I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me (I Feed Her to the Beast, #1)

by Jamison Shea

Just thinking of what those men from the board said made my heart rate spike again. Classical ballet wasn’t made for your kind. But it was all I had. A ballerina was all I had ever known myself to be.

“Haven’t you realized? The ballet’s a chess game, and you’re all pawns.”

“Come see us when you’re tired of being sacrificed for the king.”

He asked for beauty, but then it also made him a monster.

“To sow chaos? Must everything that exists have a reason?” He shrugged, like it didn’t matter to him at all what our mysterious benefactor wanted.

She’d rehearsed this speech, every word practiced like a lawyer in a courtroom, confidence brimming with the set of her jaw. She thought she’d win. And maybe she was right;

Coralie couldn’t have her friend back because she didn’t exist. And maybe never did.

I craved it so much, I let it change me,”

“I’d worship you any way you please. I’d melt Palais Garnier down and build an altar in your

name, if you so wished.” It was a reverent whisper, the kind uttered in the wings of a stage, before an audition, with desperation.

It wasn’t the art that was the problem—it was the company. The art I loved and would keep with me, but the place would kill me if I let it.

This place wasn’t meant for me this place doesn’t want me this place doesn’t deserve me so I’m letting it go—

“Go fuck yourself. I can’t wait to watch this place burn.”

We weren’t the same; I’d tamed my beast and walked away from this place.

Every feat I ever accomplished was glorious and in the name of glory, and I didn’t need to play her game to prove it.

I fed her to the beast, and the beast was me, and the beast was within me.