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.

“You don’t get to decide my retribution.”

“You don’t hold a sword, you wield it.

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

Maybe if I turned my body to ice I could become the weapon I needed to avenge my father. To avenge myself.

This was who I would become in front of him. A sweet, beautiful confection. And when he bit into the honeyed sugar, it would be poison filling his mouth.

The problem when someone you loved betrayed you was that you had a lifetime of good memories with them that you had to examine in a different light. What was once a safe place to be—beside him, engulfed in his arms, inhaling the smell of rainstorms and pine—was actually the most dangerous place of all.

“You know I’d follow you anywhere, Dani.” Something twisted in my heart, and I was suddenly robbed of breath in a way that had nothing to do with the battle.

I was a frivolous, beautiful confection. Not a warrior. But he didn’t know warriors could wear jewels just as well.

“The most frightened people are the ones that do the frightening.

If you spend everything you have chasing this, you might not like what’s left over.”

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

It was much easier to hold a dagger, for my weapons to be blood and blades, not my lips, my thighs, my skin. It was simpler to stab someone in the chest than lose my heart.

I could feel something black and dark entering my chest, as if I were being taken over by my hatred, and it wasn’t me talking, but my revenge. “I am a tool of vengeance now,” I uttered. “I exist to destroy those who came for me and my family.”

You marked me, but in more ways than one. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, the way your hands felt.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know you? I’d know you with any face. Any skin. Any hair. A thousand djinn could disguise you from me and I’d still be able to find you just by the sound of your breath.”