Serpentine Desires

The predator-153

Blood was nothing new to me. It painted my hands like a second skin, crusted under my nails, and seeped into the fabric of my soul. But tonight, it felt heavier—different. It wasn't just someone else's blood. It was mine, hers, ours.

Revenge. That was all that ever mattered. Should've mattered. The driving force. The dynamics of the event horizon I built around myself ever since I realised the darkness that flowed inside my veins was darker than the black hole itself. The poison I drank every morning and the cure I swore by every night. It kept me alive when I should've been dead. It carved me into the perfect soldier, the blade my brother wielded when his own body betrayed him. I was his knight, his weapon, his monster. That's what I told myself. That's what I needed to believe.

Until now.

Now, I was something else—something weaker. Fragile. Fucking terrified.

I stared at my hands, trembling as the blood dripped from my fingertips. The crimson was darker under the fluorescent lights, almost black. It matched the pit growing in my chest. The room stank of antiseptic and despair, the kind of smell that clung to you long after you left.

I wanted to scream. To tear this place apart. To rip out the beeping machine that kept telling me she was alive but not really. It mocked me, taunted me with every fucking beep.

I almost let that bomb go off. I almost let myself die. For what? Peace? Redemption? The idea of meeting her in some goddamn afterlife where none of this mattered? Where she could be mine without the weight of blood and betrayal between us?

Pathetic.

I wasn't built for peace. Or redemption. Or love.

And maybe that was the reason distanced myself away from my mother, cause she was the only sane human in the house that made me human. Now, that place was replaced by my Ptichka. My little bird. I shouldn't want her.

But fuck me, I wanted her. I wanted her in ways that made my chest ache, my head pound and my sanity crack. I wanted her laughter to echo in my ears and her touch to burn away the darkness inside me. I wanted to drown in her and forget what it felt like to be Judas Romanovski.

Instead, I sat here, covered in blood, waiting for her to wake up.

I didn't know what I felt anymore. The respite, the relief. I didn't fucking want to know. The only thing I knew she was safe. Alive.

"Ptichka..." I whispered under my breath. The nickname slipped from me like a prayer. My little bird. Broken, battered, but still breathing. Still fucking fighting, even when I didn't deserve her fight.

The anger came then, sharp and blistering. It burned through the fear, through the pain, through the weakness that clung to me like a noose.

This was not my father's fault. Not my brother's fault. My fucking fault.

If I'd been faster, smarter, stronger, none of this would've happened. She wouldn't be lying there, hooked up to machines, her face pale and her body still. Krystina wouldn't have been sobbing in my arms, begging me to save her. And I wouldn't have been dragged out of that warehouse by the man I hated most in this world.

Or so I thought.

I clenched my fists, the blood on my palms sticky and cold. I could still feel the sting of his grip on my arm, the way he yanked me back from the edge like I was a goddamn child.

You think dying makes you a martyr? You think your misery erases the blood on your hands?

His voice was still ringing in my ears. 

You don't get to die. Not until you've fixed this mess.

A cruel laugh bubbled up in my throat. As if revenge was some righteous cause. As if it would bring any of us peace.