Blood & Bone [Book Three of The City of Eternity Series] [✔]

3.13: Retaliation

You'll be okay.

"You'll be okay."

Everything will be fine.

"Everything will be fine."

I'm okay, Arsenio.

Inas doesn't repeat the words from the woman kneeling in front of me.

The shadow of my wife was smiling at me as her hands seemed to rest against my knee. The touch was not quite real enough to fool me, each tap of her finger causing a pulse in my heart at the same time my mind rejected the idea of skin against my own. If it weren't for the fact Inas still had a firm grip on my head, cradling it against her chest, I know I would've been swallowed by the darkness outside already.

"So that's it..." I say in a whisper, denying the words enough weight to truly become reality. I barely moved against her chest, but Inas gripped tighter, her nails clawing into my arms with an intensity I was struggling to fight against. An aching, rigid knot of tension was building in every muscle, and with my last moments of true consciousness, I knew there'd be nothing to hold me together anymore.

When my gaze shifts from the claws Inas was holding me with, to the image of my wife, now slumped against the archway to the front door. The sight did little to me. I was looking at the dismembered image of the woman I loved and couldn't muster a shred of sorrow over it. Where I expected grief, an outpouring of emotion that refused to still, I found instead a numbness.

I already knew this to be the truth. I knew that she was dead. I had accepted that reality the moment I left the Central zone, I had just hid from the fact. I allowed naivety to convince me to collect different thoughts; the stones of love and hope I'd filled my bucket with merely painted with bright colours to hide the depravity of what was underneath.

That's what I told myself as I tore myself from Inas's arms and ran from the home.

I knew it.

I was kidding myself.

I was not the type of person to have a good thing happen. To deserve to have a good thing happen.

I wanted the darkness to swallow me up as I tore through the door, but the sun was still illuminating the zone with a warm glow, the snow beneath glistening in the light. I'd almost say it was a beautiful sight if I weren't running barefoot in the ice. It was only that feeling that was keeping me even slightly grounded; the hot anger that was being pumped through my veins and attempting to leak into my mind kept at bay by the desire to stay alive, to ignore numbness in my feet.

I barely registered the shouts from the couple behind me, the echoes of my name chasing after me as I struggled to stay upright. My teeth were taking the brunt of my anger, digging into my bottom lip until they'd managed to draw blood, and satiate the beast that had snuck up to the line.