I rock and rock and rock,ripping at my hair, clawing at my arms, my neck, my scalp ...
Me.
There is no pretty way to paint over all that ugly.
I severed my tether to humanity at the tender age of two—lost control and butchered not only the people who broke into our home and took my brother from me, but also the servants, the cooks ... mymother.
I murdered my mother ...
I shudder, dry heave, pray it was a swift and painless death.
Pray she didn’t suffer.
Her scream echoes through my mind; the sound she made when the axe was swung—
Of course she suffered. She watched her son bleed out, then saw her daughter turn into a monster.
Watched me die in a different way.
Rhordyn took me in and dressed me as a lamb, not realizing I’m actually the wolf. Except my weapons aren’t fangs and claws, but an inky fire so noxious itsevers—leaving fleshy, bubbled bits that weep their life.
My rocking becomes so violent my bare skin grates across the stone.
No wonder the people in Whispers haunt me. That their perusalsburn.No wonder part of me tried so hard to put them back together.
I thought the unintentional paintings were my gift for the ones who lost themselves that day, but it was an overflowing well of guilt worming its way out of me in any way it could. Forcing me tolook.
So many faces.
So many wide-eyed, condemning stares.
Murderer ...
A strangled sound claws out of me, raw and roughly hewn.
Did my subconscious create my Safety Line as a way to cage mein?Perhaps it considered me best kept isolated should I lose control again?
And what if thatdoeshappen? Do all the people who run the estate end up being torn to bits—their scorched remains scattered throughout the castle halls? DoesBaze?
Rhordyn?
I release a low, throaty whimper.
They call me a child-survivor, when I’m actually their unbridled demise just waiting to unleash.
I need to atone for everything I’ve done, and I can’t do that if I’m tucked high in the clouds.
No.
All I’m achieving here is to waste my life, living in a protective bubble I don’t deserve—one that could burst at any moment, be it from the inside or the out.
Cainon’s proposal was much more of a gift than I realized. Fate is giving me a chance tosavelives, and I refuse to look at it any other way. It’s too late to go back and change things, so I’ll have to do what I can with what little I’ve got ...
A blue and gold cupla.
I claw up the edge of that mind-chasm, heaving and bruised, broken and bloody. There’s not a single part of my insides that isn’t ugly, so unlike the real me hiding beneath this skin I wear.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
