“in the past, I could afford to wait because it was just about me, but now it’s about us.” Kamila brought his right hand to her womb.
“So I started digging up and I discovered that Raaz never raised his hand on you or any member of your family out of rage or pride. Your fear and spite for the word father are completely groundless.
“As for the boy, I discovered that until you met Yurial, you’ve never had a male friend. On top of that, back at the academy, you claimed to have fought hard to protect your brother and his happiness yet we both know you never gave a shit about Orpal and Trion.”
“Did Phloria tell you?” Lith opened his eyes wide in surprise, feeling betrayed.
“No, Friya did. Your heartfelt speech left a deep impression since she remembers it after seven years. Friya shared it with me only because she considered it something of the past whereas Phloria claimed to know nothing.” His pained expression was all Kamila needed to know to be onto something.
She waited for an answer, but Lith remained silent. He didn’t want to lie to her again but telling the truth was out of the question.
“Does Phloria know?” Her exasperation grew with each passing second, believing that despite everything they had gone through together, Lith still trusted another woman more than her.
“No, she doesn’t.” His words took a burden off her chest, but too small to matter. “Believe me, you don’t want to know. Even if you did, you can’t understand.”
More silence ensued but she didn’t let him go nor allowed him to avert his gaze.
“Does Solus know?” The guilty grimace on Solus’ face and his silence answered her question better than any word could. “Of course she knows. You two are one and I’m an extra, right?”
Now it was Kamila’s turn to feel betrayed. Her eyes became cold as tears veiled them but her voice didn’t crack.
“You’ve never been an extra nor you’ll ever be.” Lith took her between his arms, his voice was full of sincerity yet it wasn’t enough.
“Then why can’t you be as honest with me as you are with her?” Kamila asked.
“Because I’m afraid of losing you.”
“Do you think that treating me like an idiot makes anything better? That knowing you still don’t trust me enough to be a full part of your life doesn’t create a gap between us? What in the gods’ name is worse than that?”
Lith looked at Solus for a second and almost opened their mind link to ask her advice. Almost.
‘If my eyes turn golden right now, if Kamila thinks that before making an important decision about us I have to discuss it with Solus first, no matter what I do, I’ll lose her anyway.’ Lith cursed at himself, gritting his teeth while his eyes moved back to his wife.
He hated himself for being so weak that he had let so many details of his first life slip from his mouth.
Almost two decades had passed since his reincarnation, yet his trauma still ran so deep that his Abomination side had gone rampant at the worst possible time and ruined years of hard work.
‘That’s bullshit and I know it.’ He thought. ‘It’s not about me being weak and making mistakes, I’m just human. Phloria first and Kamila later noticed the inconsistencies about me because they love and care about me.
‘Even if nothing happened today, she already had too many pieces of the puzzle. It was never a matter of “if” we’d have this conversation, only of when.’
“Please, don’t hate me.” Was all Lith said as he created a mind link between them.
“I could never h-” The words died on her lips as an alien world filled with alien people filled her mind.
The moment Derek McCoy looked at his brother Carl, Kamila recognized the boy in the sand. When he stood in front of a mirror, it returned to her the image of a scrawny, scared child whose body was filled with old and new bruises.
There was little resemblance with the Abomination side yet she knew to be staring at Lith. The body was different, the world was different, but the eyes were the same. Filled with determination and the embers of a rage that needed just a little push to turn into a blazing inferno.
She witnessed the daily abuse, the pain, and the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world that only the brotherhood between the two boys made bearable. Kamila lived each one of the beatings, no matter if from his Earth father or the bullies.
She experienced with Derek the helplessness turning into a despair that grew with each passing day until hatred became an integral part of him, turning violence from an enemy into an ally.
At first, Lith had intended to give her only a montage of the most important moments of his lives. Not enough to cause her mana poisoning but enough to understand him and his fear.
Or so he hoped.
Then, however, no matter how many images and voices he sent through the mind link, Kamila was unaffected. Lith had no idea if it was due to the tower, the baby, or both. He simply didn’t care and exploited the phenomenon to share everything with her.
She witnessed Derek turning from a boy into a revenge-thirsty teen. She felt every hit he took and dealt. She felt his hesitation warning Ezio about the wet stairs, her lips curling in a cruel smile seeing him tumble down to his death.
Yet they weren’t his feelings but his own. Derek’s savage joy filled her with horror while his lack of empathy and remorse sent a cold shiver down her spine. If not for what she had already witnessed as a Royal Constable, she would have already fainted.
Instead, she was forced to see time flow, the teen Derek growing up with no care for the blood on his hands and the violence that he instilled in his own little brother with the excuse of being necessary for self-defense.
The teens turned into men, their lives now much more peaceful, but still lonely and filled with hardships. Then, Carl was taken away from Derek, ripping his heart out and leaving his body walking the Earth with no sense nor purpose.
The world had become dull, grey, and cold. Every day was identical to the previous and the next. Then, it came cancer and Derek died a second time. With no heart and no future, there was nothing stopping his hatred anymore.
It spread faster than the cancer itself, becoming stronger and more deeply rooted with every step of his revenge plan he completed. Then, came the warehouse, the timers, and the gun.
When Derek had taken his own life, he had killed a man already twice dead. His soul trapped inside his already decaying body was finally free.
