My own conscience taunts, and I don’t have it in me to taunt back. My fortress is sieged, and my walls are crumbling at their foundation, sinking into my own rubble as the sky above me burns red, the wind scattering me without fight.
I am not this man. I am a conqueror. I am a king.
What is a king without his crown?
Pressing my thumb to the jagged edge, I watch as my blood bubbles up from under my skin, spattering on the debris beneath. I try to silence the voice in my head as I press the shard deeper, waiting for it to slice through my flesh to the bone, waiting for the same scorching heat that spread through my chest earlier to come back.
It never happens. All I feel is the warm trickle of my blood down my wrist, and again the mirror glints a crimson light in my darkness. A lighthouse on a rocky shore.
My veins pulse and burn from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. Everything inside me pounds and screams in the silence until all I can hear are the voices echoing in my mind.
What would it feel like?
Let go, Christopher.
Daddy…
My vision clouds, the stagnant air in my lungs drying my mouth and nose. My throat swells with the weight bearing down on me.
Arabella’s right—I did this. I’m responsible.
Daddy?
“Christopher?”
Daddy!
I’ve never heard anything that beautiful before. That voice. So soft. So trilly. Wispy. God, I want to listen to it forever. I want it to fill my existence.
Daddy.
“Christopher!”
Daddy…
That sweet sound muffles with the bloodied hands prying at mine and no! I won’t let anyone take her away from me again.
My little girl.
I’ll kill any fucker who tries.
Pushing away, all I can see are my empty, bloodied hands. Guilty, treacherous hands.
Those of a murderer.
Warm hands grasp my clammy ones, and I’m not ready for it, her pity or her touch when she tries to hold on to me. Fisting her wrists, I push her to the wall with wide strides, until the tips of her toes try to find purchase on mine as I hold her up. I take in the way my blood dribbles down her arms, soaking into the pushed-up sleeves of my shirt, the white turning pink and then red.
Following down with my gaze, my chest almost bursts with the way her eyes are so wide on me. It’s not fear or anger or pity. It’s the one thing I can’t handle right now—love.
How can she love me?
“I’m sorry,” Arabella mouths as she wraps her legs around my hips. Her chin trembles, and with a shaky breath she repeats, “I’m sorry.”
No tears. No audible weakness.
Why is she sorry?
“I didn’t mean it.”