#dark romance reader

I can’t ignore this torture for much longer—my body will probably surrender before my mind does. Everything hurts so much, I can barely feel any of it anymore. All my nerve endings are on fire and my brain, as sluggish as it feels, is racing, trying to register all the parts that are aching right now and giving up in the process because it’s simply too much to cope.

I can’t breathe. I can’t hear. I can’t talk. And everything I taste is my own blood. It feels like going underwater, like a warm, hefty blanket swaddling me in its comfort. But it’s cold, so fucking cold.

I’m fighting with myself to keep my eyes open, but sleep is claiming me. Despite how cold my body feels right now, it’s still kind of… relieving.

It’s overwhelming how underwhelmed I feel right now. Or maybe I’m just… whelmed. Is that even a thing? Does that even make any sense?

“You’re making me do this. This is on you, not me,” Norman whispers, snot dripping down his crooked nose. “I am not—This is your fault, Kyree. Your fucking fault, you hear me?!”

Kyree. Who’s Kyree? They’ve got the wrong guy. I’m Sin—Sin Slade. And I am here to… find… or protect… or avenge… Wait. What am I here for? I don’t even know.

My whole body tenses up with the first stroke of the serrated knife on my right wrist. The bone-cutting pain jolts me right up, my mind swimming up to the surface with a clarity I wish I didn’t have right now.

It’s an out-of-body experience, watching your own hand being chopped off. How the blood spurts out, the distinctive smell of bone being ground by a knife, the sound of the dull blade sawing through flesh and tendons…

Was it not my own hand, I’d say it’s fascinating. But it is, and when my brain finally catches up, the pain is insurmountable. It lashes up my arm, splitting my chest in half and travelling up until it lodges itself into the base of my skull.

I grit my teeth together, containing the lung-shattering scream threatening to break through, as my breathing accelerates—I can only hear my own heart beating on my ear drums, deafening me to the point where it seems I’ve gone somewhere else mentally.

My heart is beating too fast. I need to calm the fuck down or I’ll lose blood faster. I can already feel it dripping down my fingers and splashing in a pool beneath me.

Inhale. Exhale, Kyree. Breathe. Hang on tight, you’ll…

Her voice is like a balsam—my little traitor. A chant that dies down the more I try to hold onto it. But why is she calling me… Kyree? That’s wrong.

Wait, don’t go. Talk to me, please.

And then I hear the retching, bringing me right back. I pick up my head, feeling extremely lightheaded—I’m close to passing out. In the corner of my eye, I see the knife is still embedded in my flesh and has cut through half of my wrist, but the hand that yielded it a second ago is no longer there.

I look like a fucking brochette.