“So can I speak now to answer, or is there a time limit?” I asked as I debated how to tell her I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.
“Aran.” She said my name like a curse and took a deep breath. “Moving on, how do you feel when Scorpius tells you what to do?”
I dug my nail deeper into my lip.
“Do you not like when he orders you around?” She pointedly looked at the blood dripping down my chin.
I scoffed. “Obviously not.” I tried to wipe the copper taste off my tongue with the arm of my sweatshirt.
A beating heart throbbing against my tongue. Mother’s blood down my throat.
“The fact that he told you not to pick at your lip—” Dr. Palmer nodded like she was realizing something (she was delusional). “—is making you act out of spite. Spite is an intense psychological response to a negative valence such as disappointment or betrayal.”
Rain streaked drearily across the window. Cold air blew on the top of my head. Orion’s thigh pressed against mine.
“Have these men betrayed you?”
Scorpius’s chuckle was harsh, as if he wheezed with pain.
I would have joined him, but I didn’t laugh with men. I only laughed at them.
A voice in my head laughed at my joke, like a monster that didn’t exist, like the Angel Consciousness that did exist allegedly, like an angel guardian, like ancient peace accords that left us stranded, fighting a war.
It’s fine.
I’m fine.
I understand my brain, I reassured myself.
The paradox of the liar—you couldn’t lie if you knew it was false, but if it was false, then you were a liar. The cycle spiraled into infinity.
I rubbed at my wrist where the heavy diamond bracelet tingled like it was alive. It pulsed warm, then stopped, and I couldn’t decide if I’d imagined it.
My subconscious screamed something to my consciousness, but there was a dead space inside my brain that I couldn’t understand. There was an emptiness where knowledge fizzled. An abyss.
Perhaps it was hours spent screaming on a palace floor.
Perhaps it was the little sister I’d never had who’d stolen my memories.
Perhaps it was three men who’d tormented me.
Perhaps it was me.
I wanted to slam my skull against the wall.
“Your emotions make sense and are valid, especially if you feel betrayed,” Dr. Palmer said slowly, like I was an imbecile.
I stared at her deadpan.
“Perhaps you’re feeling spiteful because of your own deep sense of hurt based on their actions?” She nodded. “Have they done anything to make you feel especially disappointed?”
Black ice scorched my throat, and I needed to wipe the patronizing smirk off her face.
I blurted out, “Malum set me on fire until my face melted off—and he never apologized for it.”
Dr. Palmer stopped writing and blanched.
Both her eyes twitched. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven times. A new record.
Three men stiffened beside me.
Dr. Palmer opened and shut her mouth a few times. When she finally spoke, she overenunciated each word. “You’re telling me that your—” She cleared her throat and checked her clipboard. “—Ignis set you on fire—the mate whose role is to love and cherish you?”
She showed more emotion now than ever before.
She hadn’t even blinked when she’d learned I’d been disguised as a male because I was the wanted fae princess who’d murdered her mother, but now her eyes rounded with horror like she understood why the therapy session was awkward.
Finally.
Scorpius scoffed loudly. “An Ignis does not just love and cherish his Revered. That’s a provincial and pathetic description. His life’s purpose is to worship, provide, shelter, and obsess over his Revered—it’s nothing as menial as love.”
“It’s disrespectful to insinuate that I would only love her,” Malum said.
Ever completely missed the point of a conversation?
Dr. Palmer gaped at the kings with incredulity, and her complexion paled.
I smiled.
Everyone knew the point of couple’s therapy was to make your therapist like you more than your partner—I’d won.
“You want to talk about caring for your Revered, yet you set Aran on fire?” Her voice pitched uncharacteristically high as she gaped at Malum.
Abruptly, a picture on the wall burst into red flames, and two shifters frolicking in a field of rolling hills melted into ashes.
Dramatic irony.
Dr. Palmer’s voice climbed up another octave. “You’re telling me that Aran is your Revered?” She didn’t even glance at the flaming wall. All her attention was on the leader of the kings. “And it is your life’s purpose to care for her?”
Malum grunted in agreement.
“Yet you lit her on fire until her face melted off?”
He grunted again.
When she put it that way…he sucked.
She scribbled furiously on her clipboard and pushed her glasses against the top of her nose with so much force the wire bent. “Don’t you think that is something you should apologize to her for?”
Orion grimaced and pressed his leg harder against mine. Scorpius muttered something under his breath. I put my hand into my pockets and fondled my pipe.
Making the leader of the kings apologize was like trying to have a healthy relationship with a man.
Impossible and upsetting.
Malum gnashed his teeth. “She was disguised as a male at the time. I didn’t know she was my Revered. It was—different.” His voice was harsh and gritty.
The doctor turned her chair toward me. “How do Malum’s words make you feel, Aran?”
I brought my pipe between my lips and inhaled harshly.
For the first time since I’d seen her with Sadie months ago, she didn’t comment on my smoking addiction.
“I feel like I want to light him on fire until his skin melts off,” I said in a monotone voice.
“Then do it,” Malum snarled, and I was jostled as he leaned forward to glare at me. “Stop whining about it and light me on fire, and then we’ll be even—I don’t understand why you keep fucking bringing this up? Just let me care for you. We need to move past this—we have enough to worry about with this fucking war.”
Steel-gray eyes pinned me to my seat.
Flames cackled, and the awful scent of burning carpet filled the room.
No one moved to put it out.
I leaned forward and glared back. “Exactly. Since we’re already doomed, why should I care about your pathetic bid for forgiveness? Have you ever thought that maybe I want to hold a grudge?”
“How does holding a grudge make you feel?” Dr. Palmer cut in.
“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically.
Malum’s cheeks flushed. “Do whatever you need to do to forgive me—I’ve already said you could light me on fire.” Silver eyes softened. “I don’t know if it’s possible.” Malum cleared his throat. “But I will try to reject my abilities and let flames consume me—for you—so you can have your revenge.”
A pen dropped against a clipboard.
I gaped at my arch nemesis, and his cheekbones flushed redder the longer I stared.
“Okay, we’ll try it.” I nodded. “Get me a match and kerosene and I’ll do it. Right here, right now, since you’re asking for it.”