The Wishing Fallacy (The Vendetta Series: Book One)[COMPLETE]

Chapter Twenty-Five: Done And Done✔️

Say Amen (Saturday Night) - Panic! At the Disco

"I'm sorry. I thought you knew...I wouldn't have made you suffer this long."

"Please...let us go..." she begged.

The man shook his head. "I can't let you live. I can't let him win. When Maram comes for you, I'll let the fish go and she can have your corpse if she wishes. But if you live, he'll be able to control you."

"I don't know this man you keep speaking of!"

"I know!" The man growled. He paused. Took a breath. Composed himself. Started again, softer. "I know that now. And I could stand here for a millennia trying to find the words to say how sorry I am that he forced you into this, an innocent- but I can't, and it's futile. You're already fated to carry out his will. I can't- I WON'T allow it."

"I'm pregnant," she pleaded. "With Maram's child. We're mates. We're supposed to be family together. Why would you do this to me? To her? Your own blood? The future to the line of Iblis?"

The man silently regarded her, his dark eyes were detached from this world, his lips stretched thin in a pained grimace. "I know. I know all of this. And it just- it makes it more imperative that you are separated from her. That you die."

"Why? Why? Why?" She cried. The traitorous tears falling from her eyes as she struggled uselessly against the chains binding her. The man stepped towards her, crouching so they were eye level. He pet her face, tilting it back to force her to look at him when she tried to jerk away. His hands slid to her neck, ready.

"Iblis may have been called the devil, but you just don't know. You don't know about the perverted bastard that created us. What he did to us. And if you knew what he was going to do to Maram, you'd understand-"

"LUAI!"

"Belle!"

Belle jolted upright in the bed, the adrenaline in her veins counteracting the whiplash. She felt cold and unbearably hot- her shirt clung to her sweat drenched skin like a glove and her surroundings twisted and shimmered around her, as if she were somewhere else.

She blinked, and she was on a stone cold floor again, bound by chains with a handsome demon ready to snap her neck. She could hear his voice in her ear. She could hear Marnie screaming, both next to her here and next to her there. The floor became scratchy. Grass. She was sitting in grass while the wind battered at her, her mother yelling that- and now she was standing ankle deep in a shallow pond, afraid to wade forward as someone coaxed her on. She had the sensation of her world rocking- she was being shaken furiously by someone right now.

"I'm okay," Belle said, not realizing her lips were moving. Marnie was shouting something at her, but she couldn't hear it. Muffled white noise flittered in her ears. Belle swung her legs out from under the covers and stood, Marnie leaping over to her side of the bed to try and grab her. Images continued to flash rapidly in front of her eyes. People and places she recognized and people and places that she didn't. She could feel herself tilting with the world as it spun around her.

Marnie finally caught her and with hands wrapped around her abdomen, Belle stopped in her tracks long enough to mumble something completely irrelevant, see a spark of fire igniting in thin air before her eyes, vomit violently, and collapse.

When Belle woke for the second time that day, it was pitch black.

Or there was something over her eyes.

Belle clawed at whatever it was and felt a cool, damp cloth against her eyes and forehead.

"Hey," a soft voice chastised her. "Leave it."