BORDER

Chapter Forty One

NERISSA

    I wake up in a dark shed. It is almost like I am waking up in that carriage, again. Being ripped from my life and thrown into the land of the fallen. I am back in a cage, I am back trapped, I am back in Gehena.

I can tell and I hate it.

I hate it all.

My screams rip my vocal chords to shreds. I do not stop, I can not stop. Even when my mouth starts to tast like blood, I do not stop screaming, demanding help, escape, anything. I scream and scream and through my screams, my rage builds. I need out.

This is all because of him, damn Anakin Kumar. Damn the ground he walks on, the lies he tells. I hate him. I will always hate him.

    I will make sure he knows that.

    He knew everything about me and kept my entire life hidden and away from me. I will make him pay for that. I will make them all pay for what they have done to me.

I claw at the door until my fingernails rip against the force. They made me a monster, they made me a ghost of who I once was. They should have left me in Lani, they should have left me in that state of naivety. Don't they know the best usage of your weapon is to have it close to you at all times? Now, the sword is loose, the golden girl has darkened, and nothing is as it is.

    The door rips open and two guards drag me from my crouched stance. "Shut up!"

The blade cuts my face but I do not react. I keep my head low as they drag me to Calytrix's throne room. They toss me like a piece of worthless trash at the steps. I hit the ground hard.

"Welcome back," she laughs. It is a cackling sound that makes me want to wrap my hands around her throat.

Phanes be damned. There are no more rules, no more faith.

"You thought Lani was real?" Calytrix questions with a wicked voice that makes my blood boil. She pushes off her throne before kneeling in front of me. "Look at me, bitch."

I do not. I will not, until her fingers grip my chin so tightly I am afraid she will shatter my jaw. I see her notice my red puffy eyes. The tears do not stop, I can not make them. Delight blooms along her features as she pulls her lips back into a snarl.

    "He will never come back for you. He won't even look for you. Do you know why? Because he's a worthless whore just like his mother."

    I blink limply at her. She digs her nails in deeper.

    "So, get comfortable, this is your home now." Her eyes flash with mischief. "And I am going to break you, Nerissa Solely. Until you are finite dust at the bottom of my heel."

I take in her words like a knife across my skin. I take it all in because she does not know what she has threatened. She has threatened a girl with nothing left ot lose. A girl with a thrumming, lively, will to survive.

She throws my head back and I smack against the floor. Pain ricochets through my bruised body and I almost groan at the feeling. Calytrix turns to leave before pivoting back.

"Oh, and Nerissa, dear, push those cuticles back." She says with a wink. "Take her back."

I do not say anything as they drag me back to my hole of misery. My back hits the stone and I stare listlessly up at the ceiling. There is a hole, a crack of light from a moon I can not see, splits me in two.

I will find him one day and show him you do not ever cross me. He believed me to be glass, fragile and weak. But you are not afraid of glass because it is fragile, you are afraid of it because when you break it, it cuts. It makes you bleed and it gets into your open wound and digs. If glass is who I am to him, he will surely be sorry when I draw blood.

My hand finds the flower I had long forgotten about in my pocket. I pull the delicate towards the light. The once yellow hibiscus is now soaked in blood and dirt. A hot tear trails down the side of my face before I allow the flower to fall to the cemented ground.

    This is only just the beginning.