Chapter 37

37

Her scream vibrated against her ears. Vega clawed at them, hoping she could rip them from her body and stop the high-pitched ringing. She hadn't begun to beg. Not yet.

"Stop." Her sister's voice was monotone, telling Junie to pull back on her current method of torture. "Are you ready to talk, Vega? I can go all day." Marlena sat in a chair in the corner of Vega's cell, making herself comfortable. She kicked her feet back against the wall, inspecting her fingernails.

Dried blood caked under Vega's nails from the trickle out of her ears. "I don't know how Remus did it! I've told you that!" Vega screamed, anger replacing her pain.

"Wrong answer. Junie." Marlena didn't look up from her hands, only motioned for the girl to begin again.

The pain restarted, and Vega plummeted to the floor. She wished she could go back to her blissful morning, where she sat and thought about the things in her life that made her happy—distracting from the fact she was the prisoner of a sister who wanted her dead. Junie kept going, kept clawing at her brain with the ability to peel her apart, layer by layer inside her own mind. Junie reached inside the part of her brain in control of pain, and it was like she pushed the On button until Marlena told her to stop again. Junie removed her hands from Vega, taking a step back with a blank expression.

Vega was beginning to see stars, nearing the point of blackout. She retched on the floor from the buzz still bouncing around inside her head. The contents of her stomach splattered all over the cell.

"One last time, Vega… How did Remus curse Romulus and the original gods? You summoned Remus. I know the answer is inside of you somewhere. Think harder."

This was the information Marlena had given Vega her memories back for… knowledge that she'd never known. Why does she want to know? What could she possibly need that information for?

Vega screamed, incoherent to herself, trying to drown out the pain still bubbling inside even without Junie's powers dancing around. "I don't know, Marlena! I. DO. NOT. KNOW!" Vega knew what it felt like to go mad—having Junie inside of her head was unlike any torture Marlena had ever subjected her to. She didn't know how much she could put up with Junie using her brain against her. Where did they find this bitch?

Marlena sighed and pushed herself up from the chair. "I'll give you the night to soul-search. We'll be back tomorrow."

Vega stayed on the floor, chained to the wall. When she could no longer hear their footsteps, she let herself cry. The tears wouldn't solve anything, but after everything—all the duress she'd been forced to live through—Vega deserved to cry for all she'd lost, for all she'd become.

Her new guard didn't speak or bring her food. The last time she'd had anything to eat was when Felix was on guard, and she ate moldy cheese and stale bread like they were a greasy burger from her favorite fast-food place in Chicago. Her stomach growled with a hunger she'd never known.

Her fingernails were chewed down to bloody nail beds—it was all she could do to distract herself from the endless torture.

Nothing felt right, but hey, at least I have my memories…

The chains were tight around her ankles, keeping her confined to a small corner of the already tiny cell. She'd officially lost track of time and was beginning to give up hope that her friends were going to be able to save her. How long had she been here? Four, five days? A week? When would time mean nothing at all?

Vega spun the ring on her finger, fidgeting to keep her mind off the loneliness in her chest. Her cell smelled of puke, keeping a constant wave of nausea rolling in her gut.

She didn't hear the footsteps until they were right outside of her cell—irreparable damage in her eardrums might surely be the cause of her delayed sense.

"What did you do to deserve no food tonight?"

Bridger.

Whenever her memories took her to the past with Bridger, laying out his never-ending list of betrayals, she ignored the hurt like Khort told her to do. Instead, she focused on the pit of anger bubbling like lava in her chest.

Remembering him drove a stake through her already depleted heart. "Go away, Bridger. Please." Even her own voice sounded muffled through her ears. She continued to stare at the wall, hoping he would get the hint. Vega didn't have it in her to have it out with him.

"That's all you have to say? ‘Go away, Bridger?' That's a little tame for the Vega I know."

She coughed out a laugh, the pain in her throat stinging. It was raw again, drops of blood seeping down the back of her throat when she talked. "You don't know me."

"I beg to differ. The Vega I know would be cussing up a storm, pulling at the chains until her ankles bled, and she certainly wouldn't have said ‘please' when telling me to go away. In fact, the Vega you were days ago was ready to send me straight to the underworld."

Vega shot up, head spinning, but she ignored it. "Maybe I'm finally giving up. That's what you both want, right? For me to finally come to terms with my inevitable death?" She walked to the end of her chains, meeting Bridger's eyes for the first time since remembering who he was, who she was. "The last thing I want to do before I die is look at you, at the sad, pathetic excuse for a man you've become." She'd once told him differently.

"There she is," Bridger said.

"Here I am." Vega rolled her eyes, and the chains rattled as she pulled against them. "What do you want, hmm? To rub it in my face that you're winning?"

"Winning?" Bridger barked. Vega felt power slip around her, the chains at her feet falling off. He'd thrown a shield around them, keeping their conversation private—Vega could feel his power brimming, making the brand on her wrist tingle. "What makes you think that I'm winning?"

Her body pushed her forward, free of the restraints that kept her in the corner, struggling to hear. "Did you hit your head on the way in?" she asked before continuing. "Look at you, hiding behind that commander's uniform. You did it so you could win, right? Traded me in for the bigger, badder, and better Caelum sister. Traded me so you could wear the warrior's wardrobe you'd dreamed of since childhood."

Bridger looked her up and down, his lip curled in disgust. She could only imagine what she looked like to him—his clean-cut hair, longer in the front than it'd been in her last life, his facial hair growing into a five o'clock shadow, his perfectly pressed uniform. Clean and as handsome as ever. Compared to her own blood-stained body, dirty hair, and the fact she couldn't remember the last time she'd been able to bathe or use a real bathroom—Vega knew she was an eyesore at best.

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

They stood directly in front of each other. The only thing separating them was the iron bars.

"Don't I? I have my memories back now, and everything is so clear. You chose Marlena because you thought I wasn't strong enough to beat her. Maybe I'm not, but at least I'll be on the right side of history. You'll always be remembered as nothing more than her sad little pet she walked all over," Vega sneered, returning his look of abhorrence.

Bridger clenched his fists. "You don't know what I've been through, Vega. Assuming to know only makes you ignorant."

She huffed a laugh. "Poor Bridger got everything he ever wanted. An army, power, respect. But wait, do they respect you? Or are they just afraid of you like they're afraid of Marlena?"

Vega was close enough to slip her hands through the bars and strangle him—but she couldn't. She had no powers, no strength, and she knew he would cut his losses and kill her before she could finish.

I will not start over. Not again. Something inside of her was still trying to fight.

"Get a grip, Vega! I did what I had to do. I made the best of the cards I was dealt! You weren't there—you have no idea what I went through and what I've done to get here." His voice raised, that deep baritone rumbling against her chest.

"Sure, you're right… but I bet it wasn't as bad as being killed twenty times, feeling the memories stolen from your mind as you take your last breath. Or falling in love with someone who promised to fight for you and then being stabbed in the heart by them. Multiple times. Or how about?—"

Bridger cut her off, his temper flaring. "Do you think I need reminders of the last fifty-five years? I was there! While you got to forget, I lived this life, with these memories haunting me until I learned how to escape them!" Their voices matched decibels, echoing inside the sound bubble Bridger trapped them in.

"And how did you escape? By lying to yourself that what we had wasn't real? You left me! You left me, and you stand here like none of it mattered to you!" Vega refused to cry. Instead, she gritted her teeth until she felt like her jaw might shatter.

"Forgetting is easy! It's remembering everything, every grueling detail, that's the hard part!" Bridger slammed the palm of his hand into an iron bar, the structure swaying under his strength. "You're not the only one of us that has been through shit! This curse isn't just on you—it affects all of us."

Vega balled her bloody fists, clenching hard to keep herself from rearing back and punching Bridger through the bars. If only I had my lightning, my storms. She would turn him into a pile of ash… But there was still a piece of Vega deep down inside that wanted to reach out and touch his beautiful face, to feel his lips on hers. To feel the way she felt when he loved her.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Get a fucking grip on yourself! The Bridger you loved is gone.

Vega's smile was meant to kill. "The only part of the curse that still haunts you is the memories of us that you'll never be able to shield yourself from. No one has ever loved you like I did, and they never will again. People can see right through that cold heart of yours. That ruthless personality is honestly a work of art, and all it took to get was a curse and manipulation so deep, you hurt the only people who would've fought for you." Bridger went to say something but clipped his mouth shut. "Now you're alone, and you always will be. Your mother doesn't love you, your best friend would never choose you over the crippling fear of disappointing his parents, your father is dead, and Marlena won't save you in the end. As soon as you no longer serve a purpose to her, she'll dispose of you too." Vega took a step away from the bars, her eyes never leaving Bridger's.

"I'm so glad you know everything. Everything except how to save yourself from this." He pointed to the bars keeping her caged in. "Too smart for her own good," he mused.

Cocky son of a — "Go fuck yourself, Bridger."

"I don't have to do that anymore. My bed is nice and warm… And look at you. You don't even have one." He moved away from her cell, his cape floating around his legs. "All you had to do was play nice, and you might have gotten dinner tonight. How ever will you beat us if you're skin and bones?"

The question didn't need a reply, and Bridger didn't give her time to respond or retaliate before he fled the room.

Vega liked to believe he did so with his metaphorical tail between his legs.