Chapter 361

• Some days Death showed me my children, other days he let me burn for hours on end. On rare occasions I was with Adara or Malachi or James. He wanted me to witness their grief and their pain and feel it deep in my soul. It was the worst punishment I’d ever suffered through.
• He took such pleasure in my pain that I stopped reacting to whatever they felt and turned my emotions off. He let me burn extra-long when I did that and I don’t know what hurt more, their pain or mine. I felt numb to it all, even their emotions because I was beginning to feel like I had when I’d taken Malachi’s pain, before going to Wolf Peak. I felt weak.
• Finally one day he let me sit down and said we should talk, man to man, and I laughed at him. I had clearly lost my mind and I had no idea how long I’d been there with him because there was no measure of time. There was only pain.