Fractured Souls(3)

He covers his mouth with his balled fist, either pissed off or trying to hide a smile. “Well, I’m glad to see that you still have your twisted sense of humor.”
“Barely,” I retort, holding his gaze while he holds mine. “But I can already feel it fading, just like everything else inside me.” All I can feel at them moment is rage. It’s like a fire, ready to burn me to pieces. I wish I could turn it off, but I can’t seem to figure out how. Shit. What if something’s wrong with me? What if whatever did happen broke my emotions instead of getting rid of them.
He lowers his hand onto his lap and sighs. “When Aislin and Laylen showed up at the cabin,” he continues. “Stephan and the Death Walkers were gone. They just upped and left while I was—”
“What?” I interrupt. “That doesn’t make any sense, since Stephan was pretty much dead set on breaking my soul and mind apart.” I pause, eyeing him over, closely watching his reaction. “Something you were pretty dead set on helping him do.”
He swiftly shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, you were. At first I thought you were going to save me, which felt…” I trail off, trying to figure out exactly how it felt, but I can’t quite piece what I’m feeling together. “And then I guess you changed your mind and decided to side with the devil.”
“I didn’t decide to side with my father,” he insists. “I did what I had to do because it was the only way to keep you safe.”
I tap my foot anxiously on the floor. Do I want to sit here and listen to more of his story? Or try to run? I feel like I’m in a maze where almost every end is a dead end or a trap and it’s hard to figure out which path will get me to wherever I need to go. My emotions are also confusing, combined with the electricity, I feel like I’m being pushed toward Alex and then pulled back. Pushed and pulled. Pretty soon I’m going to tear in half.
“I know what I saw.” I place a hand on my bandaged wrist. “You stood by while your father tried to erase my mind and I bled all over the floor; I could have died.”
“I would have never let you die.” He reaches for me, however I hover back, shaking my head, not ready to be touched by him yet. He sighs and withdraws his hands to his lap, clenching his fist so tightly his knuckles turn white. “Do you remember that necklace I gave you?”
I grab the hollow of my neck and then panic at the bare space. “Wait. Where is it?”
He sets a hand on my knee before I have time to react and a burst of passion swells through me. “Relax. I have it.”
That doesn’t make me relax at all. I keep remembering how Laylen and I talked about Alex being brainwashed. What if he’s right? What if he has to be here because the memoria extracto didn’t work and Alex is helping his father hold me hostage until they can figure something else out?
“Why do you have it?” I ask warily.
He takes a deep breath and gradually frees it, his fingertips massaging my kneecap. “When I gave you the necklace, I wasn’t just giving it to you because it belonged to you. I gave it to you because it has sugilite in it,” he says. I’m about to ask him what sugilite is when he adds, “That’s the purple stone in the center of the locket. It protects whoever’s wearing it from certain kinds of magic.” He pauses. “Like the mind erasing kind of magic.”
“I thought you said my mother gave me the necklace when I was little?” I ask. “Did she give it to me to protect me from something, too?”
He sweeps my hair back off my shoulder and I tense, unsure why he is so persistent about touching me. “She gave it to you because you have the star’s energy in you. It was her way of trying to protect you from anyone who tried to use magic on you to get to the star’s power.”
“So why didn’t it work when I was little?” My voice is sharp and bitter. “When Sophia detached my soul from my emotions? Why didn’t it protect me then?”
Alex shuts his eyes, his face contorted in pain. “Stephan knew what it was and he took it off you before Sophia detached your soul.” He opens his eyes and they’re glossed over. “That’s why I tucked it into your shirt in the Jeep. So he wouldn’t see it and take it off.”
I remember when Alex was about to climb out of the Jeep back at the cabin in Colorado. The Death Walkers and Stephan had just shown up and stopped us from running away. Alex had reached over and tucked the locket under the collar of my shirt, whispering, whatever you do, keep that hidden. Don’t let anyone know you have it.