Part of Them

Part 32

I woke up to some quiet rustling next to me on my right side. The dim light of the ceiling was too bright for my eyes so I had to quickly close them again.

Now squinting my eyes, I turned my head to the right to examine where the rustling was coming from. Seeing a blurry silhouette of a tall, slender man with pitch black hair, I immediately realized that this must be Rayi.

Seeming to have noticed my movements, Rayi turned his head and smiled at me.

Now that my vision was starting to clear, I saw just what Rayi was rustling with. He was rummaging through a cupboard and pulled out something thin, shiny and metallic, that looked suspiciously like some kind of scalpel and with that grin he was giving me, it seemed as though he was a villain who was just about to reveal his true intentions.

"Oh, you're awake," he said happily, seeming to hum some jolly tune under his breath. "Alerus can't return until tomorrow morning, so you will have to wait a bit until he can continue treating your wounds," he continued, his mood seeming to drop as his smile faded away. "For some reason he wouldn't allow me to treat them instead..." he mumbled, not seeming to understand the problem.

Maybe it's because you know literally nothing about the medical field and didn't even seem to have a problem with telling me to lie down on my still open wound? Or making me stand upright for two hours on one leg with a broken foot?

I would have liked to throw these accusations at him, but I didn't dare to insult him while he was standing there with a scalpel in his hands. After all, Rayi was one of the people here I could predict the least. He had acted so weird earlier.

Perhaps I should ask him about his unusual reaction earlier, when my wounds were revealed. He had just clenched his fists and walked out of the room. This really didn't fit him at all, he was just not the type to care much about others' well beings and feelings.

"Why did you react so extreme earlier to my exposed wounds? I thought you wouldn't care that much," I asked him, looking at him warily, as if expecting him to jump at me and stab me with his new weapon any second.

After speaking those words out loud, Rayi momentarily stopped hovering around the kitchen like counters and looked meaningfully at me.

"I wasn't planning on telling you this actually, but I think you have the right to know. After all, I can fix everything now," he began.

What did he want to tell me? It seemed as though this was a rather big deal.

He averted his eyes and broke eye-contact with me. Resuming his previous search, he continued talking.

"I'm not who you think I am and you're not who you think you are. I'm half vampire half mage, a Hybrid, but that's not the point. I used to be on your side, thinking that what your brothers were doing to you and how they were treating you was very wrong. So when they brought you back, I tried to give you back lost memories of your true identity behind their back. I was hoping that if you remembered your past, it would make you snap to the point where the brothers would no longer want you, but it doesn't seem like-"

"What do you mean by my true identity? What about my past?" I questioned, bewildered.

What was he going on about?

"They aren't your brothers Faer," Rayi said, meeting my eyes for a second before he opened another cabinet and pulled something out. "You used to live on the streets, you were an orphan, a human," he continued. "When we were walking through that alleyway that day and you threw a small pebble at Rei and giggled, hiding behind some wooden tiles, they took you with them. Nobody said a word, as Rei picked you up and carried you home while you were banging your fists at his back and balling your eyes out. You didn't want to go with them and when he tried to turn you into a vampire at home, you wiggled under his grasp and the entire procedure went wrong. At last, you were turned into a vampire, but you lost your memories and the growing process was completely damaged, making you a stuck forever in the body of a clueless child."

While he was telling me all this, I was staring wide-eyed at him, trembling.

"After some time, you started to get accustomed to living there, especially because of the support of your new parents who accepted you as one of their own. The brothers were treasuring you like crazy and everybody in the household loved you, you were well cared for. But when their parents died, everything went downhill and I quickly realized that the possessiveness your brothers were showing towards you was starting to become sickening.

When you ran away that night, I kept them off your back for some time to help you. I was hoping that you would start a new, happy life where you would be free from their grasp.

"The brothers were completely devastated and looked for you ever since and when Rosen spotted you that night, and I went out to confirm the horrifying news for myself. They took you back against your will, just like back then. I wanted to help you, give you back your memories, do you some justice, and maybe help you escape at the right moment, but after seeing that wound and how shut in you were, I quickly realized that everything the brothers were doing was justified. You need us, Faer. Look at all those scars and injuries you suffered when you were all on your own, you even got yourself a curse mark," The thing he pulled out of the cabinet was a white cloth, which he was now using to polish the scalpel.

"Now I have to drain all the magic back from that pond out in the woods. It took me so much effort to make it work and serve you as a source of magic and give you back your memories, but in the end, it didn't even seem to work. What a pity..." he sighed, not meeting my eyes and instead concentrating on the medical tool inside his hands.

Excuse me? What did you just say? My brothers aren't actually related to me at all, basically erased my memories and kept me against their will? And I used to be human? What?

I was speechless. Does that mean that the woman I saw in some kind of weird fever vision was my mother? Did I actually have a life before all this? Is my mother still alive then?

But wait, Rayi said I was an orphan right? Does that mean...

But since I was human, she must've been human too and therefore she probably died centuries ago.

"I'll come back in a couple minutes to feed you. You need to be back in good health when I manipulate the curse mark," he said, without looking at me.

He went over to another cupboard that was out of my reach because it was located high at the wall and placed the scalpel, now wrapped in the white cloth, in there.

As he walked out, my head was spinning like crazy. Everything I believed in for as long as I can remember had just been proven wrong.