For She Is Wrath

by Emily Varga

Today, I would be free. I would reunite with Baba. And then I would wreak hell upon the ones who put me here.

If I focused on being afraid, I would never leave this place, and all my plans and plotting would come to nothing.

The number of times the guards had hauled me out of my cell to be tortured meant I had no room left in my heart for regret. Not for them. Not for anyone.

Fuck it. If I was going down, I would take the bitch with me.

If I were free, I would make them all pay the price for what they had done. They would feel every bruise, every moment of humiliation and betrayal.

“Mazin was someone I trusted when I should have known better. Someone who was always going to betray me, in the end.”

“The ones closest to you will betray you the most,”

“Do you have a plan?” I smiled at her, an echo of Thohfsa’s earlier one. “No, but I have a sword.”

“He took your father from you. I would want revenge for the exact same reason. But just be careful you don’t become what you most despise. That we both don’t become what we most despise.” “And what is that?” “Greedy. Power hungry.”

“You’re the first friend I’ve had since Souma. I don’t have anyone else. And yet I’m helping you destroy yourself. What kind of friend does that make me?” “A friend who understands exactly what it feels like to lose everything.”

“Sometimes it is those we trust the most who will betray us,”

Not until I burned him up inside like he burned me. Until there was nothing left of him but this wanting. Until he begged for me like a dying man in the desert, and I the mirage that could have saved him.

“You can’t just extinguish your feelings, Dania. You aren’t like that. You’ll end up hurting yourself more than you know.”

A history of women and girls being wronged by men who never had any consequences. Now I would be the consequences. “I choose vengeance. I choose death. And in the end, that’s what you chose too.”

“I came for revenge, but I’m leaving with something much more worthwhile. Friendship.”