Rage

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Reverie

I hold my breath hostage as I flee his wing and make it back to mine.

For weeks, I’ve studied him. I’ve watched him succeed in the manor’s nefarious games and he’s surpassed all my expectations of him.

He’s strong and fierce, yet gentle and kind.

He’s known loss—far more significant than I can fathom—even though I can’t remember who I lost.

The ghosts of something I can scarcely grasp have corpses anchored to my subconscious. The place inside me where that woman exists is vast, yet she lingers there, bleeding and bloody and clinging to my skeleton.

And when I held him aloft in my talons and my lungs pulled full of his scent, his piercing eyes, rich with the molten color of firewood, skewered me, and I swear he saw the girl within.

I’ve been so mad, hardened, and scrupulous for longer than my memory stretches, but I know there is not much left that’s soft and tender in my heart. It’s hostile and hardened and looks for war, even when peace is presented as a gorgeous man reading one of my favorite books. It’s usually impervious to things like caring, which is a dangerous territory, no matter how far my mind drifts. The harder you care for something, the more fragile the world becomes.

All the other times I’ve watched him—seen him fall victim to the manor’s moving rooms, enchanted furniture, and monsters in the garden—tonight I could not fight approaching him any longer.

While the monsters of the manor are real and should be frightening, they are the only things I’ve had for company in what feels like centuries.

But tonight… tonight, I watched him climb the ladder and pull down one of my favorite books. I witnessed him sit in my favorite chair and get lost in the world that’s cradled me in my darkest hour. His thick and calloused fingers strummed the pages like a guitar, and his beard, adding a rugged texture to his already robust appearance, jostled as he moved his lips to mouth the words—a sign of dyslexia—exactly like me.

It was at that moment I glimpsed a flaw, effortlessly beautiful amid the immense energy radiating off him, pressing against me with such intensity that it stole the air from my lungs. When he spoke, his voice—dense and unyielding—pierced through my soul like flint striking stone, scattering sparks that crackled through my icy veins in the most unsettling way.

I pace around my chambers, rage warring with want and the desire to dissect these thoughts. The rage doesn’t want company. It takes up too much room in my being for fickle, silly feelings such as lust and desire.

My talons itch to shred the black drapes even more, though ninety percent are nearly shredded to bits. The manor waits until there’s no more fabric on the rods before it replaces them with new ones.

“Why don’t you just ask him to dinner?” Edmund asks, my butler bringing me my nightly elixir—and right on time.

Whatever he puts in here always calms me down.

I swipe the pewter goblet off the silver tray and slam back the icy cold liquid, wiping my face with the fuzz on my arms. “What?!” I question him, pushing the mug back onto the tray with such force that it buckles his knees a bit.

“You’re clearly thinking of him,” he states, treading carefully as he edges toward the exit. “It’s been longer than I can recall where you’ve had another young person to talk to. Your childhood was filled with?—”

“ENOUGH!” I shout, and he shrinks away from me, my voice gravelly and low, soaked with the beast within. “I don’t need you to tell me about me, Edmund.”

“Yes, m’lady, I know, it’s just?—”

“Edmund!” I shout, falling to all fours as my hackles rise.

He taps the tray, and the mug fills, and he sets it on the ground in front of me.

I’ve hurt Edmund before. Though he’s not of this earth, he is more like a living embodiment of my love and warmth, guilt and sorrow, and some shame and grief. He’s all the little bits of me I don’t have left. Edmund came to be of the things I have discarded.

My claws can still cut him, my words slice into him, and my cold indifference to the world chips away at the armor he’s created by being near me for so long.

I can still see the scars.

And he’s quick to remind me I have good pieces still tethered to the broken bits of me.

But he is also quick to dampen my mood whenever I have a good day.

It’s like he tries to be the balance.

Or both the hero and the villain.

He is both the calm and chaos in my bones.

I drink the elixir, and the red-hot sting of the alcohol singes my bones, calms my rage, and settles my soul.

“Invite him to dinner,” he says softly, crouching to level me with his heather gray eyes.

I roll my neck to release the tension; it pops in response as my gaze returns to his.

“This is your chance, Rev. You mustn’t waste this opportunity, as it may be the only one of its kind.”

“You don’t know that,” I retort, pulling myself up from leaning on all fours.

“You forget I’m the keeper of your lost memories and things you choose to forget.”

I open my mouth to say something to get him to stop, and then I close it again. Instead, I turn and move over to the fireplace, even though his words chase me like the flick of a whip.

Edmund straightens from the crouch he’d been in, pulling the mug from the floor with him. “While you may forget the person who cast the spell and the words that bind us, I cannot. They haunt me every second.” He reaches me at the fireplace. Mug filled once again, he hands it to me, the amber liquid sloshing up the sides. His cool, gray eyes impale me. “I know you’re scared. You confuse that emotion with anger. Set your wrath aside. If you get someone to see the real you inside of this—” he jabs his finger into my upper arm, “we will all be free. And then you can have your vengeance on the real person who deserves it.”

His words encircle me, gathering the rest of my rage and laying it to rest for the night. Calm, soothing air picks up the heavy burden that revenge and wrath creates, extinguishing the fire marrow cascading within me. The chilling balm settles me, and I release a ragged and deep breath.

“What if he doesn’t like what’s left of that girl?” I ask, keeping my lip steady though it nearly threatens to tremble.

“Beneath this big scary beast, you really are a great person Rev. You got dealt a shitty hand and pissed off the wrong person?—”

I shove my finger in his face to shut him up. “Tsk tsk. You know I don’t?—”

He shrugs me off. “Want me to say anything about who you were? I know,”

I nod and turn away.

I’m exhausted from this conversation, and we barely talked. I know he’s right. Yet I have no desire to gather any bits of me he feels like giving back.

I’m comfortable in my oblivion.

I say nothing as he clears his throat.

“I’ll tell him to be promptly at eight.”

I give an imperceptible nod and fall into a trance with the flames as he saunters off, leaving the conversation at that.

The doors to my chamber clang closed, and I sink into the chair by the fire, letting the rest of my anger slip into the embers.

I must be on my best behavior for dinner.

Gotta convince a man I’m neither maiden nor monster, but something in between.