I stare at her.
“I don’t know who he is,” she says. “I thought he might be one of you, but then I realized he was a Darling. I owed him, and he wouldn’t let me stop. I tried to stall, to give him unimportant details, so I wouldn’t have to hurt you.”
I want to laugh, but I can’t seem to remember how.
“Did you read them all? To the end?” she asks, her voice desperate and pleading.
She once told me she’d never beg.
She was always a liar.
“I cut him off, Royal. I knew for months, and I wasn’t going to tell him. I couldn’t do that to you. But you were going after innocent people… I’m sorry I said anything. And I’m so sorry that you have to do that. I wanted to help you. But you’re ruining people who don’t deserve it.”
“You deserve it.”
“I told him I’d never talk to him again.”
“Do you really think I care?” I can hardly believe the audacity of this bitch. But this isn’t my first dance with a Darling. I know what they do, how they think.
“Please,” she says. “Please don’t kill me.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I say. “And I won’t speak to you again.”
“Please,” she says again, as if she’s forgotten every other word.
So, I say the words, the ones I’ve regretted for the last two years. It seems fitting somehow, that they’re my last words to her, too. I speak them slowly, savoring the painful ache and weight of each one. “You are dead to me.”
It feels good to say them. After repeating them in my head a hundred thousand times over the past two years, saying them aloud brings a kind of closure. It’s a relief, as if I’ve severed a gangrenous limb. That’s what a heart is. A parasite eating away at me, a disease corrupting me one day at a time, deceiving me into thinking that I’m still Little Royal in some dark corner of my mind. But I’m not Little Royal. And now he’s cut away cleanly, and I am only the monster.
“She’s yours,” I tell my brothers. “Do what you want.”
I don’t turn away. I don’t enjoy watching the scene, but I won’t spare myself. I will witness this, and witness how I am able to feel nothing. The monster has grown fat on two years of rage and pain, and he is more powerful than any emotion a mortal man would feel. He has complete control. It’s truly impressive.
I watch them silence her. Strip her. I watch her fight, and I watch them overpower and punish her. For a moment I waver. Some part of me wants to kill them for touching her. But that is weakness, and the monster doesn’t allow for weakness.
The monster is me now, and I am him. And he knows what must be done. Mercy is weakness, and though she may have been my weakness, he has none.
This isn’t about her at all. I could have followed the footprints around her house to the back and shot her through the window while she slept. This way… This is the monster’s way, the twins’ way. This is the only way to show my blind heart the truth—she is no longer mine.
She never was.
When they’re done, they crack open beers and make a toast. I’m not here for the celebration. I’m not here to see what sick torments they can think up. I’ve seen enough. I saw to it that she was punished, made myself witness enough to ensure that I would never be weak enough to see her as mine again. Now it’s done, and I feel nothing. It’s final.
I turn and walk away.
That’s the difference between her and Crystal. That’s why those same five words destroyed me once and set me free the second time. I didn’t mean them when I said them to Crystal. That was never meant to be a goodbye.
It was a goodbye for Harper. The fitting words as I leave her to die.