I didn’t want to see my bedroom again. I didn’t want to see Annabelle and have to explain things to her. She had lost so many already. There was no need for me to revisit a place that had long since been a home. My things didn’t need me to collect and move. They’d come to me like I had commanded.

I began walking toward my mother, just to watch her back away from me. It was bizarre to see her cower away from me. As a child, she’d treated me in ways that made me feel weak, unwanted, hated. I was savoring the fear in her eyes, and I knew the darkness inside me was roaring through my veins. It wanted me to cause pain; yet, until this moment, I’d never had the urge. Or the temptation.

“It’s done. I’m gone. Thank you mother for nothing in this life.” I expected a sharp pang of guilt when I said those words aloud but I felt nothing. As it should be. I had been her dissapointment and she’d been sure that I knew it.

“You should have never been born,” her voice trembled slightly as she said the words.

I agreed with her. I didn’t wish my life on anyone. “Agreed,” I replied.

“Don’t go to Duely. Leave him alone,” she added to hurt me.

The only blood relative that cared for me, she wanted me to also leave alone. Even now, she was trying to control me. She may be disowning me but I was still a Kamlock. That she couldn’t change. “That’s up to Duely,” I told her.

She raised a hand to me as if to protect herself, but she said nothing. I rolled my eyes. This was the most ridiculous thing that I’d ever experienced with this woman, and I’d been through a lot. I thought the time she locked me in a car in the heat of the summer at the age of ten as a test after the casting lessons she’d given us was bad. My sisters hadn’t been testedlike that. Just me. I’d passed the test with ease. It had seemed cruel but this topped that by far.

“You’ve been trying to get rid of me since I was child,” I said wondering if the tests she’d given me my entire life had been her trying to kill me.

She didn’t argue with me. She didn’t deny it. I was stunned. Duely was right. I was naive. Terribly naive. This was the end of that though. Today would change me more than anything else she’d ever done.