My fist tightens around the chain as I steal a glimpse of the woman in the mirror ...
She’s a masterpiece; the most exquisite rose given shape and life and a fluttering heartbeat. She’s the sun and the soil and light that bathes the world on a beautiful day.
She’s broken, lonely, and hiding from her past.
But it’s hard to keep hiding when I’m staring at the unveiled truth.
The shape of my eyes ...
The cut of my chin ...
The map of my freckles ...
I look like him. Like the little boy I’ve painted too many times to count—the one who lives in my nightmares.
Onlyin my nightmares.
Wide eyes that stare at nothing.
My lids flutter closed, twin tears darting down my cheeks as I sever the sight of my loss.
I survived. He didn’t. And something deep, deep inside is bellowing through the blackness that it should have been the other way around.
How am I supposed to handle that?
I can’t.
And I just know that tonight, while my consciousness is sleeping, mysubconscious will end up perched on the edge of that shadow-filled chasm that exists in my dreams, trying to force my hand. That it will threaten to jump.
Again, I’ll refuse because the monster you know is safer than the monster you don’t.
I open my eyes, lift the necklace, and yield to the invasive gulp that suffocates my skin as I drape the chain around my neck ... watching all my luster bleed away. It only takes a few seconds before the real me is gone—painted over by a plain ruse that chafes my soul and hides the person I really am.
The beauty.
The pain.
Thecoward.
They came stomping up the stairs, boisterous voices tossed back and forth the entire way. I thought one of them would knock the other out before they made it to the top, but it seems that was just wishful thinking.
Now, they’re outside my freshly rehung door, stabbing each other with vulgar expletives like a couple of mindless brutes.
I sigh and drop off my perch on the windowsill, plucking a path through my belongings still littering the floor from Rhordyn’s looting. Passing the vanity, I pause ... skin prickling.
Stomach twisting.
Slowly, very slowly, I look sideways into the mirror, stealing a peek at the lie. Studying the rope of flaxen hair hanging over my shoulder for even the slightest hint of an opaline hue.
Nothing.
The ruse is flawless; a thought that makes me feel sick to my stomach. I have no idea how it works, or what Rhordyn’s done to allow his filthy lie to prosper.
Ripping my gaze away, I stalk to the door and swing it open to see Cainon trussed up against the wall by a fiery faced Baze—the former hanging in a lazy lump with a mocking smile curling his lips.
Baze’s wooden dagger is poised at Cainon’s throat, and a loosened bead of blood is trickling down that golden skin.
I knife my overprotective escort in the back of the head with a glare. “Baze.”
