#Chapter 184: The Shattered Bond

Amelia They said there was no pain under hypnosis, but that wasn’t true. There was pain, constant, ambient, gnawing at the edges of my awareness. It just didn’t feel like mine. It felt inherited, like it was planted there. Foreign, but rooted. My fists collided with the mirror again and again until the glass fractured like ice, webbing out in jagged veins. Shards splintered outward, slicing my knuckles open in deep red gashes, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Each crack felt like retribution, like punishment, like I was finally doing something, anything, about the festering ache in my chest. The girl in the mirror didn’t flinch. She just stared, slack-jawed and watery-eyed, wearing that awful expression Serena used to wear whenever she wanted to comfort me without saying the truth. That look, quiet and apologetic and unbearably soft, made my stomach turn. “You’re not real,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re just what’s left of her. What she left me with.” The voice in my ea