The Companion

by E.E. Ottoman

And if there is one thing I understand better than most, it's the way the world tries to crush the life out of you."

Audrey was like her; she was almost certain of that. A woman of found and claimed womanhood. A witch as Madeline had longed to be when she'd been a child with the power to transfigure her place in the world. We are the same, Madeline thought and let that knowledge settle inside her, felt the weight of it.

I couldn't have intimacy or desire without feeling like I was playing into some overarching scheme where I would only end up discarded at the end.

Kissing Audrey was like the promise of a storm at dusk—power, beauty, and chaos not quite seen but felt all the way down to Madeline's bones.

To be intimate with someone and feel not right afterward, too vulnerable and too seen."

"I spend so much of my time not being seen. Explaining and quantifying myself."

Getting what you want and not knowing what to do with it. I am good at being hurt and bad at being loved."

Crying for all the times people had looked at her with hungry, predatory eyes and the times they hadn't looked at all. For all the small humiliations and larger terrors she'd had to silently swallow, the ways her heart had been broken over and over.

"When I was young, I used to read fairy tales, but I never wanted to be the princess," Madeline said. "I always wanted to be the enchantress of the woods—beautiful, powerful, and wild."