No, you were selling your soul to the Devil.
And in our case, Nikolai Aster and Logan Nightingale were Abaddon and Beelzebub reigning on Earth. My father was a cruel man, but Nikolai… that man put everybody else to shame. The depravity swirling in the pit of his soul, if he even had one, and the chilling detachment he acted with—he was everything I never wanted to be.
And now, Ophelia… She was just a kid. An innocent girl. What sick fuck could make his seventeen-year-old daughter kill a man? The one standing next to me, obviously. If she passed the initiation, he was already training her, shaping her to become like him, to become like all of his soldiers—a psychopath, an assassin, a cold and emotionless human being.
She kept her eyes trained on the table in front of her, the only thing moving was her chest with every breath she took. It was never easy killing another, taking their life into your hands and destroying their soul. With each stab, each gunshot, each wound you inflicted, you weren’t just killing the person in front of you. You were destroying yourself, piece by piece, until the only thing left inside of you was the hollow space where your soul used to be. They never wanted us to just kill. They wanted us to enjoy it, to strive for it.
People said killers were born that way, but I refused to believe that. I think they were made by the circumstances of their lives, by people that made them who they are. Psychopaths on another hand, the ones like my father and Nikolai, they were born deranged.
I tried catching her eyes, but it was no use. Ophelia seemed completely detached from the world around her. I looked at her father, plastered the brightest smile I could muster, and walked to the other side of the table where she sat. She was here, but she also wasn’t. Her mind was somewhere else, somewhere far away from this place, and as she played with the napkin in front of her, ignoring the rest of us, I got a sudden urge to take her away from here. Something inside of me wanted to protect her, to remove her from this whole situation. Ava hadn’t said a word to her since they got here, just threw a few cautionary glances her way.
“So, how are your studies going, Cillian?” My attention snapped from Ophelia to Cillian, another mess at this table. I pulled the chair out and dropped down, carefully watching my twin brother and his reaction. Nikolai Aster had a smirk on his face, and the knife in front of me looked like the perfect weapon to erase it, or maybe to carve it further up. Cillian hated going to the university. He fucking despised it, and I had a feeling that the only reason he was still there and tried to appear as a normal member of society, was because I was there.
He was like a bomb, waiting to explode. One wrong step could send us all up in flames, and this whole break from the university could be that step. I knew he stopped taking his meds. I also knew he stopped going to his therapist, but I didn’t have enough fucking time to deal with all the clusterfucks surrounding me at the moment. I needed Theo to get his ass home, so that we could think about what to do next. If Ophelia was initiated, that meant Ava was next, and I didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
“Oh, it’s peachy, Mr. Aster. My favorite part about this whole experience are the college girls. Especially Freshman. They’re just...” Cillian picked up the glass of wine in front of him, and took a sip before continuing, “Juicy. So ripe, full of fire, eager to please…”
“Cillian!” my mother exclaimed from the other side of the table, her eyes narrowed at him. “Language. We are about to have dinner for Heaven’s sake.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” He lowered his head, feigning innocence but his grip on the edge of the table never loosened. During moments like these, I wished twins could read each other’s minds. Not that I was necessarily keen on being inside of his head—God knows what kind of a mess resided there—but it would have been extremely helpful to stop him from making stupid and rash decisions. Though, I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that my brother wanted nothing more than to jab the fork he started turning in his hand, in Nikolai’s neck.
A laughter coming from my right side made me turn my head. Ophelia was staring at the empty wine glass in front of her, chuckling at whatever she found funny. What I saw in her eyes earlier bothered me.
Emptiness.
Coldness.
Darkness.
If what was happening to her happened to Ava, I would’ve wanted her to have somebody.
But you don’t think of her as a little sister, do you, Kieran?
That annoying voice in my head started. My fucking subconscious toyed with me, just like it has been doing since the last time I saw her. I wasn’t feeling this way out of sheer courtesy or because she was my sister’s friend. I tried to deny it, I tried to fight it, separate myself from it, but there was something about Ophelia that started calling to me. Like a siren’s song to a sailor, she had been haunting me for a year now.
“That’s alright, Leanora.” Nikolai’s voice tore through my thoughts and I looked up only to see him smiling at my mother. A snake’s charm, that’s what this man had. “Boy is only joking. Isn’t that right, Cillian?”
One day, one fucking day, I would burn this man down, destroy him inside out, peel his skin, piece by piece. He did this every time—fucked with Cillian’s head, criticized everything I did, sneered at Ava, and my father did nothing. Just like a pussy of a man, he just sat there, nodding, while the other asshole insulted his family. Some people killed serpents; we were feeding them. For a moment, I could see myself holding Cillian down, or even attacking Nikolai myself, then a loud crash echoed through the room, halting me momentarily. All eyes turned to Ava, who started getting off of her chair, and crouched next to the table.
“I’m so sorry.” She stopped whatever she was doing as all other noise in the room ceased to exist. “My glass just fell off. Too much caffeine today.”
She tried to downplay it, but I knew better. Her eyes connected with mine, and I knew that this wasn’t an accidental slip. She could feel the tension, and reading Cillian was always much easier for her, than for me. Ironic really, considering that we shared a womb for nine months. Ava didn’t need a verbal confirmation that something was going on. Something she didn’t know about, and I didn’t want her to know. I didn’t want her to be involved in any of this, because hers was one of the souls I wanted to see off to Heaven rather than Hell.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mom asked her. A hand gripped my knee, sharp pain traveling through my body, awakening all of my nerve endings. I tried prying Ophelia’s hand from the spot, but her grip got stronger, her nails biting into the meniscus. A thousand sharp jolts spread from the spot.
“It’s fine, Mom. I’m not hurt.” I could hear Ava’s voice, but I focused on the girl next to me, trying to wrestle her off of me.
“What the fuck, Phee?” Her ocean blues clashed with mine, sparkling with amusement. She knew what she was doing, and even when I pulled her hand away and squeezed harder, the smile didn’t disappear from her face. If anything, it only increased as if she enjoyed the pain. As if it was some kind of game she was playing with me. Who the fuck was this girl sitting next to me? She seemed so quiet, so timid on the outside. What happened in the span of a couple of minutes?
“Ophelia?” I asked her again, and from the corner of my eye, I could see my father observing us, that familiar calculating look on his face.