Chapter 225: Beg
PRIM
Inside the belly of that demon, everything sounded muffled and wrong, like listening to the world through water, but I heard exactly what it said to Margaux clearly enough.
"I want to be yours."
That single line horrified me more than anything else it had whispered into her ear, and I turned toward the other two shapes trapped in this strange, dark space with me, my urgency spiking hard enough that I forgot for a moment I no longer had proper lungs to catch my breath with.
"We have to get out of here," I said. "Now! Margaux is about to make a terrible choice. If it concerns Étienne, she will make it without so much as a thought."
Étienne’s brother barely looked at me.
"I really do not care," he said. "She’s a Beaumont. Why in the world would I lift a finger to protect one of them?" He crossed his arms, the gesture so casually dismissive it made something hot and furious rise in my chest. "I am here for one reason. Payback. That’s the whole of it."
I turned toward Étienne’s mother instead, hoping for something softer, something I could actually work with.
"What... What about you?"
"I want to help, but this is not an easy choice," she said, and her voice carried none of her son’s bitterness, something far more diplomatic threaded through it instead. "And I say that as someone who holds no resentment toward Margaux specifically. She was a child when all of that happened. A child does not carry the sins of her family on her own back."
She turned to her son then. "You should know that."
Étienne’s brother made a disgusted sound at that.
"It doesn’t matter that she was a child," he snapped. "She played a hand in our hell regardless, didn’t she?" His eyes cut toward his mother, sharp with old, unhealed anger. "You loved her like your own. Our family fucking did. But that did not stop her from siding with her family and watching us burn from a distance. She is not innocent. I do not care what happens to her, and I will not sacrifice what’s left of me in death for a fucking Beaumont."
"You know they love each other," I said. "Your brother and her. He might not survive losing her. If you remotelt cared about him, you might want to consider that part—"
"I do not give a damn!" He shrieked back.
"My brother is a lovesick fool," he continued, "and I do not blame him for it. The mate bond is one hell of a drug." His jaw tightened as he said it. "When I get out of here, though—"
"I thought one of your reasons for being in this plane was taking this demon out," I cut in, unable to stop myself.
"Yeah," he said. "But the fact that I would cease to exist entirely is a hard choice to make. For me. For my mother." He gestured between the two of them. "Especially when we’re not even certain it would actually kill the thing. So yeah. It’s a hard fucking decision." He looked directly at me, something almost cruel curling into his expression when he saw how the weight of it landed on my own face. "It will be hard for you too, I’m guessing. And I’m not doing it now, on a whim, because some Beaumont happens to be in danger."
He sneered.
"Those people deserve to feel a molecule of what they put our family through," he said. "If I could show you the horrible way we were sent out of this world, you would understand by disdain. So let me tell you, that look in your face, it does not move me one bit. I care about my brother. Not the Beaumont and if this demon will lend a hand to take her out. I frankly do not mind it. We are allowed to want different things as spirits. But if you care so much, feel free. Be my guest and do something about it. I do not intend to stop you and your insanity."
I stood there, stunned into silence, and he laughed at that, a short, humorless sound.
"That’s right," he said. "Not so easy, is it?"
He was not wrong. It was hard. Even as I took a minute to think deeply about it.
My entire existence since becoming what I’d become had orbited around one single obsession. To hunt down those who hand a hand in my death and that of my family. I had taken out Séverine’s grandfather and all that was left was to kill Séverine and then go home to my family in whatever afterlife came after this. If I would still even deserve one after everything.
I had built every fragment of myself around that goal, had let it define the shape of my anger for longer than I wanted to admit, and doing what he was daring me to do would end all of it permanently.
There would be no afterlife for me. No reunion. No revenge finally collected after everything Séverine had taken from me.
No hell even.
Was I actually about to give all of that up for some privileged Luna I’d only known a handful of weeks?
Was it a cruel, mortal and selfish thought even as I inhabited this form? It was. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking it.
Then a memory surfaced, unbidden and sharp.
It was of Margaux and me, sitting together in that field of forget-me-nots, not long before the demon consumed me.
I could still hear her promise that my family would be buried properly, that she would be the one to take Séverine down herself if I couldn’t manage it. But she would ensure I dealt the final blow.
She had meant every word of that. I knew she had. And even now, even reduced to some formless, splintered blob somewhere in the waking world, unable to speak, unable to fully protect myself and her, I could feel that other half of myself still reaching, still trying, because Margaux had refused to abandon me even in that state and was somehow actively working to get me out.
She seemed the type.
The kind of person that would help me even when helping me cost her something.
My eyes burned with tears I didn’t fully understand how a spirit produced. They did not spill down or touch the darkness though.
Why could I not be that kind of person? Then I realized... I was.
With that mental decision made, I turned back to Étienne’s brother.
"Turns out it’s not that hard after all," I said.
Then I closed my eyes.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he shouted. "Are you fucking insane?"