Reborn To Change My Fate-Chapter 92 - Ninety Two

He felt her hand, the one that wasn’t around his neck, move. And then he heard it. A small, clear, and impossibly beautiful chiming sound.

Jingle-jingle.

It was a small, silver bell, a tiny, delicate thing, shaken right next to his ear.

The sound was not just a sound. It was a key. It slid into his brain and unlocked the full, terrifying power of the drug. The fog in his mind, which had been a confusing haze, now thickened, swirled, and changed. The room itself seemed to twist, the shadows deepening, the candlelight blurring.

He stared, his eyes wide, at the face in front of him. The face that had been Senna’s.

It was blurring. The features were softening, melting, and re-forming into a new, impossible, and heart-stopping image.

He was staring at Marissa.

Her sharp, intelligent eyes. Her strong, proud jaw. The small, perfect, dark mole just under her right eye. She was here.

"Derek," the vision of his wife whispered, her voice a soft, intimate sound.

His heart, his stupid, confused, and treacherous heart, seemed to stop in his chest.

"Mari... Mari..." he breathed, his voice a dazed, unbelieving, and stupidly, stupidly happy sound.

It didn’t make any sense. Why was she here? Why was she on his lap? Why was she dressed in Senna’s robes?

The bell, and the raw, burning need in his body, a need he now realized was not just a drug, but a desperate, lonely longing—it all twisted his logic. She’s here, he thought, his mind a happy, foggy dream.

His hand, which had been tensed in a fist of rejection, now lifted. It was trembling. He reached out and, with a touch so gentle it was almost reverent, he traced the line of her neck, her cheek.

"You... you came to me," he smiled, a slow, dazed, and utterly blissful grin.

Senna, watching his eyes glaze over, watching his hand touch her face, her neck, but with a love and a longing he had never shown her, felt a surge of pure, triumphant, and venomous power. It’s working, she thought. He sees her. He desires her. But he will have me.

Filled with this hallucinatory desire for the woman he thought was his wife, Derek moved. He was no longer hesitant. He was a man possessed by a single, desperate idea. With a rough, passionate sound, his arm swept across his desk, sending the map of Strathmore, the ledgers, the quills, all of it, crashing to the floor.

He lifted Senna, his hands gripping her, his movements urgent, and he dropped her onto the cleared, hard, wooden surface. He leaned over her, just as he had wanted to in Marissa’s room, and he nuzzled his head into her neck, burying his face in her hair, inhaling her scent...

And he stopped.

The scent.

It was wrong.

It was all, terribly, horribly, wrong. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

It was not the clean, sharp, familiar smell of lavender and soap, the scent that was, he now realized, uniquely Marissa.

This was heavy. This was perfume. This was the sickly-sweet, cloying, suffocating scent of the Golden Swan. This was Senna.

The realization was not a splash of ice water. It was a dagger in his gut.

He recoiled, jerking his head back as if he had been burned. He opened his eyes, his vision still swimming, and he forced himself to see. He fought the fog. He fought the drug.

The beautiful, beloved illusion of Marissa’s face shimmered, like heat rising from a road... and then it broke.

He was staring at Senna.

She was lying on his desk, her eyes closed, her lips parted in a look of ecstatic, and terrifying victory.

"Senna," he breathed?

She opened her eyes, not realizing he had seen through the illusion. "Yes, Your Grace," she purred, her voice a triumphant whisper. "It’s me. It’s always been me."

She jiggled the small, silver bell on her wrist again, trying to pull him back under, to drown him in the magic.

The sound hit him, and the awful, weakening heat, the heavy fog, rushed back into his mind. He felt his muscles go weak, his will dissolving. He was losing.

"I have you," she whispered, her arms locking around his neck, pulling him down, her lips pressing, hot and wet, against his throat.

No.

His mind screamed. I will not be this. I will not be used. He was trapped. His body was a traitor. His mind was a fog. He needed... pain. Pain was the only thing that was real. Pain would cut through the magic.

His hand, his right good hand, was not trapped by her. It was fumbling at his side, on the surface of the desk. His fingers, desperate, scrambled across the wood... and found the small, hidden catch.

A secret drawer in the side of the desk, one his father had built, slid open a single, silent inch.

His fingers slipped inside, brushing past old, useless, dried-out quill pens. And they found it. A small, sharp, steel dagger. His personal letter-opener, but he kept it sharpened to a razor’s edge. Always.

He gripped the hilt. Senna was still kissing his neck, lost in her victory, her eyes closed. He pulled the dagger free.

He did not hesitate. He did not think. He acted.

He slammed the point of the dagger, hard, into the palm of his other hand, his left hand, the one that was braced on the desk. And he dragged it, hard, across the soft flesh of his palm.

The cut was a blinding, white-hot, pure agony that was so real, so absolute, that it was like a new, clean fire. It burned away the drug. It shattered the bell’s magic. The fog in his mind, the sickly-sweet desire, it all vanished, incinerated by the clean, sharp, real pain.

He shoved her.

Senna, her eyes flying open in shocked, angry surprise, flew backward, her body slamming into the far wall.

Derek scrambled off the desk, stumbling, his body weak, his mind partially clear. He was clutching his left hand to his chest. It was not a small cut. He had slit his palm open. Blood, dark and real, was pouring from the wound, dripping from his fingers, a hot, steady, rhythmic stream onto the floor.

He looked at Senna, who was staring at him, her illusion broken, her plot failed.

He had to get out. He had to get away from there.

He staggered, his body a warzone of pain, poison, and the lingering, sick remnants of the drug. He lurched towards the door. He fumbled with the knob, his bloody hand smearing the brass knob, his vision starting to blur again, this time from the pain and the blood loss.

He ripped the door open and fell out into the hallway, leaving a trail of blood drops on the carpet, his one, single, desperate, and utterly illogical destination:

Marissa’s bedchamber.