Wyatt
I can’t hear her. I can’t hear anyone.
The last words I heard were from Rhea. Rhea, the titan who blew what we thought we knew about Barnaby’s birth away.
Sapph. Sapph takes it the hardest. Her eyes widen, her mouth draws up into a twisted grimace—lips pulled back to show the agony in her teeth. She doesn’t scream…or maybe she does. All I know is that she’s grasping for fake Barnaby—for something solid to hold on to.
But Rhea snaps her fingers and makes the remembrance of our son fade away. That’s twice we didn’t get to say goodbye to our baby.
Guy runs over and taps me on the shoulder. I squint, hard, concentrating all of my energy into gaining my senses back. Eventually it comes. Yet another thing I’m hiding from my family: I don’t have full control of all my senses. Not since I ran out of power last time.
“Wyatt! You okay? I thought we lost you too.” He asks, pumping my shoulder twice. He turns to Sapph, taking her hand in his.
“I’m less than fine but I’m here. Sapphyra. Princess, talk to me.” I wrap my arms around her head, pulling her into my chest. It’s not much, and I know she’ll phase through me if we’re not careful but I don’t care. My wife needs me.
“She’s lying right? Tell me she’s lying.” Sapphyra whispers. I want to tell her yes. To wipe away her fears and give her some righteous anger but I can’t. I can’t lie to her like I’m holding all the cards again.
“She’s gotta be fucking lying. How would you even know that Rhea? You’re a descendant, just like me.” Guy bravely bit back, thrusting his square chin forward. I should really dislike him more…maybe when all the chaos stops.
Rhea chuckles, sitting back at a booth across from us. Good for her because if she gets too close, I’ll wring her fucking neck myself.
“She wouldn’t be the first case. I’ve seen others transform to protect their young and they come out perfectly fine. If I had to guess, your baby was struggling but instead of letting nature take its course and heal your baby via transformation—you tried to ‘science’ the problem away?” She looked directly at me, smug as fuck.
“Bitch. Fuck you!” Such foul language has only escaped me once—over an argument with my brother about whether or not I should marry Sapphyra. Some days I think Dante might have been right. Feels like all I do is bring her trouble.
The least I can do for her right now is protect what little of her peace she has left.
Sapph whimpers against my chest. I run my fingers through her pink fro and whisper soothing affirmations in her ear but it’s not enough.
I needed to hurt someone.
“Rhea. You brought our son back just to torture us? Not very motherly of you.”
“Torture? No, I brought him back—”
“But you didn’t. That wasn’t our son, not really. That was your sad attempt at playing at our heartstrings because you lack the imagination to do anything that requires an iota of real creativity.” I let Guy take over, phasing through the booth as I move towards Rhea.
She sinks back into her seat, adjusting her glasses with a nervous twitch. Good. She needs to fucking fear me.
“Shouldn’t you be consoling your grieving wife—”
“My wife wouldn’t be grieving if not for you and your bullshit.” It wasn’t much but I blinked from in front of her to behind her next. Nothing like how my teleportation used to work but it would do for now.
“I used to kill ‘gods’ like you. People who thought they were above everyone and everything else.” She nearly jumped out of her skin.
“How did you—?”
“Doesn’t feel good does it? Being someone else's pawn. Leaves you feeling like shit, I bet.” I blink again, sitting atop the booth itself—legs crossed just like her.
“Stop it!” She teleports to the other side of the restaurant. People panic and flee. Good, less obstacles for me. I’m right beside her again.
“You’re stuck with me—a permanent reminder of the bad decision you made when you crossed my family so intimately!”
Her breath started picking up, chest rising rapidly, sweat pouring from her forehead. Rhea’s glasses slipped. She scrambled to pick them up.
“I–I’m not afraid of you! You’re just a ghost, a hollow shell of a man. What can you do to me?” Some of that haughty attitude had come back but it was all false bravado.
I smiled. No, I was beaming with glee.
“Allow me to demonstrate.”
What I did next was positively fucked up. Not because it was morally wrong, I have no cares left to give about morality. It was a bad idea because it might leave a piece of me in an improper place—her head.
“It’s a good thing you’re not human. Otherwise I couldn’t show you what I could really do.”
The light from Sapphyra’s choker began to flood into Rhea’s unprotected eyes.
“St-stop! Stop this!” She howled as pieces of my memory began to flood her mind. Not all my memories, just the ones tied to our family. She saw our honeymoon in all its sweaty glory. Sapphs smiling and teary eyed face when that little stick gave her the right symbol. Every bad case of morning sickness and each midnight run for sesame-seed raw chicken tacos, I flooded Rhea with it all.
“It burns! I don’t…I don’t want to see anymore, please!”
Sapph's head peeked up. She’d finally noticed what I was doing. I think she motioned for me to stop, mumbled a half baked “enough”. But it wasn't enough for me. Not until I broke Rhea like she broke my bride.
“Burns? Damn. Oh wait, so you didn’t know about this at all huh? What did Rupert tell you? Our physical descriptions so you’d guess what to make our child look like? A little tragic backstory on our part became your show for a hellish performance. You think you know what motherhood looks like?”
As Rhea screams bloody murder, I stop the memories. They leave her, coming back to me like nothing ever happened but I can tell they’ve made a lasting impression. I grasp her chin and force her to look at Sapph.
“That. That is what motherhood looks like. Love and life and loss and sacrifice. Nothing that you would know about—you simpering whelp.”
I let go and blinked back beside Sapphyra. I didn’t touch her, she needed time and I intended to give it to her. Besides that, I didn’t want to see her look at me like I was a monster. Because I was the monster, and for her, I always would be.
“Wyatt.”
I sighed, turning to her with a soft smile. “Yes, my love?” Something hot dripped from my nose.
“Your nose…it’s bleeding. And the blood is still here.”
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