36. I Hate Seeing You Like This

-Katherine-

“Your father really meant to hurt him,” Xenia says when she sees me pulling out the last baobab arrowhead from Gabriel’s arm. It clatters into the steel bowl, joining the rest of what I’ve pulled out.

50 bullets in his torso, 28 arrows broken off in his right leg, staked through the arms so viciously that it left splinters… don’t get me started on the number of arrowheads in his stomach. All that plus scars from his limbs and fingers regrowing and the UV lamps.

My father wanted Gabriel to suffer, and it fucking breaks my heart.

“I know,” I say, tears clouding my vision and watching as a tear falls onto his bloodied chest and slips down his side. Xenia reaches for me and I shake my head. “No, I need to do this myself. It’s my fault they caught him.”

“Kat-”

“No!” I exclaim, throwing down the tweezers and glaring at her. “This is on me! I shouldn’t have sent him away that night, Xen, it nearly cost him his life!”

She cringes away from me, sighing. “I’ll leave you, then,” she