Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“What separates monsters from good men is only a matter of perspective. In your eyes, I’m a sick fuck for what I’ve done to you. But I, on the other hand, see you as a parasite.”

Curious Moth. A nickname. A fitting one, too, given the fact that I had no intentions of avoiding the flame.

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

“The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

“You’re a sickness inside of me that begs never to be cured. Infecting me with this unshakable craving for things I shouldn’t want.”

“You’re going to destroy me. And I won’t stop you. It feels too fucking good to stop.”

She was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death.

“And if you think, for one second, I’m letting you jog around here in the dark in those tiny fucking shorts, looking like a midnight snack, you’ve grossly underestimated just how much of a prick I can be.”

“Jealousy is a callow schoolboy’s emotion that ends in hard feelings and bloody noses. What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.”

“The decision was made the moment I met you, though. To stay here. I choose you.”

Over her shoulder, she shot me a smile–one so fucking beautiful, I wanted to frame it. Capture it. Study the alchemy of it. How wonderfully intoxicating one simple expression could be.

“You’re the fever in my veins,”

“An incurable madness I can’t shake.

You’ve infected every part of me, and I can’t stop. I can’t stop this obsession.”

“You don’t have to be scared. I will never hurt you, Lilia. In fact, I’ll rain hell on anyone who ever hurts you again.”

all I could think about, all that mattered to me, was the girl. The beautiful girl with her autumn hair, and eyes that reminded me of both the sea and the sky. And she was everything. The earth, the sun, the moon. The air I breathed, and the tenacious beat that kept my eroded heart pumping.

I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

I will bleed out every one of your demons until you feel safe.”

Love was also a sickness. An incurable disease. The kind that crawled inside the muscles and bones, and persisted long after death. As