Chapter 33
THE UNROOTING
Iwake with the room as empty as my soul. Where spots of light come in with the morning sun, my heart only holds darkness. If putting the ring on opened my eyes to things I felt I had always known, then Ry shutting me out in that moment earlier today ripped my entire world apart.
I am starting to see what has always had to happen. He can’t stay, but neither can I. Not mentally at least. For I only know madness now. It was forged in my bones long ago. Something I held onto as the world fell around me, over and over again.
Each life we have together teaching me something new about love. Not the kind I dreamt of as a girl, but the messy, evolving kind that changes who you are—sometimes for better, sometimes not.
One love can awaken a part of you. A part you didn’t know existed. Growing into the good of the experience. That’s not the one I know.
Then there is another love. A love full of na?ve comfort that eats away at your insides. That never leaves, but can’t quite stay either, because in all its comfort, you find it is entirely uncomfortable. Ry’s love is the latter, and I am completely uncomfortable in all that we are.
And because of it, the same thing would always follow.
I would leave tragically, or he would push me away time after time, much like he is doing now.
But when the insanity crept in this time, I knew it would stay.
Wrap around the crevices of my soul, filling me with fleeting escapes that only I could fathom.
Madness stayed. Madness cradled me. Madness was my undoing, even when he came back in the next life, and became my unrooting, yet again.
I know this now, and after Ry’s clear disgust this morning. I knew I could never be the same. I could either break or I could adapt.
Suddenly, all his terrible traits become so clear in my mind.
Because sometimes the bad guy will be just that.
He may care, show glimpses of someone who could be more.
He may even want to be better. But in the end, he’s still the villain through and through.
And if you are lucky, he’ll let you play the villain, too—but it may not be in the way he was hoping.
I am broken, that is true, but free. Free to make a choice that will fucking tear him apart.
He was right when he said that mortals and gods do not fit, but I am no fucking mortal, and he is not the god he thinks he is.
Our hearts spoke clearly that morning, and what started as two hearts saying I will bleed for you turned, quite tragically, to one saying I will make yours bleed, and that is exactly what I intend to do.
I tear his ring off and stuff it into my bra, my skin already itching from its absence. I no longer wish to wear something so tainted with dishonesty and hatred. Something forged for me in what I mistook for love, only to drain me of my power.
I leave plenty of food for Carya and open the basement door, knowing very well she can travel between realms with no problem, as she did when she disappeared before. The basement door that would send chills to my core, calling me down to its depths. But the basement isn’t meant for me tonight.
Ry shattered my heart. He left it in pieces on the floor as if it were a fallen dime-store vase on the mantel.
Not even an heirloom worthy enough to be glued back together.
No, he made it clear our love was nothing when he spoke that word to me.
Pathetic? I will show him how something he sees as so insubstantial can be used to tear his whole world apart.
I slam the front door behind me, so much so that the ancient mirror beside it fractures, my bare feet making hard contact with the wet misty ground once I make my way down the steps.
I run toward the trees. The bottoms of my soles already feeling the effects of walking amongst the cold, muddy soil of the southern bayou.
Caked in mud, I run past the sleeping hawk that always lingers around wherever I seem to be. The hawk doesn’t sleep tonight, feeling my fevered heart make a direct route to where I know I need to be.
Sweat and tears tangle my hair in a mess against my neck.
It isn’t even warm here this evening, but the temperature inside me is making me feel as if I am heading to the inferno.
A growing fire of fury sitting deep beneath my ribs.
I’m afraid not even revenge could smother its flames, but that is the route I must take.
Now the crow’s eyes are looking, but I no longer hide as I pass by open moonflowers along the trail. My steps strong and panicked—laughing as I do. My manic state getting the best of me.
I was going to make an example. I would break him from the inside out, much like the soles of my feet upon finding my destination at last. I crawl frantically up to the tree base, ripping at the roots and the soil with hands that will never again show any mercy.
Mercy is for the weak. For the breakable. And he will be broken.
I can feel stubborn roots ripping at my cuticles as my female rage seeps into my hands and lets them take on a life of their own.
One of my nails bends back, breaking off at its base.
Something that should cause me to scream in pain, but no pain compares to what I feel surging through my blackened heart.
Feverishly, I make my way deeper and deeper until I see a light. Iridescent and welcoming. How deep I am, I do not know, but I pull myself into the mass of entangled roots with only a feeling of how this may turn out.
I am weeping now. An uncontrollable sobbing brought on by the splitting of my unrequited devotion. Weeping for the love I imagined, and so overwhelmingly exhausted by the truth that it will never be.
I am holding onto one moment of vulnerability as two hands grab my arms and pull me farther and farther, until I am in a place I cannot even put words to. But the hands are still there, and they wrap around my shoulders, consoling me in a way they wish someone would reciprocate.
I collapse, finding myself lifted to be cradled and carried away. My tear-soaked vision looking up into the eyes that are receiving me just as I knew they would. The acorn-hued irises rimmed with the ring of the moon. Que.
“Hello, gem. Finally making your own choices, I see.”