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

by S.T. Gibson

Am I sick to still think on you softly, even after all the blood and broken promises?

This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. I suppose both are a sort of gentle violence, putting down in ink what scorches the air when spoken aloud.

We were drunk on sheer possibility.

I, however, took love much more seriously. Love was no girlhood game. It was an iron yoke, forged in fire and heavy to wear.

I tried to be generous with you, my love… but the seeds of doubt, once planted, put down deep and stubborn roots.

“I want to live,” she whispered back. Probably too afraid that you would hear from your rooms next door. “But I want to live in the world, not on the outskirts of it. The days just go on and on, Constanta, they never change… I’m tired.”

A feminine hysteria resulting in listlessness and ennui. I thought, perhaps, it was simpler than that. I thought that she was simply fading the way flowers denied sunlight droop and die.

Your memory will fade to shadow and I shall never speak your name again, not even when I tell my lovers the story of how we two met. There will only be sweetness and kindheartedness, and a hundred years of bliss.