubbed so fucking hard, the blood I cleaned up was replaced with my own, proving that I was the same as them.
I bled red. Same as them.
I was tainted. Same as them.
And when I looked in a mirror, all I saw was them.
A man intent on hurting others.
A man who had hurt others.
So I smashed those mirrors for telling lies. I rained shards all over the floor for showing the truth.
The truth that I was a man alone.
Alone because he deserved to be alone.
CHAPTER TEN
HE STOOD BY THE window.
His silhouette menacing and dangerous in the dark. Meager moonlight etched shadows with silver, revealing the rope that had been around his ankle now lay loose and abandoned on his carpet bed.
I froze on the threshold. The plates I held trembled as fear skated down my back.
He’s untied himself.
Shit.
That shouldn’t have happened unless he was awake long enough to work the rope.
Which means...
Either he’d remembered who he was, or he’d lost himself completely to his nightmares. Either way, I was probably in trouble.
Looking over my shoulder, I debated backtracking to the kitchen. Of tiptoeing from the house and going for help now that he showed enough improvement to survive alone. But then I looked back at him. Truly looked, and my heart panged.
His shoulders rolled in the shadows, hands balled at his sides. His broken arm still bandaged with the splint. His entire aura spoke of someone who’d woken in a world he didn’t understand. Who needed a guide or at the very least...a friend.
But beneath that aura was another and another. Layers upon layers, twisting up a man who could snap at any moment.
Make a decision, Gem.
Leave or take a chance.
Each one came with consequences.
My idiotic heart couldn’t decide, but my feet chose for me. I backed up a step, taking the safe way, only to stiffen as he murmured, “I know you’re there.”