What I want is to make her explain this shit in tiny little baby words. But it’s just a distraction. I understand what she’s saying. “He needs to know that I want to be a monster.”
Ostanes’ smile is sad. “You have always been monster. But I put you here to hide you from them. Don’t listen to Saturn when he says you belong to him. You do not. I made you. You are mine.”
“So… he’s right then. I’m not real.”
“Do you feel not real?”
“No, but—”
“You are as real as you want to be.” She smiles at me. “Listen carefully now. We are getting dangerously close to the end and there are things you must understand. Your human soul is gone. The moment that bullet hit your chest, it died. It cannot be recovered.”
“Then what the fuck? Why are we even having this conversation?”
“Because your soul has two halves, Pie. All of my monsters have one soul with two halves.” Suddenly, the moths around her body converge once more and turn back into Pia. She chirps. Flies over to me. Snuggles into the front pocket of my flannel. And everything in this moment feels… inevitable.
“She is your other half. Your monster half.”
“You want me to say this is me. This girl with hind legs and hooves. This girl with horns and hide. This is me.”
“Yes. This is who you are. So you will say it again,” Ostanes whispers. “Say it again, Pie. And this time… you will mean it. And then, dear girl, you will take all the power you were always meant to have.”
I still want to deny it.
I want to hold on to my humanity for dear life.
But I’m having trouble remembering what it was like to be Pie. My past is fading as I stand here. Everything that came before Pell and Tomas seems… irrelevant.
There is still a small part of me though. A tiny part that want to deny this new me. Guilt, maybe? Fear? That lingering question in the back of my head about Pell.
Is he evil? Is that what horns mean? And if so, am I evil?
I am not evil. I do not require a single moment to debate that.
It’s settled.
I straighten up. Feel the muscles in my legs. My fingertips absently brush along the side of my thigh. Against fur, not skin. The horns are heavy on my head.
And somehow, it all fits. It all feels right.
So when I say, “This is me,” I really do mean it.
The woods disappear.
Ostanes is gone.
And then… I am alone.
And this is not what I was expecting.
I was expecting to return to the sanctuary. To wake up in Pell’s arms. Or find Tomas’s handsome face hovering over me with a look of concern.
But I am in the nowhere. The in-between. Not in the gray, something worse than the gray.
There is no air here, so I cannot breathe.
There is no light here, so I cannot see.
This is darkness.
This is emptiness.
And then I get it.
I am done and this is the end.
I have one last breath inside me.
The breath that Pell gave me that night of my date.
I use it now to call his name.
“Pell,” I whisper.
But the darkness swallows it up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - PELL
“Hello?” I call out to the dark emptiness.
Where the hell am I? And what happened to the sanctuary?
“Tomas?” I call. “Hey! Can you hear me? Pie?”
I don’t know how long I stand here doing nothing but listening, but I think it’s a while. Because something has changed. There is a sudden blankness to me. Like… like I’m about to be erased.
I have heard caretakers complain about the gray over the centuries. When they step outside without that ring, that’s always the wake-up call. It’s the one thing I can count on to wipe away their disbelief and force them to pay attention to my rules and expectations.
But I am unable to walk through the gates without my caretaker, so I have never experienced it myself. Even if I had, it would not matter now. Because this is not gray, this is black.
It is the absence of everything.
“Why am I here?” I yell.
I do not expect an answer, nor do I get one. But if those damned gods are going to abandon me here in this new hellish purgatory, then questions are all I have left.
“Who is in charge? What do you want?” My voice is loud and booming and my words bounce back. Like there are walls somewhere in the distance.
And they stop.
And there is just… nothing.
I let out a long sigh, ready for this curse to be over. So done with this bullshit life. What is the fucking point of living when you’re just a toy to them? Nothing more than entertainment. Just a fucking joke.
But something happens to my breath when I sigh. It glows a little. Lighting up the space around me.