All's Fair in Revenge

Chapter 21: Sutara

Blood. Saltwater. Drowning. Screams. My nightmares beat me with snippets of memory. They all began the same. With me below water, peaceful and calm. Flashes like lightning and thunder forced me to the surface, to the shore. Arin held her neck closed. Flash. Blood pooled at her knees. Flash. I slipped over my feet trying to reach her. Flash. I ran to her. I kept running. The blood—her blood—warm and slippery, splashed at my legs. It coated them.

I'll never catch her. I'll never catch her. I'll never catch her.

I never catch her.

"Hana." Cool knuckles dragged along the contours of my cheek. "Hana, wake up." My body jerked without permission. "In for five. Out for seven." I opened my eyes to a blurry Liv. I gasped. I inhaled. I exhaled. The nightmare dissipated like a fog beneath the summer sun. The shaking stopped. Something warm had wet my legs.

"I pissed myself." My voice was all rasp and no volume.

Liv nodded, an effigy of concern. "I know."

"Sorry." I whipped the covers off my legs and began stripping the bed.

"There's nothing to apologize for." Liv placed a gentle hand on my arm. I froze at the touch. Worry sagged her shoulders. "Clean yourself up. I'll take care of this."

"Thank you."

In the bath chamber, I peeled the long, thin nightgown from my body, crumpled it up, and threw it to the floor. From my tangled hair to the anointing bruises and scars I looked every bit as feral as the court professed. Thorne, too.

On days better than this, I saw my body and seeped with probably more confidence than I deserved. The young woman reflected at me was strength and resilience made flesh. Every blemish and flaw told the story of my life. Each mark screamed, Er'im esisi yeth dauor: I am not yet dead.

You are not yet dead.

Sometimes, I wish to be. When the weight of existence gripped me by the ankles and threatened to pull me down deep into the ground. When everything felt like too much and nothing at all. I wanted it to end.

We all do.

Perched in the corner, an ovular mirror watched the itchiness of shame scrape me from toe to scalp. It crawled between my shoulders and skittered down my spine. I strangled every emotion my nerves begged me to acknowledge. I tried tearing the sticky indignity from my skin. It had no right to be there, to linger, to poison, corrode. The vine-like streaks of mirror rot variegated with the stain of midnight blue energy slipping from my fingertips, dyeing my spidery veins. The darker I felt the darker it became.

My back hit the wall with such force it knocked the wind out of me. I slid down each smooth stone to the floor and watched the near-constant tremble of my hands. It threatened to choke. It threatened to smother me. I hid them in my hair. I yanked. A silent scream ripped from my chest. The darkness only grew stronger. I, on the other hand, had never felt weaker.

Night after night since Arin's death, I woke in fragments worse than the last; broken and betrayed by my mind and body. They were divided. I was divided. My subconscious and conscious alike cowing to a haunted shadow I couldn't erase. My soul frayed.

While I'd never once hated myself—even if there were traits I could do without—timorousness had now cracked my bones, opening for a derisive flood I could not contain. Now that? That I despised.