Lahat ng Kabanata ng Nine Ungrateful Sisters: Kabanata 551 - Kabanata 560

The door creaked open a crack. Jason pushed it wider.Amara stood with her back to him, facing the window. She stared out at nothing in particular.Jason had seen this exact scene countless times when he lived here before. But this time, he didn't look at her. He looked at her shadow instead. It was faint against the wall, yet something about it was wrong. A second head seemed to overlap hers.The dim light distorted the silhouette. It looked like a larger outline wrapped around a smaller one, one dark and solid, the other pale and barely there."My godfather said someone would come looking for me. I never imagined it would be you."Amara turned around. Her face was nothing like before. She looked like a completely different person. Her eyes especially had changed. The dark pupils were gone. In their place was amber, with a tiny black point at the center and pale yellow radiating outward to fill the iris. The whites of her eyes had turned a deep, murky brown, like clouds of dark s

Oscar recoiled. He dispersed the vitalis at once, forcing it back before it could settle. The claws receded slowly, nail by nail, until his hands looked like his own again.A wave of weakness followed. His body felt even worse than before.There was a particular cruelty in glimpsing the light after spending so long in the dark. Once you had seen it, the darkness that returned felt heavier than the one you knew before.Oscar had been holding himself together for weeks. To everyone around him, he looked functional, composed, unremarkable.However, the complications from his brain cancer were wearing him down every moment. The only things standing between him and collapse were Caleb's medicine and his own stubborn will.Then, for a single instant, his body felt at ease. Every muscle loosened, as though every cell in him had exhaled at once. Every part of him cried out with the same message: "Keep going. It doesn't matter what you become. As long as you're alive."He absently tapped

Diana couldn't hide her shock.Before Oscar was driven out, he and the sisters had been close. He wasn't one of them by blood, but in some ways he had been closer to her than her own sisters. They had fooled around together, played games, and filled the house with the kind of noise only a family could make.What Diana had always secretly envied about Oscar was his physique. She had never seen him work out or diet. Yet he was built like a model, lean and defined in a way that looked completely effortless, the kind of body you could only truly appreciate when you actually touched it.But now her hands were wrapped around his arm, and it felt like a thin rod beneath his oversized clothes."You..." She forgot what she had been about to say. The guilt in her chest doubled.The nine of them had lost a brother. Oscar had lost nine family members all at once. He had lost an entire home. If a person divided his heart equally among nine people, each one received the same share. Most of Osca

Diana wondered if she had heard him correctly. "What? A housekeeper?""What's wrong? Not up for it?" Oscar released her chin and stepped back. "Then forget it."He turned to leave.Diana gave in. "I'll do it. I'll be here tomorrow." It was just looking after people. Wasn't she already doing exactly that for Freya back with her sisters?"When you can get the rest of your family to come serve the Miller household too, I'll consider us even."He left the words hanging as he continued toward Jason's house.Diana might agree to something like that. The other sisters never would. They had grown up with every comfort handed to them. The thought of working as household staff would probably make them want to die.He had no real intention of forgiving any of them. Putting Diana to work was a way to make his point. She had humbled herself this far. The others could never do the same.Diana's heart filled with something that felt like hope. "I'll make it happen. If that's what it takes,

Oscar tried what had worked the first time. He attempted to disperse the vitalis and force the transformed arm back to normal.But he could only disperse the vitalis flowing through the rest of his body. The arm was attached to him. It had grown from his shoulder, yet it had become something entirely separate.It was a self-contained system. No matter what he tried, the vitalis inside the arm wouldn't respond to him. It circulated within its own boundaries and ignored every attempt he made to control it.Simply put, when only his fingers had changed, dispersing his vitalis had been enough to restore them.But the arm had finished becoming what it was meant to be. It had developed its own interior, its own contained world. Something had taken root within it and claimed it as its own.Oscar had lost jurisdiction over it.He sat for a long time with a knife in his hand, staring at the point where the arm joined the rest of his body.His body felt strong now. That strength came enti