Act of a Demon: The Dark Bloods - Book II ✓

Chapter 24 - Doubled Delusion

Dante wants me to sleep on the couch? Fine. I will. That way next time I'll send him here too.

She had seen the frigidness in his eyes. Or at least she would the few times he actually looked at her. She sighed and flipped onto her stomach. Her arm dangled down and brushed her day clothes she had dropped next to the couch.

Reyna stared at the intact flower heaped on top of her jeans. She grabbed it and brought it up to her eyes. Light—from where she hadn't figured out yet—shone through the windows enough to illuminate the room for her to see it. Its curled petals were perfect, arching the orange streaks into the blossom's flat, purple tips.

 The more she gazed at it, the stronger the memory of Mundus' bow entered her head. He had bowed at her. He had begged for her forgiveness. He was on his knees. His desperation had exposed him to vulnerability. 

Reyna remembered how stunned she was. How the feel of his arms around her, his head on her stomach, felt alien. All she could think was the countless people those hands had killed. All she could see was her ruined home, yet when she had kneeled next to him, his face shattered it, and all she saw was Mundus.

She sighed, bringing her arm down and letting it hang over the couch again. She kept a firm grip on the flower though. All she had to do was eat it, and she would have unimaginable power. She would live almost forever. With him.

Her lips burned with his earlier kiss.

But if I eat it...

She would lose her humanity.

I'd no longer be human. I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be part of the world I lost. I wouldn't be part of Diorela and Jean and Anna. I wouldn't be part of Michael and Abran. I wouldn't be part of...Dante.

Everything they had gone through would've been for nothing. All her nights of whining and crying to him about what they lost would now be lies. His comforts would have been in vain. Their after–sparing conversations about earth might as well have been fabrications.

Reyna sighed as something dawned on her.

All along I was the one complaining to him, and he was the one telling me it was okay. He lost loved ones and friends too. He had seen the initial takeover of the demons when they were being controlled by Ram. He saw the destruction firsthand. He saw it all, and here I was complaining to him. Dante just smiled at me and told me not to worry.

Her hands balled into fists. A sweet smell filled her nostrils and she realized she had squeezed the flower. Reyna opened her hand to see its smashed petals reconstruct themselves.

I'm such a fucking idiot.

Reyna sprang up to her feet, tripping on the blanket that had tangled around her legs. She dropped the flower in an attempt to catch her balance. When she freed her legs, she crept past the hallway that held the sleeping teens, but when she reached the stairs, she took them two at a time.

It was when she reached the second floor that she heard the voices. They were coming from her room. She already had her Magika essence suppressed—she always did—but she pushed it down a bit more and edged to her room door. She almost walked through it, realizing it wasn't closed.

Reyna scuttled away from the doorway and leaned on the wall. She had seen who was inside: Mundus and Ayame. The demon's presence was vivid in her mind. His Magika mapped out his body with threads of green, blue, and red. Her closeness to him meant she could see detailed facial expressions and at the moment he appeared confused.  

Ayame was the only one she could not sense. Unless she was Verden, there was no way she was going to be able to tell what she was doing. Reyna could, however, hear what they were saying.