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( there are no bargains between lion and men. i will kill you and eat you raw )
ECHO CADDEL HAS BLOOD on her hands.
She'd always hated that phrase. Blood on your hands. Like she wears blood like the Kerch merchant's wives wear gloves. Like she'd never spilt it over onto her wrists or her forearms or any other part of her wicked, wicked flesh. Like she could take it off if she tried.
No, Echo Caddel had blood in her bones- as if she could have done all this and walked away with anything else.
It had been a good thing - for a time. For a few tranquil days it was proof that she'd survived. Sure, she was a good ear and a few kruge down but what that compared to her life? She'd fought against the monster of her childhood and now it lay dead, nothing more than food for the worms, whilst she stood on the deck of a ship with the wind in her hair and decidedly more life in her veins.
Except now she couldn't sleep. Sleep evaded her, rejected her, scolded her for seeking refuge in it's depths like she had done so many times before. Echo would close her eyes and see a familiar smile (The Darkling's, her mother's, her sister's, her father's? They all looked the same now. ) and then she would decide she really didn't want to sleep anyway. So she'd stumbled into the deck of the ship that carried them home and heard only half of the world and try to remember that despite everything, she was still alive.
Somehow that didn't help.
Her heart beat a lot faster these days too. Especially when she was thinking and especially when she was alone. Her breathing would rise and fall at an uncontrollable pace and her chest would move like a piston and no matter how much Echo tried to forcibly replicate the normal functions of the human body - her's simply refused to obey.
When they got home it would be better. Probably. At least in Ketterdam she'd be surrounded by shadows that didn't wear her mother's face and people she could trust to be nothing less than their most horrifying. The predictable nature of men would be like a soothing balm on the festering wound in her mind. Everything was going to be fine.
Because Echo Caddel had been shot at, nearly eaten alive, swallowed by the Fold and spat back out again. She'd been abandoned, battered, bruised and forgotten. How much worse could things really get?
playlist:
i. trouble: valerie broussard ii. angel of small death and the codeine scene: hozier iii. choke: I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME iv. dark red: steve lacy v. body: mother mother vi.girls against god: florence and the machine vii. let me live / let me die: des rocs viii. bury a friend: billie eilish ix. dream girl evil: florence and the machine x. eat your young: hozier
