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CHAPTER SEVEN / VOL. I, THE MONSTER BEFORE YOU
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IT'S HARD TO BE GOOD. Maybe not for the average person, but for Will it always has been. It's not like she wants to be a bad person; it just comes naturally. And as much as she might try, being good does not come naturally. What Will Solace always tells her is that being good is allowed to be hard. He understands that she doesn't always make the right choice and that even when she does it's never easy. He says that the important thing is that she makes the right choice anyways, no matter how difficult it might seem or how much she wants to choose the painless option.
Her father doesn't believe in right or wrong, good or bad. People just are. He, like Will, is calloused and cruel with no moral compass and no concern for the concept of morality. Most people are born with a moral backbone or at least find it along the way, but Ares has a spine like a whip, still dripping with sweat and blood from the battlefield. He is self-serving and antagonistic—born from ire and warfare, finding a home in the chaos that comes from his own wrath. He thinks that the easy choice is the best choice because it's always easy to choose his own gain. He's selfish and in some ways a coward, and as much as Will wants to say she's not like him, the sad truth of it is that she is.
Luke's trust in her was misplaced, just as hers was in him. Despite what he had told her, Will was the spitting image of her father—eyes like torches and a niche where her heart should be, an empty cavern full of dark things that scramble to find safety in the shadows.
Outside of the building, the cold air nips at her cheeks and her whole body is threatened by the stagnancy of the cold, and she thinks that maybe she deserves this kind of pain because there is nothing remotely redeemable about her. Standing by one of the falling fences, Will looks back at the warehouse that holds the good in her, the parts of her that say to be selfless. She'd left it long behind and now she feels her gut wrench. Finally, she understands—it's guilt. It festers until it becomes uncontrollable and Will has to stop herself from attempting to carve out this unfamiliar feeling with her bare hands. She hates feeling this way, thinking that she'd rather take a sword to the stomach than feel this guilty ever again. Because she's left Piper to die and it already haunts her.
