A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood, #1)

by S.T. Gibson

I soaked in the tincture, perfumed by the agony of my abusers, and let you comb out every snarl.

You turned a strong-minded girl into a pulsing wound of need. I never knew the meaning of the word enthralled before you.

I wouldn’t realize until later that you were irritable precisely because I was in bloom, because there were suddenly so many sources of joy in my life apart from your presence.

“But you would collect us, like baubles?”

I was only ever a guest, every night contingent on my good behavior.

Love was no girlhood game. It was an iron yoke, forged in fire and heavy to wear.

You kissed me. Punishingly, until my lips were bruised, until there was scarcely any air left in my lungs. The force of your love nearly drove me to my knees. I was no woman; I was merely a supplicant, a pilgrim who had stumbled across your dark altar and was doomed to worship at it for ever.

You made it into an art form, this quiet sort of violence. You were so far into our heads your gentle suggestions so often felt like our own thoughts.

You always knew how to thaw my heart right when I had resolved to freeze it against you.

“I love you,” you said into my mouth. It sounded like you were drawing up a peace treaty to protect the boundary lines of contested ground. “I promise you that.”

here was no huge argument that predicated my decision to betray you, no ultimate act of tyranny. I simply broke under the weight of a thousand tense nights, a thousand thoughtless, soul-stripping words. I felt like I was losing my mind in that place, and eventually my desire to do something about it, anything about it, outweighed my fear of you.