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

by S.T. Gibson

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.

I wonder if you would have wanted me if you found me like that: vibrant and loved and alive.

When life fails you, spite will not.”

“Water your mother’s flowers with their blood.”

You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night’s fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of debts being wiped clean. I say you do not have a name.

There are no angels in this world to accompany the dying in their final moments, only pickpockets and carrion birds.

I knew then I would chase your tiny moments of weakness all the way into hell and back. What is more lovely, after all, than a monster undone with wanting?

This felt cosmic, like a piece of me was being excised so it could take up residence in you.

think, my lord, that this is when you loved me best. When I was freshly made, and still as malleable as wet clay in your hands.

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

I kissed every inch of her as though she were a holy relic, sloughing off her dress with the delicate care I might use while unwrapping a communion chalice from its linen.

Love is violence, my darling; it is a thunderstorm that tears apart your world. More often than not, love ends in tragedy, but we go on loving in the hope that this time, it will be different.

“Love makes monsters of us, Constanta, and not everyone is cut out for monstrosity.