Null and Void (Patrons of the Divine, #1)

by R. Moody

For anyone who has ever been told how to feel. Embrace the rage. It probably won’t solve any of your problems, but it’ll be a lot more fun. Stay moody.

It’s my earliest memory, rage. The fluttering bird in my chest became a full-grown firecat clawing to get out.

I have nothing left. No rage. No fight. I am a crushed vessel.

I vow to build the wall higher. Tighter. Colder. I will give no more—can give no more—of myself. I am done. Nothing is left.

“I don’t know who or what has made you think that you wouldn’t be worthy of your friends coming to rescue you, but I won’t tolerate it. I won’t tolerate you treating yourself with any less respect than you deserve.”

if we constantly let the awful things that happen darken the sun, then we would never see the light again.”

I rip and claw and scrape at his face, screaming until my throat is as raw as the open wound where my soul used to be.

He whispers my name. My name. Not Firecat. Mika. It sounds like a promise on his lips, one I might want him to keep. Forever.

I’m sorry to scare you, nothing is wrong. I’m just…” What? An emotionally volatile, rage-oholic? Stuck replaying every awful thing I've ever done in my head to remind myself that I don’t deserve to be loved? Confused about what to believe, so I choose to believe the worst? Sick to death of how weak and useless I become whenever Riley touches me, so I erupt in brutal anger and lash out? Hating that I willingly gave him a hold over me, and now I am terrified I can’t get it back? Not wanting to be used by him and turning into this ugly creature that uses him first?

I didn’t cry. I was only my rage. And I was happy with my solitary life. Happy. Was that happiness?

I’m trying to shake off my own memories of being abused and manipulated. And here I am again. Is this all the Divine has for me in this life?

I’m an empty vessel barely containing a nightmare.

Here I am again. Captured by a man wanting to break me. To take something from me. To take a piece of my soul, or what’s left of it. How many times can you lose a piece of your soul before there is nothing left?

Perhaps these aren’t my tears, but the blackness of what’s left of my soul, leaking out of the cracks and broken parts of me.