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He punched at the barrier, over and over, kicking and throwing his entire body weight against it. All the while screaming her name. “Katharine!” Over and over, he did not stop. Not until his voice scratched along his throat, cracking with each shout.
“Marius, you need to calm down.” I reached for him, slowly, only to snap my hands back as he turned on me. His entire face was pinched with lines. They covered his head, clawed at the sides of his eyes and tugged at his lips. In the faded light he look… monstrous. His eyes were as dark as the night around us. His lips almost non-existent as he hissed and snapped fangs at me. Marius was hunched, breathing heavily as he studied me. I saw the disregard in his gaze. How he studied me as if he did not know me.
This was the monster of the curse.
Wind picked up around my body, rushing in familiar and guarding torrents. I fisted my hands, trying to calm the fear that had stunted my ability to take a full breath.Not now.
“Marius, it is me.” I kept my voice as quiet as I could muster whilst the fear raged wildly through me. “It is me.”
He snapped his head to the side, dark veins bulging in his neck.
“Jak, it is your Jak.”
My name seemed to anchor him back to reality for a moment. His expression softened, only enough for the whites of his eyes to return. Then his raspy voice broke out of his snapping jaws. “I… want… I want to hurt.”
I almost heard the threads of his jacket burst as he slammed his fists into his chest. Pounding one after the other.
I buried the fear and moved for him, throwing myself at his body to stop him from hurting himself anymore. It did not matter to me if he did not feel his actions, if that was the entire reason for doing what he did. I could not watch it.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my head into his chest with my eyes pinched closed. It happened so fast that I readied myself for the slams of his fists into my back. Wincing in anticipation for the pain.
But it did not come. I waited, holding my breath, only to have his hands run softly down my back.
“It…I…Jak, it is me.”
His words almost shattered me entirely. I could not speak, instead only tightening my hold on him as if I could never let go again.
I melted beneath his touch as he traced his fingers down my spine and held onto me.
“I am sorry if I frightened you.”
I spoke into his body, voice muffled. “I am not scared of you. Only what you wished to achieve by hitting yourself.”
His hand stroked the back of my head, as I gripped onto him for dear life.
“That was not even a slither of what I will become, Jak. You need to know that.”
“I do not care.” Tears slipped from my eyes, wetting the material of his jacket beneath my face.
He took my shoulders and pried me from him. “That was me losing control. But when the final moon rises, I do not simply lose control. That suggests I can find it again. You… I cannot explain.”
“Then don’t.” I stared at him, thankful to see his face soften, erasing the harsh lines that had creased across it.
“You are cold,” Marius announced, rubbing his hands up and down my arms.
It was not the cold that made me shake, but the subtle detail of the ribbon that held Katharine’s sheared hairs in a bundle.
I had seen it the moment I had laid eyes upon it. Marius showed no sign of noticing what I had, nor did I point it out.
Marius wrapped his arm around my shoulder and guided me back towards the castle, leaving the horror far behind us. I was thankful for the quiet as we walked. Not even the blood hounds that hid among the shadows of the grounds dared make a sound.
I needed the silence to make sense of what was revealed.
Embossed at the end of the black ribbon was a faint marking of a symbol. One I had seen many times throughout my life.
A pentagram etched like a puckered scar across the ribbon’s material.
It was a sign. For me.
