Areston thinks he can shield me from his past, but what he doesn't realize is I'm already part of it.
The darkness that haunts him? It's the same one that's been chasing me for years.
I've given him everything-my body, my heart, my soul-and still...
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Research Question Time:
Whose POV chapters do you enjoy the most? Why?
Note: Goes without saying that these questions help me write my book better so the more answers the better.
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I've often heard my wife and others regard me as a demi-god. They see power when they look at me. Omnipotence. The absolute control. And a man who twists everything to his whim and shapes the world around with mighty will.
They're not wrong except for one thing—I am not a demi-god. I am the supreme deity. A god who's the architect of vengeance and pain.
As I stand outside the sterile torture room that's as dark outside as it's white inside, the rage within me seethes, eager to be emancipated from the shackles I've tied it to.
The glass wall gives me an unobstructed view of the man inside. Strapped and shattered. But not nearly enough. I won't break him just yet. Doing that would be easy and I am a man who enjoys inflicting slow agony. I want him to feel the depths of excruciation before I am done with him.
A decade ago, they took the only person I've ever loved. They didn't just hurt my angelic rose, they shattered her. Fucked up her mind, crushed her spirits, and left behind a shell of the girl she once was.
The ghost of that horror still lurks deep inside her.
I see it every time I look into her mesmerizing emerald gaze that's meant to lure mankind like a siren's song does to sailors.
I see it when she flinches in closed spaces, the way she sometimes begs for help in her nightmares, gasping and trembling, something she doesn't know she does and I'd like to keep it that way.
Her nightmares are not as frequent as they were before when we first started our arrangement in Greece and I used to watch her all night when she'd be fast asleep. But they have resurfaced violently thrice when she was stressed because of her past and mine. I witnessed it the night I told her about Esme, then the revelation about Darina, and recently after the powder room episode.
She has scars that are no longer visible on the surface, but she knows exactly where each one of them were once as if her body is a bloodied and almost destroyed map that she has taped back together.
They did that to her.
Plucked her out of the dome from the fortress and crushed her, petal by petal. Turned my bright, fierce rose into a shadow of her former self, all for their sick pleasure.
I cannot forget the sense of resentment I could feel gnawing at her when she mentioned her attempts to kill herself.
My angel puts a brave face for the world, but I can see the truth right through her. She lets me because I am the only one she trusts explicitly to erase her demons.
