"I'm very real, baby girl. I know about the birthmark on your inner thigh. I know your favorite position is reverse cowgirl because you like to be in control and don't want me to see all the silly faces you make. I know you love it when I put my thumb on your asshole even though you slap it away every time and threaten to put a finger up mine.
"It doesn't get any realer than this."
Priya covered her ears with her palms, trying to make the voice go away, but failing at every moment of it. There was nothing she could do to stop it from penetrating.
This wasn't because Atom Link spoke to her mind—Zarek's voice was being projected as normal. It was instead because she was in so much distress that she hadn't realized that it was because her own sensory perception had increased so much.
If she really wanted to block out his voice, she'd need to use Godsfall or throw the bracelet very far away. But Zarek knew that she would do neither. The first she wouldn't do because she wasn't in the right mental state. The second she wouldn't do because it was the last piece of him she had right now.
He took advantage of both.
"Stop talking! You're not Zarek!"
"Am I not? Is this not how I talk to my enemies? How many of them have I humiliated just like this? If you're not the Priya I fell in love with, then what good are you?
"I've had four lifetimes now. Every single one of them I've wasted on you. Every fucking single one. Do you know what I could have done with my Talents with these kinds of opportunities? Do you know how much further I could have made it?
"Do you think any one of these fuckers could stop me if I didn't have your dead weight pulling me down every step I took?
"Why wouldn't I treat you like this? You've already given up. This is the last chance I have. If I don't cut you off now, when will I?
"I'm on a trial world right now with fucking aliens on it. The world is so much bigger than just Earth, and I've never even stepped off the goddamn planet.
"Three of them. I had THREE triple S Class Talents, and wasted every single fucking one of them."
Priya's breaths were only becoming more shallow, her skin turning purple and blue as she wasn't getting enough air. She was breathing in and out so fast she was becoming lightheaded, and yet her body was still too powerful for her to pass out and take her out of her misery.
"Just hurry up and shatter the bracelet on your wrist. I don't want to have to see you anymore. This shit is too much.
"I've had nothing all my life. You've had everything, and I gave you all you could ask for on top of that. The one thing I needed from you was to be yourself, but apparently you can't even do that anymore. So fucking aggravating."
Priya's hands shook and she reached for the bracelet to do as she was told. If she did it, it really would be over. There was no backtracking now with Zarek so far away.
There would be no one there to re-establish Atom Link.
Her fingers trembled, the tears streaming down her face coming in faster rivers.
"Hurry up!"
Zarek's voice boomed in her ears and Priya found herself freezing.
"You aren't Zarek…" she said weakly. "You aren't… Zarek would never do this to me… he wouldn't…"
"I would never do this to the love of my life. Clearly, you aren't her. Unconditional love only exists in fairy tales and those garbage romantic comedies you make me watch, and that's only because the movie ends before the couple has to actually live their life together.
"Every movie would have a bad ending if you let it run for long enough, and quite frankly, I've let this one run on for more than that. I'm done. More than done.
"The woman I love has backbone, some actual grit to her, is stubborn and doesn't know how to listen when she's made up her mind. You, however, clearly have none. You're like Belladoll—a fucking pathetic excuse of a woman."
Priya shook all over, her sobs breaking through in heated waves. Heart-wrenching cries came from a guttural depth in her chest, down to her diaphragm, and even past her flesh itself to the deepest crevices of her soul.
Zarek's words kept raining down relentlessly. Even through her choking sobs and nigh shrieks, they pierced through time and time again.
He didn't give her a single moment of break. She was already torn down, but he trampled her, burnt what was left to ash, then didn't even have the care to throw it all in the trash.
What he did was far worse than that, and every word was more potent than the last.
And then, an entire hour later, Priya seemed to run out of tears. Her throat was too hoarse to make a sound, her body too dehydrated to produce anything more than salty chunks from her eyes.
She stared down at the floor between her legs, wondering if this was really what rock bottom felt like.
Soaked in blood that wasn't her own, crying her eyes out in the middle of a building where Turned could show up any moment now, the man she loved cursing her out for being useless somehow becoming the backdrop of her life…
There were really only two ways people reacted when they hit rock bottom, and the first was simply to end it all. The second seemed to be to bounce back, but…
There was a third, and that was just to wallow in it. Sit there, steep in your own filth, and let the world learn how to go on without you.
"Are you finally finished crying?" The voice still sounded harsh to her ears, but she barely managed to nod. "Good. Then stand the fuck up or I really am done with you."
There wasn't a hint of joking in Zarek's tone. He meant it.