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

by Jamison Shea

every room was a chance to have our graceful suffering acknowledged.

What I found more interesting was that Joséphine never denied the tales of drinking blood and spells with hair, only adding to the aura of mystery around her. Fears of curses and dark magic psyched out her competition, making her nothing short of genius. Ballet was warfare, after all.

walked the length of the room, skirts fluttering the floor around me, skin humming as gazes followed with the same vacantness I’d elicited from Rose-Marie at the restaurant. A touch fearful, even, as if I’d ripped the worship from their reluctant hearts. While Coralie was tucked in a corner trying to smooth-talk President Auger, people were parting around me, a sea of fine silks and charmeuses punctuated by real gold and diamonds, and like a shark, I passed through. Good.

Now I was the new puppeteer making high society dance, and blood rushed to my ears from the euphoria of it.

it wasn’t divine intervention or smoke and mirrors that made me better—it was practice. Grit woven into the tapestry of my person.

“I don’t think it’s weak,” he countered softly. “In fact, there’s strength in knowing when to walk away.”

I found home in the monster’s embrace, in its sinister whispers and unabashed cruelty, in being not just seen but felt.

I was fragile, a mortal body stitched together with divine thread. We weren’t supposed to make a habit of swimming in the power of a god.