Salt in the Wound (Lyonesse)

by Sierra Simone

But something about dancing with him under the night sky felt like dancing right into a trap that even I might not be able to escape from.

I’m not a stock to be traded, I’m not an asset to be invested, and I’m not giving up my future to further my father’s earthly glory.”

Maybe I wanted to matter to someone. Even if it was only through the lens of sex. I wanted to be something more than a tool, something more than a means to an end.

I want you mine. That should be enough to terrify you, because I would hold nothing back until I’d eaten your very soul. I would hold nothing back until it was written on your skin and scratched into your bones how much I crave you.”

“A calculated gamble,” replied Mark calmly. “But one I felt confident in taking, because I know you, Isolde Laurence. You’ll always hate yourself first. When you look back on this, it will be yourself you want to burn alive; it will be your own choices you want to scourge yourself for.

“You are terrified that your soul will be damned to hell. And I no longer have one left at all.”

It was bad enough that I’d been forced into this marriage, but to have fallen in love with him too? To have been played, tricked, and now abandoned? It was just salt in the wound.

Mark thought I would hate myself before I hated him? He thought I would lose any game I played against him? He might be older, stronger, the devil sent to scourge other devils, but I was Isolde Laurence, and I had been forged for years into a weapon to be wielded against devils exactly like him.