July 1938
The Nexus had changed me so quickly. I woke one morning with my heartbeat in my ears, steady and slow and impossibly loud, as everything had been from then on. My hearing was sharpened threefold, my vision tenfold. My heightened senses were at first unbearable.
As the days passed, Ned never stopped testing me.
He got me with a knife at dinner, slicing through my arm to the bone. It barely hurt. I was more stunned by the rush of ice in my veins that exploded in the place of pain. Everyone watched in awe as the wound healed in seconds: none more shocked than I.
He got me again later, set the dogs on me in the yard. I outran them easily, slowing down only when I realized that there was no point in running away and nothing to fear. The mutts caught up, and in an act of cold fury, I picked one up by the scruff of its neck and threw it into the closest wall. It died almost instantly, but nothing could staunch the self-disgust I felt afterwards, staring at its broken corpse at the back of the house.
I tore into Ned then, yelling at him in plain sight of Gentry and Maryanne, who said nothing to deter my rage. They offered me sympathy and support, and I barely stopped myself from snarling at them.
Lewis was still their precious child, but power attracted them more easily than love.