For She Is Wrath

by Emily Varga

Or perhaps I needn’t have done anything. Perhaps he always had the capacity to do this to me, and I was too in love with him to see it.

Never show them your fear. The weak feed from fear.

“Dania, you’ve already done enough for me. You went back for me and you didn’t have to.” Her smile was sad. “It’s okay. If I had family, I’d want to be with them too.” My heart splintered, knowing that she had no one left, that she was alone now, and I still had people who loved me. I clasped her hands in the boat, and it rocked with the force of my movement. “You’re my family now too.”

I had known immediately my hands were the only thing I couldn’t have changed. They had led me to freedom, were the reason I could use a sword so well. But above all, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to look down and see someone else’s fingers, someone else’s scars. These hands would never be locked behind bars again, would never be stopped from holding the weight of a sword hilt. These were the hands that would see me through this.

“I’d read you like scripture, a prayer. And all the worship I felt, I’d heap at your feet.”

You may have given him forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean you owe him kindness.”