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She runs her hand over my hair line like she used to do to calm me down as a boy.

Her patient.

The same way my mother used to as well. “Enlightenment is found in the perpetual dance of order and disorder, control and liberation. You need to be controlled, Mikael. The world isn’t ready for you.”

I’m not sure when it happened, but the scissors are now in my hand and pressed into her neck. I play with the blade and meet her gaze. “You were supposed to make me better,” I say as a dullness hits my vision. “You didn’t make me better, doctor.”

Instead, she relentlessly pounded blind hatred into every contour of my mind. Etched her scripture into my skull every day, as if she was chiseling her dark emblem into my soul.

Hate. Kill. Blood. Murder.

I was a child when she was assigned to me. Orphaned, alone, and traumatized, and now she wants to box me in?

She was aware of my identity. She was there when it happened. She’s the one who found me and made sure she was assigned to my case.

Her hands are soft as she reaches up and cups my face. Although they always were soft, like a mother’s touch. And I suppose she is the closest thing to a mother I have. But I’m not the shining light in her world.

Lincoln is, and will always be, her favorite.

“Take a look around. See the life he made for you. Just relax, observe, and enjoy it. It’s all yours, too. Experience what he does without interference. Fuck that girl to oblivion for all I care. Having a second chance like this is a gift. You’re truly fortunate.”

I slam my fist into the desk as she turns away and heads to the door. “He doesn’t even feel,” I spit at her, and she pauses. “He’s not real, you stupid bitch. He’s a shell I created.”

She only half turns her head. “For your own good, keep your distance from the girl until the ceremony. She belongs to Him, not some half-formed orphan.”

I release a growl.

She lifts her chin to the sky. “You will deliver her body the night of the ceremony, and that will be the end of it. Do not mess with me, Mikael.” She disappears into the same darkness as Summer, clicking her heels as she goes into the ivory tower she hides behind.

I swallow bile down my throat. Every ounce of me wants to follow her, tie her up, eat her up, and spit her out. I close my eyes as Lincoln’s voice brings me back to my sanity, and I let go of my shields, preventing him from coming in.

It starts with a subtle ringing in my ear. I don’t fight him. I let go of the constant tug of war and the psychotic withering he’s used to.

I’m strong. He knows I’m strong.

So the question is, what the fuck is he going to do about it?

“We have to talk, Mikael,” he says in my mind’s eye.

I stare at my reflection in the window, at Lincoln staring back at me. I grab my glasses and slide them back on my face as my vision blurs and his vision grows clear.

“About what?” I smile, knowing why he’s pissed. I took the best moment from him, right as he was about to come.

“About Summer.”

I shoot an emotion straight into his spine as I dissipate into the abyss. Let him feel what I feel for once—the worst emotion in the human consciousness.

Jealousy.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

SUMMER

I’ve been lost in my textbook for the past hour, only occasionally aware of the cool breeze whispering past my cheek. Five days have blurred into one since my last interaction with him. It’s Friday now, and I fucked Lincoln, or Mikael, or whoever that was on Monday. I only saw Lincoln in class once this week, on Wednesday, and he ignored me. The silence is deafening.

I grip the phone and swipe to my last set of messages with Lincoln. Five days have gone by since we’ve spoken. I’m barely sleeping, barely functioning. I stay up until three in the morning, trying to drown out all the other thoughts I should be reconciling, or the fact that I’m falling into a dark hole.