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

by Jamison Shea

TO THOSE WHO FIND FREEDOM IN BECOMING A MONSTER WHEN DENIED THE SPACE TO BE HUMAN

Firm but still broken. And always beautiful. Just like the perfect ballerina.

Enough to inspire endless gossip. People always manufactured excuses to deny us our successes.

That was the kind of power I didn’t know I wanted. To be undeniable.

But bodies mattered to them as much as our skill and devotion, and many talented dancers were chased away over the years because of things they couldn’t change. Or shouldn’t have been asked to.

Wasn’t that what art was meant to be, transformation through sacrifice? It was why we endured the endless blisters and bruises and broken toes and hidden razor blades—all so we could touch god.

It was the same flavor of uncanny. Of weird.

Girls like me weren’t supposed to get tired or fall apart. I was supposed to be exceptional, every time.

Wealth and power are foreign languages you have to learn to speak fluently if you want even a chance of surviving that place. But I wear the mask well.

“My mom already tried the whole baptism thing one summer in Georgia. It only made me meaner.”

Joséphine and I were just grains of sand in the ocean, thinking we could shape the coast and influence the tide.

And really, nobody else with power stopped to question whether they earned their places. It belonged to the most powerful.

She was always the shoo-in, the guarantee. I never had to worry if she’d be accepted because she always was, so what could I possibly say to make her feel better now that I’d tasted power? Sucks to suck.

But oh, how the wicked dark had earned my faith.

Perhaps manipulating flesh, blood, was simple, but the mind, not so much. I could compel the world to bow, but I couldn’t make them believe.

Maybe normal wasn’t what I wanted after all.

Even Chaos has rules. To receive, we must be willing to take. To win, you must be willing to fight. To drink in life itself, you must be willing to bleed. And there will be blood.

What kind of person becomes a monster only to embrace their curse and build a sanctuary with it?

He didn’t truly know poison until he crossed my path.

Like I was a monster. Like I had finally become someone to fear, and I was damn good at it.

The city was a god of transformation, a phoenix demanding blood and bones, from the guilty but mostly the innocent, in exchange for being made anew. For better or worse. She was loved despite all the bodies she swallowed, those who gave their lives willingly and the millions who had them forcefully taken, the ones here and the others unaccounted for, never found and never buried, whole and in rotted pieces. Paris was beautiful in the ugliest way, and I only dreamed of being loved so unconditionally.

Just because I could do this on my own didn’t mean I had to. Besides, power looked good on me, and I simply wanted mine back.

I didn’t have to be a monster, I didn’t have to be exactly like them to belong. But I wanted to. And I wouldn’t deny myself anymore.

What is life but hunger and resilience? Persistent thriving no matter the conditions? What better kin to have?

And there was only one desire in my blood, one thing I needed most. I craved annihilation.

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.

The dream I’d been fed was a lie, and why should I shoulder that burden?

Twelve years of feeding this dream, cutting down anyone else who stood in my path, only to have the one girl I spared turn around and bite me. And she had the audacity to be mediocre.

Publishing a book is like running a marathon in a poison labyrinth: pushing your mind and body long distances, navigating winding turns and dead ends, toxins around every corner, and trying very hard not to break something in the process.