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Rage was better than nothing. Rage kept the blood flowing and the soul hungering.
“How astute you’ve grown, butterfly.” “No.” I flattened my palm over the glass and spread my fingers, ruining the scribbles I’d made. “The stupid was merely beaten out of me until my eyes opened properly.”
I needed her to come back—no matter who she became in the aftermath—which meant I had to loosen my desperate hold.
The beautiful markings of unleashed grief and rage she’d bestowed on him.
The undeniable proof that one could be monstrously ruthless and cunning, but that did not mean they were without heart. It meant they’d once had too much.
If it would even return that freedom, or if it would only grant relief that he could never again touch me. All I knew was that I needed it. To breathe without feeling the brutality of his betrayal. To fall into sleep without being afraid of dreams turning into nightmares.
It was the larger parts of me, those which had been so tampered with that I was still trying to figure out where they now fit, that did not care for logic. Logic and heart seldom coexisted.
But it took a monster to defeat one, and the only comfort I’d found came from knowing I’d somehow tamed the bigger beast.
I’d need to learn to accept it, being watched and studied, and I was. But it was a discomfort I never thought I’d experience. Therefore, I struggled to navigate it—feeling ridiculed and assessed and prodded like a caged bird who wasn’t caged at all. I was free. Yet this ageless paranoia screamed differently.
“You needed this, and although I didn’t know it, I suppose I also did. It’s been too long since I’ve seen this world in this way.” “And what way would that be?” “In color.”
Dreams I’d since seen so thoroughly crushed that I was still fighting the temptation to dream again.
“That I’m so wretchedly in love with you, it’s both saved and damned me.”
I saw it all in undeniable color—felt it invade the coldest parts of my heart with warmth.
“It changes you,” he said. “But instincts born from darkness are always better.” I met his ice-blue eyes at that. “Those scars can be molded into weapons that will serve you well, no matter how horrifically earned.”
“Even hatred makes a home in the soul, butterfly. That is why we seek to eradicate it with indulgence and vengeance.”
