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That pulls the trigger.
White hot rage blinds me.
The scream that comes out of my lungs belongs to a wounded animal. It shakes the air, breaks the glass on the porthole, and I attack him, claws out.
I go for his face, screaming. His beautiful handsome face. I slice my claws across it, cutting through his brow, his eye, slicing off the tip of his nose. I go for the other side, doing the same. I grunt and I cry and I shred him to pieces again and again until he looks worse than Sedge does. His face is hanging off in strips and he’s no longer recognizable. He’s just bone and muscle and bloody skin.
And I feel something come over me. I thought it would be shame, Ishouldfeel shame, I should be horrified, and yet there’s still something so dark and defiant and evil inside me, a monster to beat all monsters.
I lunge at him with a snapping maw and take hold of his neck, much like he did to me last night, tit for tat. But where he just drank from me, I bite all the way through, tearing out a chunk of his neck, blood pouring to the floor.
You’re done, stop, it’s over!a voice yells at me from inside.You will kill him!
Ramsay sways on his feet, a mess of a man, and I wonder if maybe I went too far. Maybe he’s not as invincible as he led me to believe.
“Are you still angry?” he says through shredded lips, his voice raw and inhuman. “Are you still full of rage?”
I start blinking back tears, a surge of emotions rushing to the surface.
“Yes,” I say, barely able to breathe now. “I’m still angry. Gods help me, I don’t want to be this angry.”
He seems to think that over but I can’t even see his eyes anymore, they are just bloody dark masses. “Then we’ll try again, another day. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
He turns unsteadily and walks toward the door, his hands out in front of him as if he can’t see at all, as if I’ve left him blind.
“I’ll get Sedge to take care of you,” he says as he pauses at the door. “Please, don’t do to him what you did to me. I deserve all your wrath, Maren. He doesn’t.”
He leaves the room, locking it behind him, perhaps to keep me from destroying everyone else on the ship.
I stare at the door for a moment, terrified at being alone now, alone with myself, with this monster, and I look down at my shaking hands, at the strips of his flesh under my nails, wondering what I’ve done.
Wondering what I’ve become.
* * *
True to the captain’s word, Sedge did come and visit me. He brought me a bucket, more fish, and another bottle of rum. I didn’t say a word to him, I couldn’t even look at him. The moment he left I took the bottle of rum and poured it all over my hands and in my mouth, trying to clean the flesh and blood from them. Then I took the bottle that Ramsay brought me earlier and I drank it down. I drank it until I was nothing but drunk and passed on out the floor.
My dreams weren’t kind to me but, then again, they had no right to be. I dreamt of Edonia and the Kraken and Asherah. Of Ramsay and Sterling and Aerik. I dreamt I was captured by skeletal Syren and dragged down into the abyss. I dreamt I saw my father die of a broken heart and my mother was captive in a tank just like my sister was in.
I wake up feeling godawful. I crawl to the bucket in the corner and I vomit in it, the rum making my stomach churn, as well as the realization of what I did to Ramsay.
He wanted it. He wanted me to unleash my fury on him, he used those words.
And yet all I want to do is cry. The shame that grips me is so great. I want to embrace the monster in me, I want to be deadly and powerful so that no one can ever hurt me again.
But I don’t want to do it by hurting him. Because even though he has done things to make me hate him, even though his treatment of me waxes between tenderness and roughness, swinging like the tide, I fear I’m starting to care for him. That when he told me that we could be a king and queen of the high seas, that a secretive part deep inside me swelled with joy. It wanted that, exactly that. To have a man that sees me as an equal, not someone to belittle or batter around.
Are we equals now? Ramsay has never been violent with me. The iron brand was harsh but he did it for my own protection. He’d never struck me or flogged me or purposely caused me pain that I didn’t want or enjoy.
ButIdid. I hurt him, I ravaged him. And I don’t think he enjoyed it. I think the madness I lost myself to, the rage that consumed me like a beast, I think I caused him a lot of pain.
And he just let me do it. He wanted me to do it. He didn’t enjoy it, it was all for me, so that I could finally be rid of the anger inside me.
Only it didn’t work. I’m still mad, this deep festering pit of fury inside me, and now I’m ashamed and scared. Scared because what if I broke something between us? What if I both scarred him and scared him? What if that thin line of respect we seemed to have for each other has been shredded the same as his face?
What happens then?
What happens next?
